Great Wall of China Half Marathon

Before moving to India, I stumbled upon this event on Facebook called the Great Wall of China Marathon. It looked like a really cool experience and I figured since I was going to be in India I would already be halfway there…right? That was my first mistake, but I will get to that in a bit. After going back and forth with the idea for many months, I finally made the plunge and registered for the race in March. I did a bit of research on the race and knew it would be difficult, but there is no way I could’ve been prepared for what it really entailed. Another misconception I had before moving to India was that I’d have WAY more time to workout/train for this race especially since I had a park right outside my door and a gym in my apartment building. But between long hours in the office, a long commute and the extreme heat over the last 3+ months training turned out to be a major challenge. In all honesty I was only getting 1 long(ish) run and 1 mediocre stair workout per week and 90% of the rest of my runs were on the treadmill. But I did a half marathon 2 weeks before China which went OK and even though I wasn’t where I wanted to be I figured I could make it through the half on the wall.

Getting from Bangalore to Beijing turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. There are a few routes you can take, but there is nothing direct and each has a fairly long layover. In the end I decided to fly through Bangkok since it was the shortest on the way there and the cheapest, but it still was not a quick trip. The flight from Bangalore to Bangkok was 4 hours and the flight from Bangkok to Beijing was about 5 hours, but I had an almost 5 hour layover going and a 10 hour layover coming back. I left Bangalore in the early morning of Friday 5/13 and arrived in Beijing around 4pm. I grabbed a taxi at the airport and was at my hotel around 6pm. Traffic in Beijing isn’t great but in comparison to Bangalore it was a walk in the park. It was great to have people following road rules and I loved how quiet it was with much less honking! Friday night I picked up my race gear, did a quick shake out run, had dinner in the hotel and wandered around near the hotel a bit. I went to bed early on Friday night and was hoping to wake up early Saturday morning since I knew I would have to try to go to bed very early Saturday night.  But I ended up sleeping in Saturday and being lazy Saturday morning, which came back to bite me later in the day. I got up, had some breakfast and got ready to head out and do some tourist stuff in the city. I wanted to stay off my feet since I had the race the next day but as it was my only day in Beijing I also wanted to get out and see the city. Before going to China, I knew a bit about the censorship issues but I didn’t realize the extent of it until I arrived. I figured I’d just use Google Maps to plan my day and get around the city…but Google is blocked in China. I didn’t realize just how reliant I had become on Google until this moment. I had plans to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City on Saturday. Public transportation is lacking in Bangalore so whenever I travel to another city I very much look forward to taking the metro and Beijing was no different. I managed to track down a map of the city and a subway map so I set out for my day. It was raining on Saturday and I foolishly only packed my shoes for the race and a pair of flip flops, I decided for the flip flops since I didn’t want to get my race shoes wet the day before the run. I thought I knew the direction of the train station and it was just a few minutes away, but after 15 minutes of walking in the rain I realized I must’ve read the map wrong and was walking in the wrong direction. I decided to head back to the hotel to regroup before I went looking for the metro station again. I got back and was able to track down a better map, changed my shoes and was on my way to the metro station again (which actually happened to be directly next to the hotel…whoops). Once I got to the metro, getting around was super easy and I was at the Forbidden City in about 20 minutes.  The Forbidden City was pretty cool, but I think it would’ve been way more interesting to view the entirety of it from above rather than walk through it. While wondering around I made friends with this German guy who was only passing through Beijing. He had just gotten in from North Korea where he was flying old school planes. How awesome! We spent the next hour swapping stories of our adventures and sharing in the misery of the rainy weather. He was heading to the mall nearby his hotel so I joined him for the walk to do some shopping myself. Once we arrived at the mall we parted ways and I checked out some traditional Chinese stores, ya know like Forever 21, H&M and GAP…ok not so traditional. I wasn’t exactly sure of the exchange rate and decided not to ask anyone/look it up, let me tell you, it’s a lot of fun shopping when you have no idea what anything costs. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast so I figured I’d grab a late lunch/early dinner. I wandered up to the top floor of the mall where the restaurants were and decided on a steak restaurant (probably not the best pre-race meal but it was pretty good and it had been a long time since I had a steak). By this point I figured I should head back to the hotel and get off my feet. I arrived back around 6pm, got a few things in order and got ready to go to sleep. The race started at 6am on Sunday morning in Badaling which was about a 2 hour drive from our hotel which meant we needed to be down in the lobby by 3am. I set my alarm for 230am and was asleep by 7, but I woke up at 10 and couldn’t fall back asleep until about 1. The alarm went off at 230 and I was up and moving. The lobby was packed with runners from all over the world, many of whom either travelled together or had met through the tours in Beijing during the week. I didn’t know anyone at this point and was only really concerned with getting a window seat on the bus so I could get a bit more sleep. We boarded a number of small buses each holding 25-30 people and while I did get some sleep I also made friends with a great group of people. At about 5am we got our first real glimpse of the wall, we got off the buses to use the bathrooms (which turned out not to be open) and it was freezing (especially after the 100 degree weather I had gotten used to in Bangalore)! Coming from the bathroom area, there were a number of entrances to the wall which were staircases going straight up…I think this is when I started to realize what I had gotten myself into. After about another 30-45 minutes of driving we finally arrived at the village where the race would be starting from.

Forbidden City

There were only ~15 bathroom stalls for all 350 people in the race, so I followed my Breezy ways and went to pop a squat instead. I dropped my bag off and got a few things in order and before I knew it the race was about to begin. They started with the 5K and 10K which was going straight up to the wall. The full and half marathons followed and started with a bit over 6K in the village before heading up to the wall. About 1K into the race my calves were already on fire and my legs felt like they had nothing in them, this wasn’t a good sign of how the rest of the day was going to go. But it turned out the first 3K was mostly uphill and so the next 3K back to the starting line was mostly downhill (funny how that works). This was a great boost and I felt like I had finally gotten my legs working. When I got back to the starting line I used the bathroom again (aka popped a squat) and grabbed a new water bottle and headed up the mountain to the wall. I did the first 6K in about 45  minutes which meant I had 15K to go, I figured there was no way that would take me more than 5 hours and I would surely be done with the half in well under 6 hours…this turned out to be completely wrong.  The next 1.5K of the race was a trail up the mountain with an increase in elevation of something like 1500ft, not to mention that it had rained the day before and so everything was muddy. We had a bunch of us who were grouped together at this point and we all made our way up to the wall together taking pictures and encouraging each other. We finally arrived at the wall and our first encounter was an unrestored staircase that was going pretty much vertical, as if this wasn’t enough, there was only a path wide enough for one person but it was an out and back course and by this point there were lots of people going in both directions. It was quite an adventure climbing the staircase, trying to make room for people coming from the other direction and avoiding falling boulders. This was my first of many encounters throughout the day where I genuinely thought I was going to die; additionally if I fell here I was also going to be taking all the people down behind me so I was really trying to avoid that. I made it to the top and made it through the next 5K which was largely on the restored section of the wall without any real issues. I did most of this portion with a friend Nichole who I had met during the trail portion of the run. She gave me some energy gels and was a total life saver!

First encounter with the wall

At this point I was a bit over 12K in which meant I was halfway done. I figured I had made it through the hard part and could fight my way through the next 9K, but I was in for a rude awakening. A majority of the remainder was on unrestored sections of the wall which were in really poor condition. Soon after getting to this section I encountered a gentleman who had slipped and injured his leg, from what I gathered he had been there for some time and while he had a medic with him they did not have a real idea how they were going to get him off the wall. This is when I really started to doubt that I would finish the race, the thought of slipping and getting injured and not having a way off the wall was not at all appealing to me. But for now I kept going and asked the next group I ran into about the condition of the wall for the rest of the race and they warned me it only got worse and that I should brace myself. I kept trudging along and ran into a few familiar faces who offered some words of encouragement. I asked someone else how much further to go and they weren’t sure exactly the distance but they informed me there was a bit left on the wall and then we would take a turn off the wall and head down a nice trail to another village, but then would have to return back to the wall to complete the race. The 3K on the unrestored section leading to the second village was definitely the toughest part of the race both mentally and physically. It turns out this section was mostly a descent which is not ideal when dealing with exhausted legs and unstable terrain. I took one fall and many near falls and I was completely drained by this point. I luckily ran into Nichole again and we made our way down to the village together. Before making my way down to the village I had pretty much made up my mind that I wasn’t going to return to the wall and would just make my way back to the starting line. The trail leading down to the village was awesome and exactly what I needed at this point, no real concerns about slipping and it added some life to my legs. Luckily between the trail down and some convincing from Nichole I made up my mind I would head back up to the wall. We stopped for a few minutes in the village to get a quick bite, some water and use the restrooms. While we were there Dewey and Rafael showed up so we all headed back up to the mountain together. At this point we had 5K to go and we knew the final 1.5K of that was a downhill trail. The 3.5K of uphill trail and the wall was brutal, but still so much better than what I had expected. Many of the worst parts while climbing down the stairs to the village were actually not so bad when heading back up and it definitely helped that the 4 of us were doing it together. It was a slow process with lots of stops and pictures but before we knew it we had made it to the end of the section of the wall we were running on and only had the 1.5K downhill trail until the finish line. We picked up the pace and jogged down the mountain and reached the finish line at just about 7 hours! I have never felt as relieved as I did finally getting off that mountain.

Rafael, Nichole, Dewey and myself when we had made it back up to the wall

The full marathon course involved 2 laps of the course I ran and I really give people props for being able to go back up there and do it again. We hung around the finish line for a while chatting with friends, swapping stories and waiting for people to finish. I met a whole bunch more cool people while waiting at the end of the race. Once I cooled down a bit I found myself some food and a beer, and boy did that beer taste good! About 5:00 we finally boarded the bus to head back to Beijing. I sat next to 3 girls who each had really interesting and unique stories (I think I actually could’ve written this blog just about all the interesting people I met in Beijing) and we spent a good portion of the long bus ride back talking. There was a dinner set up by the race at a BBQ place for that night. It turns out it wasn’t very close to the hotel and I was pretty exhausted at this point but made plans to meet a few runners in the lobby around 8 and go to the dinner anyway. Four of us jumped in a taxi and we had asked the concierge to tell the driver where we were going. After about 10 minutes we all realized we were lost and attempted to communicate with the driver, who of course didn’t speak any English and none of the rest of us spoke any Chinese (not sure if it was Mandarin or Cantonese the driver was speaking). We tried showing him the address in Chinese and looking up the phone number to the restaurant but didn’t have much success. After some time and stopping for directions many times we managed to make our way through some gated community to the restaurant. We got some food, had a few beers and hung out with other runners which was all I could’ve asked for at that point. We got out of there around 11 and Rafael grabbed a rickshaw for me and another girl who was staying at my hotel. It was a great last experience for Beijing.

Chinese Beer after the race

I had foolishly booked a 6am flight on Monday morning, which meant I needed to leave for the airport by 330. It was going to be another night of very little sleep; I got to bed sometime after 12 and had to be up again at 2:30. I had arranged a taxi the night before and when I got downstairs there was one waiting for me. I totally got ripped off by the taxi driver at the airport (aka he stole all my change) but by this point I really didn’t have the energy to fight with the guy and just slammed the door and wrote it off as a loss. I made my way to the gate and was able to get a quick nap before the flight. While going through security, there was a man causing a major scene because he couldn’t bring his brass knuckles on the plane in his carry on and they were giving him a hard time about going back to the gate to put them in his checked in luggage, while watching this I decided my situation was looking pretty good compared to his. We boarded the plane and I was sitting next to this couple where the gentleman was a much older Asian man and the woman was a young Eastern European. This would’ve been no problem for me except they were ALL over each other; it was looking to be a very long flight back to Bangkok. But then by some divine power the flight attendant came over and told the couple that there were some empty rows behind them and they could have their own row if they wanted.  Double score! This meant I didn’t have to deal with this couple on the flight and I could stretch out. I arrived in Bangkok and had a 10 hour layover. I decided to splurge and get a short stay hotel and book a massage, both fantastic decisions. I took a nap, got a massage, ate some lunch and showered; by then it was pretty much time to head to my gate. I stopped at the bar and had a couple of beers and picked up a pizza and beer to have at the gate while I was waiting for the flight to board. As I sat at the gate with 99% Indians I got lots of stares while eating my peperoni pizza and drinking my beer but by that point I really couldn’t have cared less. I arrived back in Bangalore at something like 1am and was back in the office in the morning. The race was the most amazing, stupid, crazy and awesome thing I’ve ever done and it’s something I will always be able to look back on and can say I completed. It was a whirlwind of a trip but wouldn’t have changed it for anything. This was an experience of a lifetime and it will have a profound effect on me forever.