Run

The nice thing about the Beijing marathon is the built in crowd just waiting to cross the street. This was my thought at about mile six today and it colored my views of the crowd the rest of the way. Maybe the people shouting encouragement of Jiayou Jiayou just wanted to get home after the daily grocery shopping. As I looked deeper the crowd was mostly there just to cheer and enjoy the spectacle. Little kids waving flags waiting for a parent to run by, cheerleaders of one of the sponsors, the middle age with time on their hands. But there were a few who clearly wanted to make a break for it and if you’ve lived in Beijing for a while you know lines and barriers don’t really discourage people from going from point A to B in a straight line. This was offset by a pretty massive force of policemen and military stationed along the road and at every intersection keeping the crowd at bay. When I ran in the Bay to Bridge two weeks ago, San Francisco also deployed cops to keep folks from crossing into the runners paths but the number of runners, people, and cops are at a whole other scale here. Think a factor of 50.

The run started at Tiananmen Square and was a logistical mixed bag. On one hand Tiananmen is pretty easy to find, on the other hand there was no real place for Yang to drop me off as they keep a no stopping zone around it. She managed and I got through the maze of people – mixed runners and tourists – and crossed underground to the square. They were only allowing runners into the square which annoyed some of the tourists who tried to get in anyway; sorry no luck. I was pleased that the restrooms were not backed up and clean. There was a very large crowd of runners. There were no real signs to the starting line or the clothing drop off but it was all manageable. As there were no pace markers that I could make out, I made my way into the middle of the half marathon group by 8:45 and waited for the 9am start. Young blond women were up on little stages leading the runners through warm up exercises which the runners had no room to do. Most like me just looked.

The crowd made it hard to hear the pre-race announcements but since I could not understand them anyway it wasn’t much of a problem. Besides, there isn’t much instruction needed. Run, keep running, stop when you cross the line.

At 9am we were off into a walk. A surprising well behaved walk with no one trying to push through into a run. It took me five minutes to cross the starting line and past the large stage of officials hosting the event. Then the walk transitioned into a slow jog and by the time we turned left onto Chang’an Jie we were running. Chang’an Jie is a really, really wide street big enough, well, for tanks.

My first six miles were good and fast (for me). I got into the zone, so to speak. Beautiful blue sky, runners of all around, my stride even and smooth. But then the lack of real training the past three weeks started to kick in and miles seven through 11 were much slower as people I had started to pass at mile five started to pass me again. The last two miles I was checking my Nike sportsband which tracks mileage to see how much longer I had. Problem being, it is a bit inaccurate and when it said I hit 13.1 miles (the length of a half marathon) I in face had another 1.5 miles to go.

I made it, got some water, collected my clothes and called Yang to let her know I was finished. The three flights of stairs down to the subway were a bit laborious as was standing the 25 minutes to my stop. A short taxi ride home and as I enter Lydia asks me to help with her English homework. “In a moment” I say, and I sit.