Alissa Ran Her First Marathon- The Ulsan Whale Marathon!!!

The deets:

After rippin it up in Daegu at Buddha's Birthday Festival, Alissa, Katie, and I took a 2 hour 'slow' train to the harbour city of Ulsan.

Ulsan is famous for two things: it's the home to one of Korea's biggest and most powerful companies, Hyundai, and it used to be one of the biggest whaling ports in Asia before whaling was banned in 1985.

The Whale Marathon took place along the modern industrial harbour in what used to be the main whaling port - it wasn't what we expected. We thought that we would be jogging through the picturesque harbour, viewing the beaches with seagulls flying overhead. I didn't see one seagull or beach....

The whole course weaved between oil refining plants, car factories, and other large metallic buildings. The best view was definitely of the harbour- it was filled with large container ships, docks, and large containers. Because I am from the middle of Canada, I sure thought it was interesting to see the action of the harbour as I chugged along the 21.3 Km course.

Alissa and Katie were super stoked about running their first race. Alissa finished close to one hour and waited for Katie to finish. She knew that Katie was in trouble when the clock read 1 hour 20 minutes, and there was still no sign of her friend! She ended up coming in at around 1 hour 30 minutes... I guess she accidentally ran some of the poorly marked 1/2 marathon course before someone told her to turn around!