Last December the morning of the Shanghai Marathon dawned clear and cool, with a beautiful view of the Landmark Pearl Tower across the river.
Sometimes, usually when I least expect it, I get a visual reminder of the fact that this is a Communist country. This line of cadets separated the "Fun Marathon" runners' start corral (5k) from the half and full runners start corral. They stood there at attention for this civilian event for at least 90 minutes.
This is the view in the Half/Full corral, down the Historic Bund, formerly Shanghai's International Settlement, home to numerous International banks and trading houses in the early 1900's. Almost looks like Europe, doesn't it?
Another fortunate shot across the river to the Pudong side at sunrise: the Shanghai World Financial Center, often referred to as "the bottle opener" for it's odd shape (where Mom stood on the glass floor, 400 meters above the street!)
Can some of you more experienced runners explain this sign to me? I cannot come up with a reasonable translation that makes sense....
I was looking forward to an overall flat course but knew that the ramp up to the NanPu Bridge crossing was going to be tough. Up we started at about the 2km mark
and around we wound, 2 full circles,
and across we went, just as the clouds were starting to clear away.
It felt good to go back down the other side. Unfortunately, however, it has become clear the more I run races in China that the Chinese really don't get the whole "water station" idea. I saw a lot of "drink stations" listed on the course map and decided against wearing a water belt but quickly came to realize that the Chinese seem to prefer a tea drink while they exercise, over water, and most of the stations were providing only this thick, brown muck in a bottle that looks to me like dirty pond water. And quite honestly does not smell much better! I was a bit panicked but luckily one of the local hotel chains was handing out bottles of their complimentary water in front of one of their locations on the race route. I was so grateful I nearly grabbed 2!
As I carried my bottle, we continued on through the Expo 2010 site, getting nice views of the iconic China Pavillion.
In any race in any town you will see people wearing some unexpected "running" gear. Racer 13363 certainly doesn't fit the expected profile, but she was ahead of me until about mile 7 (km 13)!
We had some local cheering squads lining the streets, yelling "Jiāyóu" 加油, Chinese for "Come On!"
Even a local Boy Band!
All in all, it was a beautiful day for a run. I was not very happy with my time but I did stop and take a lot of pictures. If I had not done that perhaps I would have hit my middle range goal. And perhaps not. Either way, the sight of my adoring fans waiting for me at the finish line makes every step worth it!
To kick off 2012 I recently participated in the Suzhou Jinji Lake Half. With this race I pushed the envelope further than ever: how little training can I get away with and still finish? (2012 hasn't quite been the year I was hoping for!) I'd chosen to race in Suzhou, about a 2 hour drive away, because I had heard it was a beautiful course, but in the end there was very little about it that struck me as particularly unique, or picturesque.
A colorful fireworks display marked the start of the race, and the death of my watch battery.
This was my stick-on timing chip.
I saw the most entertaining sight early on: it looked to me as if this beautiful Yellow Lab was running with the girl in the green jacket. I guess she's done a few races in China before too, and knew that she had to make accomodations for her own water! I just hope he's not like Barney who used to love to chew holes in his plastic bottles!
This time I wore my water belt, but I still hadn't learned my lesson because I foolishly only filled 2 of the 4 bottles. This was the scene at the 10k station.
When I got into the scrum, I found this:
I think the cups they serve pills in are bigger than the cups they were using here to serve the water. And the guy had to constantly take a break because the 25 gallon water bottle was too heavy for him to keep pouring to the demand! Not to mention that the little blue punch tab across the top of the jug made the water just splosh out everywhere! It was a disaster. The idea that I was going to run out of water, planted so early in the race, had a hugely negative psychological effect on me. And yes, by the 18km station, they had simply run out altogether.
But along the way we had these little hills that look really mean and ugly from this angle, (Check out the guy on his phone! And look how flat his shoes are! At one point we were running in the bike lane and a guy running in front of me asked a pedestrian on the sidewalk if he could have a drag off the guy's cigarette! The pedestrian gave it to him!)
but much more picturesque from the side.
In the end, for numerous reasons, it was quite simply the worst race I have ever done. I was really surprised by the high percentage of people walking late in the race and gave in to the desire. But I wasn't a DNF. My time was u-g-l-y, but I made it across the line. And there were no water bottles, no bananas, no bagels or chocolate chip cookies to greet me. This was my finisher's packet:
It included indivivually wrapped pieces of beef jerky, about the size of a gumball,
and these packets of some kind of freeze-dried chicken something or other.
Great. I'm already dying of thirst, let's fill my mouth with a bunch of dried, salty junk! But again, I did it, I crossed the line to meet my adoring fans
and we all headed back to Shanghai.
The following weekend I did the local 8k, the only race in the world that I have ever run more than once. And this year, like last year, the water stations were really poorly managed. But I've learned this same lesson enough times that I wore my water belt, with enough water to get me through. It was a very uneventful run but when I passed this sign, I had to stop and take a picture.
All of the errors aside, apparently I've been too well conditioned by Chik-Fil-A because my first thought was "Wait, where are the cows and the chicken joke?"
So the Spring Racing Season in China is officially closed for me, (and perhaps even less inclined to consider doing a Full), the Fall Season won't kick off until well into September and I have been gripped by a horrible torpor. Someone come run with me? Please?
Love, hugs and happy running to you all~
