For the Kids

Sung Ho called at 6:45am and told me to meet him in front of Gwangmyung City Hall. It's just across the street from my place so I got dressed, bought us some orange juice and went to meet him. His car has a GPS system set up so he punched in Seoul World Cup Stadium and the video monitor showed us exactly where we were and announced when to turn. 20 minutes of video game driving later we arrived and immediately Sung Ho tossed a cigarette in his mouth. (The first of many race day drags).

This event wasn't the Terry Fox run, it was The Severance Charity Run for Disabled Children. Almost every company that was taking place was related to health care and had tents set up all over the place. (Sung Ho works for a company that supplies hospitals with...supplies) We met all his coworkers who giggled because I was a foreigner and they couldn't speak English. We got there so early that we had to wait around for another two hours before the run started.

In this time I saw a lot of weekend warriors chain smoking and pretending to do some stretches. They must of been forced to participate in the run. After stretching (following the company boss) we had another hour so most of the guys chose to do some last minute training of smoking as many cigarettes as they could and were busy popping mini snickers for energy.

We were finally called over to the main stage where the world's tiniest person led us through some more stretches. The race soon started and every participant had to attach a chip to their shoe that confirms when you started and finished the race. You have to make sure to run over the counters on route.

It was a nice run from the stadium out to the Han River where we double backed a couple of times before running through the stadium's forested park. Along the way Sung Ho picked out every sleeping homeless man and said that's how he'd be at the end. But he did a lot better than I thought he would making it all the way to the 9km mark before starting to walk. I ran on ahead and only had to wait a few minutes before he cross the digital finish line. We finished in the top half of our group passing many people along the way. I will let you know the times when the results are in.