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May 27, 2005 Great Wall of China Marathon
You know how marathoners are always bragging about setting their PR, their Personal Record, their Personal Best? Well I just set my Personal Worst, and I’m real proud of it. This race was a bear. The adventure began on Monday morning, May 16th when I stuffed my 73 inches into a 32 inch United Airlines coach seat for the 13 hour flight to Beijing, (where I was seated in the middle of the brass section of the Concordia University orchestra) arriving there, with the 12 hour time difference, on Tuesday afternoon. I checked into the hotel and joined some other marathoners for a dinner of Peking duck, where the WHOLE duck is served, everything but the bill. Because I happened to be seated in the guest of honor’s seat, I was presented with the revered split duck head…..welcome to China! I now understand why you are required to spend a day at the Wall touring the site on the Thursday before the Saturday race in order to run. Most people can’t comprehend how difficult, how steep, how dramatic, how challenging the course really is. After walking one section of the course on the Wall on inspection day, many people switched from the marathon to the half-marathon, and wisely so. With my public commitment to 7in7on7, that unfortunately wasn’t an option for me….
Foolishly, I was looking forward to the final 4 miles on the Wall just because it would provide a break from the rest of the race. How foolish of me. That was the toughest 4 miles I’ve ever “run”, although climb would be a better term. That’s when I hit the Wall. That’s when I started making deals with God to just let me finish, especially when I heard lightning and thunder in the distance. No WAY was I going to quit at this point. I labored on, just doing the one foot in front of the other routine, and eventually, after 6 hours and 27 minutes, crossed the finish line. I got my medal, had a banana, took at shower, and got back on the bus for the 3 hour drive to Beijing, where I promptly got diarrhea for the next 36 hours. You gotta love this sport……
Now its preparation for Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Gold Coast
of Australia. Hard to believe this project is approaching its end, although
I’ve said all along that the planning was a lot more fun than the
execution!
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I
hit the wall at the Great Wall of China marathon – literally. About
18 miles into the race, as I was climbing one of the 3,700 steps (true)
in the marathon, I suddenly felt lightheaded and fell into the Wall, giving
new meaning to hitting the wall. Compared to George who actually fell
and cut his face (requiring stitches), I felt pretty lucky. A slug of
water and a moment to gather my senses, and I was off again. 
On
race day, we each received a 2am wake-up call since the race start is
a three hour drive from Beijing. Got on the bus at 3am. Arrived at the
Wall at 6am for a 7:30am start. The first 4 ½ miles were uphill
on a road so steep there were switchbacks. At this point, we started our
first 4 miles on the Wall, up what seemed to be a never-ending flight
of stairs, much steeper than anything I’d encountered before, and
no two steps were the same height, so it was like trying to run in an
uneven Stairmaster. A 14 inch step would be followed by a 3 inch step
followed by a 10 inch step – there was no consistency so it was
impossible to develop any type of rhythm. 
After
finally leaving this section of the race, the next 10 miles were through
very rural villages, where the local children had been taught three phrases
which they yelled repeatedly in a sing-song fashion – “Good
Luck!”, “Hello!”, and “You’re the Best!”
At mile 18, when I was feeling pretty terrible, it was all I could do
not to yell back at the kids “I am NOT the best. I am in the back
half of the pack. The best has probably already finished this race!”,
but I just smiled, grunted a “thanks” and kept going.
China
was fascinating. My hotel was filled with families from America, South
America, and Europe, all adopting beautiful little Chinese girl babies
– no boy babies, only girls. Today there are 117 boys born in China
for every 100 girls. Recently, ultrasounds by doctors have been outlawed
since they were being used to select the sex of the baby, and too many
girl fetuses were being aborted. I went to the opera one night and attempted
to understand the jarring music and the colorful costumes and dynamic
choreography and the fascinating vocal gyrations of the singers. I visited
the Terre Cotta Warriors in Xian, billed as the 8th Wonder of the World,
where over 7,000 of the life-sized Warriors have now been unearthed, all
created to protect an Emperor in the afterlife. I ate food that I didn’t
recognize. I was disappointed when I entered the Imperial City and one
of the first things I saw was a Starbucks. I noticed far more autos and
far fewer bicycles than when I was in China 5 years ago. I got incredible
massages for $12 an hour and also tried “cupping”, an ancient
Chinese practice where glass globes that have been heated by alcohol wrapped
burning gauze are slapped onto your back, where the heat in the globe
creates a suction that pulls your skin into the globe, releasing “tension
in your muscles”. When I arrived home last night, it looked to Linda
that I had about a dozen huge hickeys on my back, which took a little
explaining…