Shanghai Marathon (well, half of it)

I would certainly never call myself a runner, by any means. But, occasionally I enjoy the fun of a competitive event. Races, in my opinion, are pretty much the easiest way to do so, as running requires minimal equipment. So, I decided to run in the Shanghai Marathon, but, as I ran the Great Wall Marathon last year, and realized that 26.2 is a long ways, decided on the half marathon for this event. It was a good choice. I used my charm and wit (insert sarcastic comment here) to convince Sean and Sarah to run it with me.

I went to Shanghai for the weekend, had a great time hanging out with my second cousin Tyler, who's studying Chinese at FuDan University, and enjoyed a great dinner with Sean, Sarah, and Peter (who was in Shanghai with a friend) and spent way too much money at the foreign language bookstore there. In the worst preparation to

make a 7:45 a.m. start, I spent the night with a friend from my CIEE orientation group-who was at a costume Thanksgiving party. So, I was able to make it to bed by about 1:30 a.m. having snuck in a bottle of water or two along with a cup of sangria.

The race itself went very well. It was a great route, starting out

right in the middle of East Nanjing road, which is one of the main shopping/business streets in Shanghai. It didn't go along the river or The Bund, but otherwise went by some of the great locations in Shanghai. Not only that, but the route, through almost all of the race, was lined with neighborhood groups dressed in various traditional Chinese costumes and banging or drums or shaking noisemakers while cheering us on. It makes the miles go by much faster when you can constantly people watch. Additionally, the race was incredibly well

organized, especially considering that it

was in China and had a really low entrance fee. The route was occasionally a little tight due to encroaching traffic. On the other hand, at one point, a guy on a motorbike tried to cross the rope and I got to see a cop just kick the guy's bike, and then kick him off of it. Needless to say all the other bikers retreated a little.

By far the most noticeable thing about the race was the number of runners. I haven't really run in any big city marathons before (and only did half of this one), but there were straight up just a lot of people. From what I heard/guessed there were upwards of 20,000 runners in the 5K, half and full marathons...which ran together for most of the route. That's a lot of people, which meant that Sean, Sarah, and I had lots to talk about. Now-you might think that running doesn't involve talking. But, the three of us all had no interest in working hard, and we all knew that the three hour cutoff time wouldn't be too hard to beat, so we just chilled and kept a nice

steady jog. This allowed us plenty of time to observe other runners. I only chatted with one other guy, a very amiable, enthusiastic Singaporean who was running his 67th (or so) marathon and was taking pictures with about every single person he could. As he explained this was a marathon and a trip to Shanghai, so he was half tourist/half runner. He was also able to stop and take pictures and run at a faster pace than us-and he was doing the real thing. He had a shirt that said something like "running crazies" that seemed to fit him quite well.

As for our take it easy technique, it turned out quite well. I ran out the last halfkilometer, but Sean and Sarah weren't into that, so I finished a bit ahead of them. Gashaw Melese Asfaw from Ethiopia won the marathon in 2:10 before I finished the half in 2:21:19, in 3,349th place. This placed me in the bottom 25% of the male half marathon runners...well, if nothing else, at least I finally got up early on a weekend and exercised. Furthermore, I got the same medal that got 11th place did (top 10 got some dollar bills) so it just seems he worked a lot harder for his hardware.