Incheon Songdo Marathon

Half marathon: over.
Time: 1.55.00

Sessions and I went out to Incheon on Saturday arvo to get ourselves ready for the great race. We had been preparing for this since back in late June. I was looking forward to that finish line more than I'd realised. After all, who would give up a precious weekend to go and sweat it out with 10 000 other nutters on a Sunday morning? Even the churchgoing among us had a longer sleep in than Stephen and I! I have decided to spend the next few Thursday nights at Traveler's Bar & Bistro getting pissed and telling stories about how I used to be great at sport, which will lead to the more tall stories about how I used to be popular at school, and then onto more general shouted demands for the whole pub to STFU and listen to me sing Khe Sahn. And enjoy it.

We headed out on the bus and spent the afternoon wandering around Incheon's Chinatown and Jayu Park. There's a couple of notable monuments out there including the General MacArthur statue and the monument for the centenary of Korea-US relations. At around 4:30 we headed off for the love motel district (adjacent to the Incheon Songdo Business District) and started to look for somewhere to stay. Love motel or not, 35 000 KRW was a good price for this room. It came with a free condom which, although I appreciated the tired receptionist's gesture, didn't fit because it was designed for 4 Incheon. I'm not sure how many of you will get that but it's staying in for publication as I quite like it. Cheers.

Right then. After dinner I listened to the last of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking audiobook and then had trouble sleeping. It wasn't the mattress, or the arguments outside, or the budae jjigae I'd had for lunch. Have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? It was one of the most concentrated and abominable horror stories ever to emerge from the long and painful twentieth century. And as a student of history, I am qualified to say that there was a lot fucked up shit that went down in that century. I am spending a few days in Nanjing during my upcoming Chinese "sweet 'n' sour" tour of January '11 and am therefore keen to know a bit about what actually happened there in the winter of 1937-38. But not if it involves too many more stories of tortures, beheading, rape, genocide, and Japanese soldiers enjoying it.

Sunday morning was a simple dinner of gimbap, which I thought would be plain enough before the race. We hailed a taxi and had chosen one that didn't know where Central Park was which I thought was pretty poor form but found the race after he hailed another cabbie and got directions. How amusing for me to find that the start/finish line of the race was outside the hotel I'd been put up in 11 months earlier by Korean Air when I was flying to Europe. This small area of Korea sparks great memories and carries heavy emotions for me. Korea was the first foreign country I visited and so the morning before my flight I wandered around the park taking pictures of "Asian" things. Rocks and pavilions and towers and such.



This one, the old and the new, was taken on November 19, 2009. I had the sense that I would like to see more of Korea, but had no idea it would be as soon as...



...October 17, 2010, after the short journey to Europe, the incendiary relationship coming down and going up in flames, the long trip home, and the determination never to be fooled again. Oh, the humanity...



Shame about this pic as I'm doing that squinty thing again. That's Stephen next to me, an all round top bloke who did the marathon (42.195km) in 3.43.00



Some women go all Beatlemania when they spot a handsome white man. Other just hide behind their sleeves. Stephen, who took this picture, is very good-looking guy.

The race over, Stephen and I started to head back but were met by some of his mates who made the journey all the way to Incheon, only to miss the finish. We got back to Yatap, where they went to play football and drink and such and I went straight home for a nap. Actually the damage hasn't been bad at all; going down stairs was painful yesterday, but I would say that Stephen and I put in enough training, to cope with the race, when it came. And we did.

A Bit o' The Ol' Push 'n' Shove

My Chuseok holiday finished with me ambling around Bundang for a few lazy days in late September. There was a game of screen golf with Matt and his pal Will, both originally from the U.S. but teaching in Korea now for 1 and 3 years respectively. Will was quite the golfer, and at one point criticised Matt - who is always looking to improve his game - for his "Willy Loman-like stance." I asked what that meant and Will went into his "a man is not a piece of fruit" speech. Basically Will thought Matt looked a bit pathetic.

I enjoy the company of these two guys. Matt consistently displays the similar style of whimsical and irreverent Facebook status update that I favour, though (if possible), he does it better than me. Screen golf on the other hand is as boring as batshit. Yes it is amusing for the first half an hour to hit a ball against a screen then let the computer take over, but after that novelty wears away, all there is to do is drink. After an hour of that, the golf just becomes a nuisance. Some say that golf ruins a nice walk, but it ruins so much more than that, including the opportunity to have a good piss up with your new mates.

So we went to Traveler's "for 1" after the golf, and stayed for 5. There we managed to continue the afternoon of "sport" by playing fussball and darts. Each one of us emerged as the best at one of the sports, and I'm pleased to say that I became known as the one to beat at darts, which is of course the only real sport of the 3.
I called it quits early though as I drink so infrequently now that it knocks me for 6 whenever I do touch it. I also can't think of a better way I could have saved more money than in reducing my alcohol intake, other than to take up smoking and give it up in the same week.

Before you get the wrong idea please know that I went to Sarah Wilson's housewarming party 2 weeks ago and got completely soused. Okay, let's move on.

The marathon training is in full swing now as the big race is less than 2 weeks away. I will run my final long distance training session this Thursday, then do a couple of quiet ones in the week leading up to the race. On the big day I am praying for weather much like what we've been enjoying lately. My prediction came true that once the summer passed and the humidity dropped sharply I would cope with the distance running so much easier. I've even got half a mind to enter a full marathon in March, before it warms up too much.

But the major event on my horizon is my trip to China this January. Any day now I will receive my jolly old Lonely Planet China from Amazon, after which I can plan in detail my trek across the eastern and central parts of China. At the moment the idea is to take the ferry from Incheon to Qingdao, then use trains once I am on the Chinese mainland, working around to Xian and Beijing, before heading home (to Bundang - I think of it as my home I guess). In preparation for this I have been refreshing my Mandarin; it's remarkable how much stuck from all the way back in the year 2000. Immediately upon forming the first few words I fell for the sounds and the tones of the language again. After perusing the phrasebook for 25 minutes over a meal of deok mandu guk last night I found I had forgotten every word of Korean I knew, almost saying goodbye to the cook in the wrong language.

The Koreans are treating me well and I've gotten used to some of their behaviours, even if I can't always immediately accept that the "rudeness" isn't to be taken personally. I've never thought too much about the simple act of walking in a crowd, however within a few weeks of landing over here, I found I'd reflected upon it many times. There is a different flow of pedestrian traffic, one which I am used to now and so don't even notice that much, but I saw how the "after you" and "do you mind if I don't" gestures which I was brought up to believe in were less a kindness and more of a hindrance over here, where everyone already knows their place and so expects to either go first or wait for you. There are random acts of kindness of course, and in general the lack of aggression and the safety of Korean society are very attractive parts of the culture. But these "western hang-ups" of mine - of believing in personal space for instance - will just have to be suspended. It's not always that bad: Lucy brushes up so close to me during lesson planning that I have to remind myself that it doesn't mean anything. In truth, however, there have been fewer instances of that, and more of being forced up against a dribbly old man wearing a smashing US Navy cap on the subway, and not being able to move until we get back to Seolleung.