Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Sighting at the Mall

I went to the local mall to get my watch battery replaced and saw Ted McGinley walking out of the Williams and Sonoma. Just last weekend I happened to turn on the t.v. and 'Married With Children' was on. In the episode Jefferson (Ted's character) was mistaken for 'that guy on The Love Boat'. That show aired over 15 years ago.

Ted looked good, and he's aging naturally which is always great to see because plastic surgery is almost an epidemic in Los Angeles.

Star Sighting at the Airport

I neglected to add in my last blog entry (Great Wall Marathon) that Tony Hawk and his entourage were on our plane back from Beijing. We first saw him at the Beijing Airport. Tony and his people were intermingled with the people from our marathon tour group. As we got in line for departure inspection, I turned around and saw him with one of his children on his shoulders. Tony is really tall and it's hard to miss him in China. One of the older gentlemen from our group, Craig, was talking up a storm with his wife. He had no idea who he was talking to.

Apparently some of the people in his entourage are famous skaters and snowboarders too. Somebody recognized them from the X-Games. One of them sat next to my sister and me on the airplane-- he was really chill and a good airplane seat neighbor. Tony and his family flew first class and everybody else flew coach, so we didn't see him again until passport inspection at SFO.

I was told that they were in Beijing for a few days for the opening of some huge skate park. China is now trying to promote skating. I'm trying to imagine skateboards intermingled with the bikes, motor scooters, cars, and rickshaws.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Great Wall Marathon



A couple of years ago, I was looking at adventure marathons online. I was actually looking for info on the Big Five Marathon when I came across a link to the Great Wall Marathon. The chance to run on the Great Wall of China? That sounded just plain cool and not as menacing as running on the African Savannah with a bunch of wild lions and hippos.

After the L.A. Marathon this year, I wasn't up to doing another marathon soon. But I almost never have a problem 'kicking out a fun half'. Plus, I have a friend who ran the Great Wall Half a few years ago and her description of the full combined with the fact that I don't really enjoy full marathons made the decision to run a half an easy one.

I had the time, the money, and the ankles/knees (most importantly the time) this year to run the Great Wall as a half so I did-- and it was a great decision! It was a fun and challenging race, and I enjoyed the experience.

This is one of those races where runners are required to buy into a tour package to run the race. I had picked up a flyer at a pre-race expo last year for Kathy Loper Events, one of the race tour operators that operates out of the U.S. I have only great things to say about the tour. I LOVED IT! Kathy, Kurt, and Sharon (the operators on the trip) did a great job organizing everything. My sister came with me and we did the 9 day tour which took us through several sights in Beijing and some of the sights in Xi'an, as well as the race on the Great Wall. Comparing my tour photos with a friend who had toured China several years ago, we went to several of the same places in Beijing and Xi'an as he did. I guess that part of the tour was pretty typical, so I won't describe it too much because this blog entry is about the race on the wall and not tourist sights in China.

They offered several distances for the race: 5K, 10K, half marathon, and marathon. I did the half and my sister did the 10K. To briefly describe the courses for those interested in running one of these some day: the 5K runs only on the wall; the 10K runs through one village and up the wall in the primarily uphill direction, then runs downhill on the road to the finish; the half marathon first runs through a village and uphill to the wall, it then runs on the wall in the primarily downhill direction, then through a few villages before finishing where it started; the marathon runs the same path as the half marathon except there are a few extra villages in the middle, and then they run the wall a second time in the direction opposite of what they ran the first time (i.e. primarily uphill).

I had read descriptions of the race online before running it, but the videos/photos/descriptions that I read did not describe it accurately (especially for training purposes). In general, the stairs of the Wall are not even or level and some of them are just a bunch of loose rocks. This should be no surprise since they were made by hand over a thousand years ago to purposely make it difficult for people to infiltrate the Wall. However, the first surprise was that the steps are much steeper and taller than seen in the pictures and video. The best way to train for them would be to run up and down two 'normal' stairs at a time. The second was that they are very shallow so the best way to go up and down them if you have adult sized feet is sideways. The third surprise was that the section through the village in the middle (i.e. after mile 9) is actually a pretty steep uphill through manure fertilized farmland and rocks. This was one of those 'jokes' where runners look at the elevation chart and see a small blip and think nothing of it until they actually run it and realize that the blip was small on the chart because the elevation change at the wall is super huge in comparison. That blip is actually a pretty big 4-5 mile uphill on unstable ground.


The descriptions before the race said that the best way to train for the marathon would be to run an hour, then do an hour of steps, then run another hour afterwards. This is exactly what I did for the half marathon. These training runs were grueling but worth it. They made the uphill and upstairs of the race relatively fun. These training runs did not adequately prepare me for the fact that most of my steps would be down. If I had known this, I would have done some trail running where I would take the road to the top and the trail back down to the bottom.

Even with all of this, I was very happy after running this half. It was my personal worst half-marathon time by over an hour (compared to when I ran a half on a sprained ankle) because there were several traffic jams along the wall and I wasn't able to really run the wall section. But I loved every minute of it!

One last tip: two days before the race they had a pre-race inspection day where we walked the section of the wall where we were to run. Even though it freaked me out a bit after walking it, I'm glad that I did because my brain was ready to process the challenge and danger before the race. Some people did not do the pre-race inspection, but I think it is a wise thing to do considering the possible problems with footing along the wall.