My Twelfth Marathon (Before Start)

The race started at 4:30am and we were advised to arrive an hour in advance.

Of course very few people listened.

In my fast few marathons, I would arrive at the venue very early — sometimes two hours before it started.

It did a big penalty on my performance though. Waiting for too long making it difficult for me to warm up and kept myself warmed up afterwords. Sometimes it is just too boring wandering around looking everywhere. In most cases, it was too cold to wait as in most parts of the world, the so-called best temperature for marathon is about 10 degrees Celsius, which is quite a challenge for sub-tropical animals like myself.

My experience led me to try staying in an accommodation closest to the venue such that I could walk there within 15 minutes or less. If it is a big race, it may take another 15 minutes to get through all security and reach the bag drop point, then another 10 minutes or so to reach the assigned starting position. Responsibly speaking, it seems runners should be at the starting position about 10 minutes before the race actually starts, for having the final stretch and make sure all gears (particularly the performance-measuring device(s) and entertainment (a.k.a. music!) are in place and properly initiated. For small race, such time can be cut by half.

This time I am staying in a hotel about 800m away from the starting point. So I left my room about 3:45am. I was planning to walk to the venue but at the entrance, I saw a local shuttle bus so I hopped in. Then reached the venue at 3:50am.

It took me 10 minutes to have all errands done then I started stretching for 10 minutes. After which I was allowed to enter the starting zone.

With the social distancing mentality, it was quite funny seeing all runners are staying away from each other by 1 meter to the front and back but not on the sides. Therefore, there were walls of runners across the width of the track each separating from each other by 1 meter. This is quite astonishing — because runners generally like to cram towards the front as if the few meters differences before starting will make a difference in the actual performance (in a 42km+ race). I see this a material improvement of runner’s mentality.

There weren’t many running in the race, with only about 2000 runners. However since the track is largely two-lane country side roads, it could still be crowded particularly at the start. The organiser arranged runners in six groups and each would start one-minute apart. I applauded this arrangement because this really helped eventually. I never felt running in a mob and the space between runners were indeed quite comfortable.

Indeed for a full marathon, a 4:30am starting was quite late in this tropical area. It means for most runners, more than half of the time running they will be running under the sun, which rises shortly after six even during the winter. Perhaps because there wasn’t too much traffic concerns (for a rather deserted travel destination on a Sunday) hence it was scheduled this way.

Having said so, I would blame such late starting as the sole reason for what happened to me eventually.