The post-race China plan

Well, besides the obvious part of the Great Wall, that is.  I think I've made it clear that I'll be all over that bitch.

But if you know me at all, surely you've guessed by now that Amy and I aren't going to fly over to China, run all over the Wall, and come straight back.  Sure, we're going to torture ourselves with this race, but we're going to make up for it by seeing a few things while we're in the neighborhood.

But China is a pretty big neighborhood, and we only have a couple of weeks to explore.  So Amy and I took on the daunting task of figuring out exactly where we wanted to go after surviving the Wall.  GAH.  As I started thumbing through the China travel guides that our wonderful friend Bo had given us both for Christmas, I got frustrated.  I want to go to all the places and see all the things.  Ah, traveler problems.

After a lot of back-and-forth with each other and with a few travel agencies, we got it together.  While I freak-stressed over the fact that there was no way to see everything I wanted (I know it's ridiculous, but I still want to see all the things), Amy remained completely laid back and open to my travel whims.  We both agreed that Shanghai was not a must-see for either of us.  While I wouldn't pass up a good offer to check it out, it strikes me as an Asian New York-Las Vegas hybrid with nothing but fancy shopping on offer.  I'm sure it's a lovely place, but we're going to be in plenty of other big cities, and if I ever want to shop at a fancy-pants designer store, I can do that here in the US.  But I've never wanted to do that here at home, so why would I want to do it in China?

So here's how the itinerary finally worked out with Amy doing almost all of the leg work with Marathon Tours (thank you, Amy):

• Fly to Hong Kong a week before the race, flit around and deal with jet lag for a couple of days
• Fly to Beijing, spend 5 days checking out Tienanmen Square and other touristy stuff, run the race, and recover
• Fly to Xi'an for some sweet Terra Cotta Warrior action
• Go to Chengdu and play with pandas.  Freakin' panda bears!
• Check out Mount Emei, because I'm a hippy that can't get enough of the mountains
• Go to Guilin and explore karsts and caves
• End up back in Hong Kong to chill out and fly back to the US.

This whole shebang will take us about 2.5 weeks.  I figure it will be just enough to make me want to go back and see all the things I missed. Maybe I'll even want to go back to see Shanghai.

The first step to China

A few weeks ago, I admitted that I had agreed to do something that I swore up and down I would never, ever do - run a marathon.  Amy and I will be running the Great Wall Marathon in China in 2015.  Is it too early to start panicking?

There's a bit more to it, though.  The Great Wall Marathon is supposedly one of the most difficult marathons in the world.  It's steep, the steps of the Great Wall are nowhere close to being an even height, it'll be hot and humid, and China is not winning any air quality awards.  We can't just waltz over the Pacific and make this our first 26.2-mile jaunt.  We'll die if we do that.

We realized we need to run a starter marathon as part of our training.

At this point, I'm really asking what the hell I've gotten myself into.  I went from swearing never to run this distance, and now I'm going to do it twice.  But I also said the same thing about running a 10-miler and running a half marathon.  I've done both of those twice now.  So somehow it seems fitting to do two marathons, too.  Something seems strangely appropriate about having done two of each, but that's probably me just making too big a deal out of the number 2. It doesn't matter, really.  What matters is that we have a LOT of running ahead of us in the next 1.5 years.

This isn't something we can prepare for last minute.  Too bad, because preparing for things last-minute is how I got through college.  But preparing to go to China is going to be much more fun than preparing for a thermodynamics test.  So last week, Amy and I started looking into domestic marathons in order to pick one for our starter.

After some Googling and putting a shameless plea for input on Facebook, we narrowed it down to three fall marathons - Portland, Richmond, and Philadelphia.

Portland:  I am dying to visit Portland.  I love the west coast, microbrews, and coffee.  I have the feeling that if I visited Portland, I would have to be dragged home kicking and screaming.  The race itself got fantastic press online, but the main draw for me was the location, itself. The only problem with it is that it's an expensive race, and getting out there and back will be much more expensive than getting to the other two races.

Richmond:  Richmond also got rave reviews online, and I have a few friends that have run this one.  The course falls partly along the James River, which is just lovely.  Richmond is just a pretty town, and I know some great people that live there.  But I lived in Richmond previously, and really, I'm kind of looking for an excuse to see someplace new.  Signing up for a race is a good excuse to see a new location, right? Right.

Philadelphia:  But of course, this one got great reviews, too.  One thing in particular that people kept mentioning was the immense crowd support for this race.  It sounds like the entire city comes out to cheer whether they know anyone running or not.  That's pretty sweet.  Also, I've never exactly seen Philly.  That's pretty embarassing given the fact that I've lived a mere 2 hours away for 8 years now.  I've done work at the airport there a number of times, but all that meant was that I took the train to the airport, worked at the airport, slept and ate at the airport hotel, and went straight back home.  I've never actually seen the city itself.

So which one did we pick?  Drum roll please....

Philadelphia!

Our first major milestone toward not dying in China will take us to the city of brotherly love for a nice, 26.2 mile stroll.  And of course, as part of our training for the Great Wall, we'll have to run up and down the Rocky Steps.  This also seems strangely appropriate, don't you think?

What I swore I would never do

I consider myself something of a runner.  I've done a couple of half marathons and 10-milers, along with plenty of 10ks and 5ks.  I've done trail races.  I've done sprint triathlons.  I've run in order to train, and I've run just for fun. But there is one thing I swore I'd never do.

A marathon.

Now, I like running just fine.  If I didn't, I wouldn't have forked over the money for race fees and running shoes. I'm not going to punish both myself and my wallet.  But training for a marathon takes a lot of time.  To me, a long run should take 1-2 hours.  Not 4.  That's just nuts.  I mean, that's half of a normal workday.  Just RUNNING.  And if the long run takes place on the weekend (which it probably does), that's time that could have been spent consuming bottomless mimosas and watching football. Priorities, people.

Done!  Now where's the champagne?

I've been perfectly happy sticking with distances of 13.1 miles or less.  But then my friend Amy just had to send me this:  great-wall-marathon.com.

SWEET JESUS THERE'S A MARATHON ON THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

The course covers 2 sections of the Great Wall, which is pretty dadgum steep and has horribly uneven steps.  The rest of the course is pretty hilly, too.  It's also supposed to be hot and humid.  They don't have many water stops, and from what I have read, no port-o-potties, either.  And it's China, so, pollution.  Yay.  Not surprisingly, this is considered to be one of the hardest marathon courses in the world.

So naturally, Amy and I are doing this in May of 2015.   I went from not caring at all to run any garden-variety marathon to wanting to run one of the most difficult marathons in the world in a foreign country.  I am an idiot.  Logic is a lost cause in my world. But I really can't resist the chance to do something crazy in a country that I've never visited.  And Amy knows that.

Amy hasn't done a marathon, either.  We clearly have some research to do.  And a LOT of training.  But we have 1.5 years to figure it all out.  If this doesn't kill us, it's going to be amazing.