The Great Wall Marathon

At some point in time, before coming here, Dave and I heard about the Great Wall Marathon. We both thought it would be a cool thing to do. We did it. (Warning...a marathon is a long race, thus, this is a long post).

But, doing it wasn't nearly as simple as the previous paragraph might make it seem. The Great Wall Marathon was my first marathon, and hopefully not my last, but it has been almost three weeks and my knee still hurts. I am absolutely glad that I ran it, it was a marvelous experience, and a great accomplishment. It was also undeniably the most difficult physical task I have ever put my body through. After having run it, I have nothing but admiration and respect for anyone who has run a marathon.

The process to the marathon wasn't exactly smooth sailing. But, after registering by Internet, phone, fax, and wired money, I headed to Tianjin. It was only after buying my ticket for Tianjin that I was able to pinpoint the location of the race and realize, that while in the Tianjin municipality, it was actually closer to Beijing. It wasn't a big deal, a bus ride and then mini-bus/van ride later I was at the foot of the Great Wall of China. The race was at Huangyaguan, which is located in the northern corner of Tianjin. On the ride up there I started to get a pretty bad feeling, which was confirmed upon arrival. This marathon was not only going to be on the Great Wall, but it was in the middle of a bunch of hills/small mountains. Now I probably should have known this, but to be perfectly honest, I was about as unprepared for this marathon as one could be. Luckily, as it was explained to me later, my young body was able to make up for my idiotic lack of preparation. I didn't even read the course description before starting the race. My preparation and training consisted of reading the Wikipedia article on marathons, running occasionally (but never for more than 13 miles), running stairs once, and eating a lot of noodles the days before the race. But I finished...albeit slowly, but I finished.

To begin, it's important to note that the Great Wall Marathon is considered an adventure marathon. This essentially means that there's something adventurous or challenging about the marathon that it's not compared to normal marathons for rankings, times, etc. Upon discussions with some experienced marathoners, I might be certifiably crazy to choose to run an adventure marathon as my first marathon. Dave had arrived the day before, so he already had a hotel room. We had dinner with some Kiwis he had met earlier in the day, got our stuff ready, hit the hay, and got up early the next morning. (Two roosters 5 meters from our window made sure of this if our alarms didn't). The plaza area surrounding the large gate to the wall was filled with runners when I got there a bit after seven. The very different thing that they were not Chinese. Although there were some Chinese runners, they made up only 5% of the runners, so it was a foreigner festival to be sure. This is a pretty shocking sight for me, being pretty accustomed to the 99% racial homogeneity of Jiangsu. I bought a PowerBar energy gel pack to go with my imitation Starburst and sugary jello drinks I would use for energy during the race. I carried them in a super stylish fanny pack, which, if nothing else, was sure to get the girls looking while running.

The race started at 7:30. It wouldn't end for me until well into the afternoon. The beginning was flat for awhile and then we started to climb a gradual hill. It consisted mostly of just weaving through people and avoiding any collisions. The marathon, half-marathon, and 10K runners all started together, so there was a fair amount of congestion. Dave ran with me for the first two or three kilometers. He trained more and is a much better distance (and short, for that matter) runner than I, and our goals were almost two hours apart from each other, so we wouldn't be running together. Things were going well for me, and I was keeping a good pace until about kilometer 6. My legs started to twitch and feel exactly like they were 'falling asleep'. This has happened to me after a few of my training runs, and a little when I was running before. I tried to walk it off and stretch, which sort of helped. A nice Italian (I think) lady even came over to see if I was okay, saying that my legs looked really red. I am not sure what caused this, maybe dehydration, but it subsided after a bit. I was mostly just frustrated because I had to walk so early in the race, and on reasonably flat ground.

The next portion of the race was quite easy, and pretty social. We hit the wall and started climbing up and down. But since there were so many people (all the 10K, half, and full marathoners were still together), we had to wait in single file lines as we went up many of the narrow trails. It was at this point that I realized this was really an adventure marathon. Some of the Great Wall has been well preserved or rebuilt with smooth large stones. We ran on this part initially. But then we moved onto some of the original, unimproved wall. It was more of an uneven, thin path with varying instability and jagged rocks. So it was slow going. I chatted with a few of the people around me, and mostly just enjoyed the forced rest. After the path though, the wall opened up a bit and we had a few pretty tall staircases to climb. They weren't too bad, but certainly weren't helping me beat the safety cut off point.

After this we headed down a long path that then lead us to some villages. In between the villages we had an unnecessarily long hill. It just kept rising, rising, and rising. Just past the 21 kilometer point, I asked a Filipino man what time it was, and he said 10:40. (Oh, all the race bibs had the runner's nationality on them, I didn't just ask everyone where they were from). This had me in pretty good spirits, 3:10 for the half was good news. I had originally wanted to complete the course in 6 hours, which is anything but a lofty goal. But the email had said most prepared runners did it in 5-6 hours, so I figured without adequate preparation I was on the low end. By about kilometer 15 or so I realized that I really should just try for 8 hours, the safety cut off time. 26.22 miles is a long way.

After the hill we ran through two very rural villages, filled with kids and teens shouting 'hello' 'jia you' ('let's go' in Chinese-literally 'add gas'), or the occasional 'go, go' 'keep going' or 'you can do it' from the high school students helping mark the course. In one village, as a kid on a bike passed, a friendly Brit running next to me joked he'd like to borrow it. I responded that I would instead offer the kid all the cash I had to buy it. I was encouraged that at least one other runner wasn't taking it too seriously (I did shave a nasty biker-stache just for the race).

The next section was no fun at all. We had to run on a rural path/bike trail for about 3 or 4 kilometers. Actually it may have been less, but it seemed pretty long. This was because the path was made up of dry, clumpy dirt littered with rocks of all sizes. Some were small, others were pretty large, but it was essentially a recipe for ankle disasters. I was pretty tired and the uneven trail occasionally forced me to walk, which made me mad, as this portion was downhill. I had been walking a lot during the race, but had only stopped during my muscle spasm problems. I found that speed-walking kept me pretty loose and rested, while also allowing me to cover some ground. At the end of the path, as we were just about to enter a bit of village, which was paved, I did it. I bit it. I was just jogging along, misstepped, and fell forward onto my left leg. The scrapes weren't too bad, but I could tell this wasn't good for my knee. The British guy ahead of me turned around and started to come back to help me. I made it clear to him that my blunder shouldn't be his slow down, and he wished me well. Luckily, only about a kilometer away, at kilometer 30 was an aid station. So one of the helpers took me to the medic van, got me cleaned up, and tried to put on some band aids, but my sweaty legs weren't conducive to that. The worst part was that my knee and shin were throbbing, and I mean really throbbing. The fact that I had 12 more kilometers to run wasn't the kind of news a knee that just crashed on a rock is looking for. Honestly, though, it was the excuse I needed to walk for awhile. The human body can only run for about 25 or so kilometers on the energy it can store (females longer than males). And, the stuff I got at the town's corner store wasn't exactly the best energy source possible. So I took it pretty easy and walked for a kilometer or so.

Then we hit the Wall. Literally, if not figuratively as well. After seeing the finish line, but being waved the other way, we entered the gate and headed up the wall. At the beginning we ran up the gradual hill and then went up and down on the wall, but mostly down. This time, after having already run 33 or 34 kilometers, we were going mostly up. It was brutal. Excruciating. Disheartening. I, and everyone else around me, had to stop frequently. My muscles were burning, hurting, and buckling. I was just way too tired and the stairs seemed endless. I bought and devoured two bananas from a vendor with the last 10Y in my fanny pack, I think these just kept my muscles from completely shutting down. Slowly but surely, I pudsched along and finally saw a great sight: the last tower and a turn onto a road. As I left the wall, the volunteer joked that now we could 'roll down the hill'. And he was right, the rest of the race was all downhill or flat. As I was exiting the wall, I chatted with an older man from Canada, who had been in the hospital two days earlier with bronchial pneumonia. But he said this was the opportunity of a lifetime, so here he was, outrunning my perfectly healthy 22 year old body. I'd like to say I toughened up and ran past him. I didn't. He beat me. Humiliating, I know. I didn't have the mental or physical energy to run the last 4 or 5 kilometers, even though they were all downhill. In fact, I didn't even start my final push until about 400 meters to go. But I finished, in 6 hours, 26 minutes, and 11 seconds. 218th out of 279 male finishers and 319th out of 437 overall runners. Dave finished in 4:50, which was pretty damn good for his first marathon. I devoured the free Subway sandwich, took some pics, showered, and got on the free bus back to Beijing. I had a great chat with two ladies from South Africa who were very experienced marathoners and triathletes, who made the trip just for the marathon. They were impressed with my time, given my stunning (to them) lack of training. This boosted my confidence, because the clock at the end certainly didn't.

Back in Beijing, Dave and I demolished bloomin' onions, steaks, salads, and sides at Outback Steakhouse, and put back a few beers. I wasn't the least bit worried about calories. We even saw two other groups of marathoners doing the same thing. Dinner at Outback was actually one of my big motivators for finishing the race. It was by far the biggest and best piece of meat (and salad) I had eaten in 10 months. So, there you have it, if you ever want to put your body through pure, unadulterated torture, I know a beautiful and fun place you can do it. The race really was an absolute blast and I am really glad to have run it. And that's it's over.