Well I was up bright and early wondering where the Pattaya Marathon was supposed to be starting from, some news reports said Soi Yodsak and some Soi 4, I guessed that Soi Yodsak would probably not be the best place for an internationally renowned marathon to start and finish, I mean the street with the dirtiest sleaziest whores available in Pattaya probably wernt gonna be it, so I went to Soi 4, and that was where it was.
Obviously Soi 4 was going to be blocked off at the bottom but fokwits will be fokwits so they all drove down the end of the Soi and just sort of abandoned their motorbikes where ever, in the end it came down to enough room for people to walk single file but only one way, and yes thats how all the athletes in the marathon had to get there, bet they were impressed with the professionalism of it all.
Anyway the announcer had erm all standing on the start line for about 15 minutes, then announced 5 minutes to go, then 5 minutes and he goes 3;2;1 and that was it they were off, pretty crap really, but then again maybe all marathons are.
Over the next 15 minutes the ones that had overslept started turning up and joining in, obviously out on the piss last night, although with the smell of tiger balm all over the place you never have smelt the booze on them.
Anyway the guy in the lead has done about 30 odd km, he is black and running quicker than I could run if I was doing the 100 meters, pretty damn amazing the stamina some of these guys have got, the bollards to seperate the traffic from the runners are all over the place, drunks in their cars knocking into them I suppose.
What did shock me was when the black guy was going past there were a couple of Soi dogs on the loose, now this guy is in the lead and he is black so he is really likely to have a problem with these dogs, but one of the Thai volunteer policeman scared them off just before he got there, who would have thought it, FORETHOUGHT.