Three months ago, I suddddenly decided to attend Akron half-marathon race without any background around it. During last several months, I did some training and started to enjoy running. When I finished it, I realized that my simple decision could bring so many new things into my life. This probably the power of adventure.
If you feel nervous before the race, you should stay with a couple of strangers, then it will help you move your focus. For example, I went to Akron with my running friend and her sister drove us there. Well, she is a fantastic driver before the marathon because I never had so strong running motivation before until I sat in her car. I loved that. Anyway, I had very good time with my friend's family, very very good. I felt like they were talking in a TV when we having a dinner. You know one mother with two daughters, the mother's right hand is one younger daughter love art and going to a full marathon race, well, the right hand is old daughter who crazy with car and food. Siting in front of them, I really felt like there is going on a family drama and sometimes I can have some interactions with them, you know, head left and then right. I love that night before the race not only because I watched a tv live drama but also her mother bought me the Italian dinner. Amazing.
As I wished, things on the eve of race kept strange and scary. I booked an airbnb room and it's a non profit community project which means it's not private house but an public house. Well, public house in a strange city for me is incredible strange. When my friend's family dropped me off and standing in front of my eye, it was a blue outlook house but totally dark house. My friend's mother sitting in the car and seeing me entered into that house. At that time, the picture looks like sending a kid into a scary forest to fight the monster. When I got into the house, I turned on the light and it's really horrible, one piano and very big first floor. Without much exploring, I went to my room at second floor, which should be locked at first but it's already open. I locked myself in the room and kept the light on. I'm so nervous to sleep and some people entered the house later and talking , then I felt better. It turns out very bad night and kept myself away from the race which is good.
The other reason that I didn't have a good sleep was I didn't know if I could get a lyft ride in the early morning. It was the first time that I called a public transportation center to scheduled a taxi for me instead of booking in a software. It turned out old system still works. I got the taxi at 6am next morning and the driver was very nice except don't know what was going on the road such as most of roads would be blocked for race. Anyway, I arrived the park on time and I gave him 10 dollars. When he was trying to find charges for me, I said could you do me a favor to kept them, these coins would be too heavy for me on the road. He must very happy to receive these tips which help passengers so much.
When I arrived the start line, it was still dark but many people wear colorful clothes and ready to run. But before that, there was another waiting line, not for race but for restrooms. Based on your speed, we have six groups area, also at the back of these areas, there were the temporary restrooms. Before the race, everyone wanted use restroom one time and I saw a rule from different areas of restroom line which is quick runner also use restroom quickly than slow group. I think that's one meaning of marathon race, you know, increase your running speed and also speed up your restroom usage which help a lot for public restroom especially the women restroom long waiting line.
The race started at 7:30 am and I stayed in the last group to run. Once I started, it was so much easier than I thought. I just kept running and didn't even want to stop. Along with many people running together was interesting and also with those neighbors who standing at the side of race road and cheered for us. When people cheering for you, they were trying to scream out your name, well as a Chinese, my name did sounds hard to pronouce. I felt like I was running to challenge people to test their language ability and well, during the whole race, there are only two people said out my name correctly. Seriously, I really proud of them who can speak a Chinese name that is moving at the speed of 11 min/mile. I even want to give them a prize for outstanding tone among so many other neighbors but I had to ran away. So you see there are many races in the life, not only the running race that I was running but also another who can screaming out Daowen competition? Even though you don't think you were attending these races but anyway congratulations to the two winners. Please find me to have your medal when you realized.
Except for people standing, there were many interesting sentences wrote in the landmark and I did got many inspires from that. Such as: life is about creating yourself. Never quit. You run better than the government. Each sentence reminds me something and they kind of become many small dialogs happening in my brain. I also heard some dialogs passing me or around me and I even heard an embarrassing hook up conversation between a strong man and a smaller women. The man was trying to invite the women to join his training, but he was so proud of himself that the girl felt being distained. So she just refused the man when they running and he got very embarrassed. Well, I would suggested him take this race a little bit seriously and ran faster instead of slower than me. So I just passed him.
I felt so happy during the whole process, so I felt a little bit sad when I closed to the finish line in downtown area. With sadness, I smelt the dumplings from a chinese restraunts in the block and that let me felt back to China's street. The finish line is inside the baseball game stadium and I was so excited to think of baseball game night. Finally the whole race ended at one familiar place.
Surprisingly, I used 2:24:25 totally without much pain or exhaustion. The funny thing was similar to the dinner with unknown family, I joined Rosario's family lunch including her husband and mother in law. It was totally another TV series ending my race.
One week after the race, when I am looking back, I have so many interesting things in my brain and they are so deep into my brain that I couldn't forget. Even though for other people, they would think it's just a half-marathon race for me, but actually I experienced much more than that. Not only did the things that I thought I couldn't do it, but also did it by myself. Like the sentence I saw on the race road: life is about creating yourself.