The 2023 108 SAO Friendship Run in Bangkok, Thailand

The short version. 

Great event! Well organised with great food and great swag at an amazingly low price if you don’t include the plane ticket to Thailand! 

The much longer version.

Like many runners we are  always happy to fit a race into our holiday plans. Harold and I knew we would be in Bangkok over a weekend so we looked for a race to run while we were there. 

We could not find anything with google but we did find Jog and Joy Thailand. https://www.jogandjoy.com/Home2-ENG a website that only works some of the time, but when it does it has an excellent list of running races in Thailand. Using it we found the 108 SAO Friendship Run. There is no website, It is only on Facebook. This is not usual in Asia and it does have an advantage because you can translate the Facebook posts! The run was being held to celebrate the 108th anniversary of the office of the auditor general in Thailand.

We managed to figure out that the run started at 5:00 am, 7 km from our hotel. We also found a registration link which had an English tab. Unfortunately, not everything was translated and some of the answers had to be given in Thai. It took us a couple of hours but we did manage to register. The race kits had to be delivered to an address in Thailand so we had to translate the address of our hotel into Thai with Google translate and hope for the best. We also had to give shirt sizes based on photos. After we registered we sent a note to the hotel in English and hoped they would understand what was going on when the race kits arrived and hold onto them for us. Registration was about $30 each so we were willing to take the chance. 

We arrived in Bangkok a month later and checked in at the hotel. As soon as we identified ourselves they produced a package for us from behind the desk. Inside we found our bibs and race shirts.

All the races we looked at included a shirt which you get before the race and most people wear them for the race. We had to pick red, white or blue and we think, based on the Facebook posts there was a contest between the colours in the race. Luckily we both picked red so there was no pre-race tension!

Now all we had to do was figure out how to get to the office of the auditor general at 4:00 am. We asked the hotel, but they could only help us get to the airport because that is the only place tourists go at 4:00 am. Thailand has “Grab” which is like Uber but better! If you have the courage to do it you can get picked up on a motorbike! We opted for a car and booked one for 4:00 am.

Race morning we were in the lobby and sure enough our Grab arrived.The driver looked confused, but he followed the app and we followed with google maps. Just as we thought we were getting close we found a start/finish line with a big stage, loud music and a dancing frog (Ottawa bylaw would have shut that down pretty fast!) The driver laughed and dropped us off. 

Along with the frog there were two very enthusiastic announcers. The start finish area was big and well organised with lots of bathrooms in trailers with running water, a bag check and pre-race water.

We were not sure if it was okay to run in something other than the race shirt so we had our RunK2J singlets on under the race shirts. There were several faster looking runners warming up in singlets so we checked our race shirts. There may have been some but we did not see any other foreign runners. 

The race had chip timing. There were two distances: a 10.8 km because it was the 108th anniversary and a 5 km. There were almost 1000 runners in the 10.8 and probably as many in the 5.

They had pacers for 60 minutes and 70 minutes who had big helium balloons tied to their race shirts with their pace times on them. 

We started on time. It was very crowded at the start. The first km was my slowest as I had to dodge and weave a lot. There was a high school band playing around the 1km mark which was quite remarkable as it was 5:00am. It was also rather dark between the streetlights and the road was not in great shape so you really had to watch your feet. 

The course was along big multi-lane roads, but we always had a traffic free lane to run in and there were police stopping traffic at all the intersections. There were four water stops and a bonus stop with watermelon and other goodies. there were even dancing dinosaurs.

The water at the stops had ice in every cup! Even at 5:00am it was hot and humid. High 20’s to low 30’s C. I needed all four water stops and by 5km I was starting to feel the heat. 

I was happy to see the finish line! At the finish we were given medals and coupons for the post race meal. There was a large screen just past the finish with live overall and age group top finishers displayed. What a great idea! I checked the display and discovered I had won the women’s 60 plus. The woman working there looked at me, looked at the name and fingered it out right away. Only western woman, plus only western name! She showed me that I could scan a QR code on my bib and get my race result instantly online- another great idea! She told me to download my finishers certificate on my phone and show it to the people by the stage. 

After I found Harold, who placed 9th in men 60 plus ,we went to the finisher area where they gave us a second “finishers” shirt, water, sports drink, Popsicles, and coconut ice cream. Behind that area there were 30 plus food trucks with a whole assortment of food. Fancy coffee drinks, mango donuts, fried chicken, various Thai dishes, soups and desserts. You used your coupons to get 2 meals, 1 ice cream, 1 dessert and a drink.  The food was amazing! Not a banana or a stale bagel to be seen anywhere!

I showed my downloaded certificate to the ladies at the stage. There were trophies 5 deep for each age group.

They said they would call me in 30 minutes to get my award or something like that, their English was better than my Thai but communication was still limited. 

There were several thank yous and pictures taken on stage followed by the overall winners. Then they started the age group awards. I was in the area and I thought I heard “age group”. The next thing I heard was then calling for runner 960 (my bib number). Turns out they were starting with the oldest women and I was holding up the show! 

They called us up on stage one by one, everyone was called by name but they had no idea how to say mine so they just called me runner 960! I won a trophy which is probably bigger than the one I have from the World Iornman 70.3 last year and 500 Bht (about $25). 

There were free photos and several photo opps. Harold and I made it onto the Facebook page highlights!

In conclusion: It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend this event or any other random race in a foreign country! Although, if they have the race next year it will be the 109th anniversary so you may have to run 10.9 km