Lai Family on the Run

Says Lai Yong­kun: “Before an event, we talk trash to each other, and once the competition starts, it’s ‘devil take the hindmost.’ That’s the only way to keep getting better.” Yong­kun is the third son in the second generation of Lai family runners. Discussing the time he and his eldest brother Lai Hai­yuan recently took part together in a marathon, his voice grows animated. He swears his intention to step up training, get back into top form, and beat his brother.

Yongkun was the first in the family to run a marathon, and was in fact an elite competitor, but that was 27 years ago. The number of marathons he’s completed remains in the single digits.

When he entered the Department of Business at National Taiwan University over 30 years ago he joined the track and field team. He jokes that he had no other choice but to do long-distance running because he “couldn’t run very fast or jump very high.”

“I’d often go running in the hills outside Taipei with other team members. We did over 20 kilometers a day.” Thanks to this hard training, he managed to finish in just 2 hours and 59 minutes when he ran at the 2nd Tseng Wen Reservoir Marathon in 1985.

But after graduating and joining the work world, Yong­kun hung up his running shoes. Later, at age 29, he quit his job in Tai­pei and returned to Tai­nan’s Yu­jing to grow mangos, which certainly left little time for running. But a few years ago he was found to have a tumor. It took a while, but he was able to nurse himself back to health. With encouragement from his eldest brother, he got back into marathons three years ago.

Haiyuan may have gotten a later start on running than his younger brother, but at age 56 he has now been running marathons for the past 11 years.

After graduating from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Hai­yuan found a job and started a family in Taipei. For a number of years he headed back to Yu­jing on weekends to help on the farm, but after getting into marathon running he couldn’t go home on weekends when there was a race. He came in for no little criticism from his hardworking father on that account.

“The thing is, there were tremendous benefits to be had from running. My brothers and I were busy with work and family responsibilities, and I felt if we didn’t have any shared interests we would eventually drift apart and have little to talk about, so I kept encouraging others in the family to take part in competitive running.”

Although Hai­yuan had done a lot of running as a university student, he had to quit when life got busy after graduation. But a physical exam at age 45 turned up alarming results. His health was not good.

He worried that if anything should happen to him, the responsibility of caring for the old folks and the children would fall entirely upon his wife. The worry triggered a distressing nightmare in which he could hardly breathe, and was so fat he couldn’t turn over in bed, or even call out for help. He woke up in a cold sweat, and couldn’t get back to sleep. When daylight arrived, he made the decision to start running for his health.

He only ran 100 meters at first, and even that left the long-sedentary Hai­yuan totally winded. It was frustrating, but he kept at it. Gradually, he began to run longer distances, and his wife Jia­lan began to run along with him. Eventually their children also joined in.

After his oldest son, Yi­ting, entered elementary school, Hai­yuan encouraged him to run by offering to pay NT$10 for every lap that he ran around a 200-meter track. Now a senior at National Tsing Hua University majoring in materials science, Yi­ting laughingly notes that his father simply kept an account of his “earnings,” but never actually paid out any cold, hard cash.

Yiting showed running talent from a very early age, consistently doing well at short distances. “I like the feeling of standing on the stage and receiving a medal.” He ran a half marathon as a junior-high student and took first place in his age group with a time of 1:40.

At a time when his peers were devoting all their energies to academics, Yi­ting ran faithfully each morning before going to school. During his last year in high school he applied for university admission via a channel provided to students who are very accomplished in some particular area, be it academic or extracurricular. He submitted information on all his running exploits. Faculty and staff at his high school held a special meeting to discuss whether outstanding performance in marathons would be a legitimate reason for recommending a student for special university admission, and they finally decided in Yit­ing’s favor.

In the end Yit­ing, who had always been very close to his grandparents, gained admission to National Tsing Hua University thanks to his running. This provided indirect encouragement for his grandfather, Lai Zheng­zhong, to start running in races though he was already past 70 years of age.

Because Hai­yuan would always take his wife and kids back to race in Tai­nan, Yi­ting just left all his trophies at his grandparents’ home.

His grandson’s trophies were a source of pride for Grandpa Lai, and he began to think that running was not such a bad pursuit. With Yi­ting’s encouragement, he entered the 10k event at the Tseng Wen Reservoir Marathon in 2000. This was the first race in which three different generations of the Lai clan, more than 10 in total, were all involved.

Running in his first race at age 73, Grandpa Lai finished with ease.

Yongkun, in the meantime, came to see all too clearly after 20 years of farming that growing and selling agricultural products is extremely tough work, and there just isn’t much money to be made. He decided to start up a mango processing business.

He poured huge amounts of time and money into various attempts to get the business off the ground, but met with repeated failure. As money dwindled and time passed, one partner after another gave up on the enterprise, but Yong­kun stuck with it and eventually achieved success. His brand name is now quite well known in Taiwan.

“The last 10 kilometers are the ‘make or break’ of a marathon,” says Yong­kun. “You’ve got to tough them out if you’re going to taste the sweet success of crossing the finish line.” He wouldn’t have made a success of his business if he hadn’t applied the never-say-die spirit of the marathoner. And now that he’s resumed marathoning, what does he hope to achieve? “I hope I can get other farmers from Yu­jing interested in running. I also want to finish a marathon in under four hours and beat my eldest brother.”