Who’s Idea Was This?

Everyone was excited to head to the Great Wall of China today to check out the wall portion of the race course. We left the hotel at 6:30a.m. for the almost 2 hour bus ride to the wall. We arrived at the wall with plenty of time before the mandatory race briefing. Leah and I scoped out the race gear for sale and bought a few items. The briefing took about a half hour or so and basically went over everything that was in the race guide (stuff like signage, medical care, course records, how many people were running etc – the race was at maximum capacity at 2400 runners. About 900 some are doing the marathon, 1000 some are doing the half, and 500 some are doing the 8K). As soon as the briefing was over we made a b-line to our bus and we were taken up the first 5k portion of the course to the start of the wall. Umm let me just say that I had read that the first 5k was an incline, but what I had not realized was that it was up a GINORMOUS hill (or mountain) with switchbacks and all. So yeah that whole goal I thought I would have of finishing in 3 hours is probably super unrealistic, especially after we began to climb the wall, and I realized that 4 hours might be a better goal time after all.

The wall was steep with many uneven steps. Again I don’t know why I envisioned long portions of flat running on the wall with sections of steps. It was basically almost all steps. I don’t think much running is going to be happening along the wall for me. Some of the sections were slippery and will definitely require the use of the hand rail. I’m still trying to envision what running is going to look like once we get off the wall when my legs are spaghetti. I can totally see why they do a course inspection day so that all the runners known in advance what they have gotten themselves into. I know I am super happy that we had this experience today.

Once we were back into the square where the race starts and finishes we were given 2 Subway 6″ sub sandwiches, a banana, and bottle of water. The sandwiches were not very good (don’t think American Subway sandwiches – different bread and fillings of a typical sub), but it was still nice to sit down and eat.

There were several vendors with souvenirs set up in the car park (as that is what they call the parking lots here in China), and we browsed through their goods for a bit. All items were relatively inexpensive and you could barter as well. We picked out a couple of small things and we were soon back on the bus on the way back to Beijing.

Once near the city we were stuck in traffic again. We just can’t get over how bad the traffic is here. It took us an extra hour to get back. In fact we were supposed to have our pasta dinner at the hotel at 6:00, but because traffic was so bad we had to move it to 6:30.

Even though we’ve all been enjoying the Chinese cuisine, I think it’s safe to say that we were happy to take a break from it and have pasta. After a long day and good meal we were ok with heading back to the room and turning in early.