Great Wall Marathon. 2.

Sluggy wake up, rushed exit, tense taxi ride to catch 3:30 am bus by small margin.
Sunny coolish morn turns to sunny hot day.
Aerobics warm up.
I'm one of the few people calling out "woo woo" since i feel bad for the aerobics girl sadly trying to get people excitied enough to yell "woo woo".
Although i really wasn't into "woo woo" in the slightest.

Run.
Run up the hill for 5 km.
Run w/ friend Jessica who runs up the hill faster than i want her to.

Run on the great wall.
Up stairs,
Down stairs.

Jessica's knee is less than stellar at descending stairs, and after finishing the wall section, she decides she must walk the rest of the course.

My stomach tells me i should've eaten more than a banana before the race.
i purchase some overpriced chemical chocolate-cookie-marshmallow thing.
Mm-good.

Run through small town, and farmer fields.

Decide to run til the finish line.
Decide to run faster for the end stretch.
The end stretch takes an unpleasantly gruelling time to appear.
(omg, where the f*** is it, already?)

Before: contemplated doing the full marathon next year.
Now that seems like sheer stupidity.

Finish the race.

Wait in uberlongo lineups for food that also deserve a finish line.

Eat a sandwich from the Veg box, but later realize it's beef.
But not much beef.
And who cares, the sandwich is easily 2x bigger than last years.
Plus there was a beer thrown in.
Which i admit, i hardly enjoyed.
Oh well.

But dang, that was one helluva sandwich, that's for sure.


Photo of me and my surprisingly sweaty back by Jessica.