Hannah's Version
On the first Saturday in February, Aimee and I had to get up at 5 a.m. to meet at the school. We had a state (Penang - which includes all of the island and part of the mainland) cross country meet that we had to compete in. After a 45 minute drive we got to a school in a small village where we had to run. Then, at about 7:40 I lined up with about 1000 U15 and U18 boys and girls. The gun went off and I began dodging people to start running. A few hundred meters later, I had managed to make good progress among this huge throng of people and got myself into a good position in the race and was able to not worry about tripping over people anymore. After about a kilometer, the path changed and we were pointed down to the beach. We ran there for about 1 or 2 kilometers. Running on the beach was very tiring and my ankle were not given the reassurance of firm ground. Eventually, running on the beach finished and we were back to running on the road. After maybe 1 kilometer on the road we were pointed down a smaller path that was mostly meant for motorcycles. After a little while on that path we were guided on to a dirt path through some fields. Whenever a gutter was crossing the path, runners would have to step on rotting wood planks to cross the small streams. We crossed the main road in that village and continued on another small path meant for motorcycles and looped on for about 20 minutes. I collected my yellow wristband to show that I have finished the race, then looped back to the main road and raced about 200 more meters to the finish line. When we got to the start / finish line I slowed down but then a guy was guiding everyone on and I realized I still had about 100 meters to go. We waited for the results about 50 minutes. Before I could check the results, one of my friends came running up to me saying I came 8th out of a few hundred people. I was extremely excited and decided to check Aimee's results. She can tell you how she did. We both did amazing and if we were Malay citizens we would be able to go to NATIONALS! Sadly, we can't go to Nationals because we are not Malay citizens. Overall, Aimee and I had a lot of fun.
This is my side of the story. We had to wake up at 5:00. I was so tired! We had to drive for around 45 minutes to get to the place where we were going to run. Everybody was quiet. We carpooled with some people from Dalat. When we got there it was dark but we could still see the thousands of people. We went to the courtyard of the school to sign up. After that I stretched, went to the washroom, and ate the bananas I had brought. I tried to look scary so people would be psyched out. Then the U15s and the U18s started their race. The U18s were doing 10 kilometers and the U15s like Hannah were doing 6 kilometers. I was in the U12 group and we did 2.8 kilometers. After that our race started. There was maybe 200 people. Everyone was sprinting at the beginning but one girl was at the head of the pack. Then she slowed down because she wasted her energy and I did not see her through the whole rest of the race. We had to run on a beach! It totally wasted my energy. Plus there was a ton of ropes connecting the boats to the beach. I face-planted two times. Some people were purposely lifting the ropes so other people would trip. After the beach it was mostly road. A sad thing that happened to Levi, a guy at Dalat, was that he was led the wrong way. They thought he was U15 but it was because he was ahead of the other U12s. He would have totally won but he did 5 kilometers! Finally I ended the race. We just had to wait. Finally the results were in. I GOT SECOND PLACE!!!!!! A girl from Dalat got first place in U15. Two other girls in my age group got top ten. Dalat did really well. I got a silver medal and a certificate. On the way home Mohari, the guy we were riding with, told us some funny stories. The first was that there was this guy in the race who picked up the rope and shook it and Mohari shouted "gila" which means crazy. Well that guy started walking because he was so embarrassed and everybody looked at him. Also, one guy kept on saying "beep" when he wanted to pass someone. Another guy kept on saying "beep, beep, beep, beep, beep" for the whole race. I don't know why he was saying that. Then Mohari and my sister and I started talking about funny movies on Youtube. The whole morning was really fun.
THE END!!!!!
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