When Randy and I arrived in Khon Kaen, we went straight to registration. We picked up my racing number, chip (they give everybody an electronic chip to put on their shoes that allows the race officials to know when you cross the start and finish lines, and whether or not you went through all the checkpoints), shirt, etc, then looked around at some of the shoe and uniform sales. I ended up buying a jersey and two power gel packets for the next day. The jersey I wasn’t sure I was going to wear, but it was cheap and nice to have as an option.
The next order of business was finding in the real city of Khon Kaen the places I had identified on a map as places I would like Randy to come and cheer. It turns out Khon Kaen is not nearly as straight forward in real life as it would appear on a map, especially if driver and passenger keep talking to each other rather than paying attention to the road.
Having figured out enough of the city for Randy to get around, we sought out some pre-race Italian food. We followed someone’s directions and arrived at a place that looked like we ought to put on tuxes before entering. Not having tuxedos along we decided to ask around a little more. We eventually got directed to a steak house that proved quite the find. I ordered both a pasta carbonara and a pork spaghetti. Both were wonderful. Randy got a steak that he said was quite good as well. To make the restaurant even better, the service was unbelievably fast. It made it seem like they were opening up microwave meals in the kitchen, throwing them in the ol’ nuker and bringing them out to serve us, but we could see into the kitchen from where we sat and they really cooked the stuff. All this—three entrees and two drinks—for roughly $15.
Dinner finished we went to Randy’s friends house to spend the night. Randy joined a game they were playing downstairs. I went upstairs and released my nervous pre-race energy into the task of making the jersey I’d bought a usable piece of equipment. I cut the edging off the lower side of the arm holes. The edging was some thick rough stuff that would have worn through my skin by kilometer 17. I also took out a nice embroidered logo, that also would have eaten a hole in my flesh. That finished, my number pinned on the jersey, and my chip on my shoe, I went to bed.
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