Run for the Jungle

5 Dec

Our 24th annual marathon

 

Our 24th annual marathon was held this morning.  This event, run on every December 5th, the birthday of King Rama 9, is meant to raise money for important causes in Thailand.  In the past, the event was called ‘Run for the King.’  After King Rama 9 passed away, and the position had not yet been filled by the new king, the event was renamed ‘Run for the Sea’. This year, the event has been renamed again as ‘Run for the Jungle’. All monies raised will, this year, be provided to the government agency that takes care of national parks.  The actual park to which the money will go is called the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, which is located about 4-1/2 hours by car north-west of Bangkok.

15,000 participants took part in today’s event, which continues to see it being the second largest one of its kind in Thailand.  The only bigger event is the bike ride for the king, which is headed up by the new king and which runs this coming Sunday.  It will have 100,000 participants.

Our event has become a tradition in Bangkok.  I think it’s also the oldest one.  Today’s event was extremely successful.  There was lots of food, entertainment and prizes.  But most importantly, there was a lot of money raised for a very good cause and perhaps some inspiration raised to stay healthy, live sustainably and care for other creatures that share the planet.  

The only minor downside of the event for me is that I had to wake up at 2:30am to get to the site of the event, as I was part of the organizing crew.  The actual run/walk started at 5:30am.  This early start allowed for much of the event to take place during a cool part of the day (night) and also made it possible for participants to get to work at a reasonable time.

There is not much more to say.  I have included links to this and past events as well as to the sanctuary.  The photos shown above are pretty random and not necessarily in any order.

There are two final points:  Every participant had a phone and took, I would  conservatively guess, at least 20 selfies during the entire event.  That’s at least 300,000 selfies.  It’s all a bit mind boggling.  The second point is that the hospital, many years ago, commissioned an exercise song that is played every day at the facilities across the network.  Today was no exception.  Prior to the marathon starting, our students and nurses, along with thousands of participants did a warm-up to this song.  I shot a amateur video.  It’s shown below.

 

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