The Thrilla in Tianjin Municipality - 42 Rounds with the Great Wall

Lazy, unmotivated Zach
prepares to run a marthon.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m actually a fairly lazy, unmotivated person..honestly! Look at me! Some of the friends that I appreciate the most are the ones who are outgoing, social, and devilishly good at exercising peer pressure. These people abuse your committed, loyal friendship and manipulate you into doing things that you perhaps otherwise would not have contemplated doing (I would love some reader feedback on these). Generally these people are not appreciated. My personal opinion on this topic, however, is that these people are in fact underappreciated. It is not coincidental that the vast majority of these instances I have openly considered out loud and thus receive stark criticism from one or both of my parents. Also not coincidental is that the vast majority of these instances were awesome and I don’t have any regrets (note - vast majority does leave room for exceptions to the rule..)

                About two weeks ago I had one of those moments when I felt compelled to act out. Long story short I made the abrupt decision to go to the Great Wall for a walk..a long walk..in fact, a very long walk. Sometimes bad decisions end badly and other times they end well. Historical example, if Ben Franklin had listened to his wife and not gone outside in a rainstorm to fly a kite with a key attached, my Chinese neighbor’s duck would have one less feather and I would be dipping that feather in ink right now to finish this sentence rather than using a keyboard. So around 10 maybe 11 days ago I was feeling pretty bold. Long story short, I run into Friend A who is dropping out the upcoming Great Wall marathon, nab the registration spot for Friend B, and somehow end up running it myself.  It is still unclear how this development came about, but it the impetus originated in a conversation I was having with Friend B about being in awesome shape. We were lamenting the post-college, post-college athletics psychological disappointment – probably closely related to the kind that Junior Seau was experiencing before he decided to, well, run a very very long marathon..There is an exhilarating feeling being in the best shape you can be, feeling like a champ, running around doing physical feats that were previously unimaginable, so a watered down, slightly heavier, less muscular version of myself was hoping to recover this feeling. A little bit of beer, one good friend, and this is how this idea came to manifestation, and I was now running a marathon in 8 days.

Day 7 - Hungover from day 8.

Day 6 – Still completely unaware of what this task entails, I begin to post advertisements on the internet to buy a dropout’s registration..carbo loading begins – noodles for dinner

Day 5 – No responses yet from the internet ads and not promising response from the marathon organizer..That evening I play basketball for 2 hours, 11 of 15 players show up so I run for nearly two hours..feels great

Day 4 – Finally through the friend of a friend of a friend I get a lead. Call the number and find the runner at the airport on his way to LA, verbal confirmation of ticket exchange, success! Decide another run is necessary to complete “training”. I eat noodles for dinner.

Day 3 – 6am wake up call. Shoes on, ipod in, out the door by 6:10. My plan is to run for time to assist coping with the mental challenge that lies ahead. As the sun rises, so does my spirit, and I run 14km in the ballpark of 90min roughly. I feel good then realize that is only 1/3 the length of a marathon. Noodles for dinner.

Day 2 – Ouch. Tired muscles hit. I knew this would come and am stretching regularly, including at work. The water cooler chatter continues to unnerve me and I start getting sweaty palms when thinking about the great wall..or even when I look at a wall..or stairs..I live in a house with walls upstairs..not good! In the evening I take a jog to remove lactic acid, eat more noodles, and stretch again (stretching helps endurance, no?)

Day 1 – My friend arrives from Shanghai and we are clearly excited about the upcoming challenge. Plan of attack, noodles for dinner (again, it’s called carbo-loading), bed at 10pm

ARMAGEDDON – 2:45am, the alarm clock rings. Fuck. I pull myself out of bed, gather my things, and we make it to the Beijing International hotel to jump on a bus with other runners and drive 2 ½ hours to the Great Wall/course. We arrive at 6am and full-fledged, intense jazzercise to “Blue” by Eiffel 65 begins. I have no choice but to begin to wake up. Around 7:10 I go pee for the 4^th or 5^th time then put Vaseline on my nipples. Take a photo (not of my nipples) and send it to my old lacrosse coaches..motivation. Up to this point I had effectively told no one, but now that I have, I know someone will be asking. Gotta finish now! 7:25-7:35 we line up, 7:40 BANG! We’re off!

And to think I was excited to run at this point.

So I’d like to first explain the layout of the race. 3 corrals all start 10 minutes apart. The first 8.5km and last 8.5km are the same (up a hill down the wall, up a wall down the hill) with the other 25km running through rural road/village. Runners must begin the second section of the wall before the 6hr mark or will be cut off for fear of being left on the wall overnight..no joke.

KM 1-5 – Easy, but I realize now it’s a dirty trick to make runners start a marathon on a 5km, 250meter incline stretch. At this point the adrenaline is flowing and the Jimi Hendrix pumping through my headphones has never sounded better. At the end of this stretch we approach the entrance to the Great Wall (from here referred to as GW).

KM 5-8.5 – Standing on the GW just after day break is amazing. Never done it before, and hope to never do it again. I understand now why this wall was an effective defense mechanism. If any foreign power had ever gotten on top of it, they would have to stand there and wait in line to use the stairs down..like I did during the marathon. I am too excited to stand and foolishly try to keep moving forward in line past the voices going “easy now but we’ll see on the way back!” which do not seem to register. I ignore them and plunge down the 300m stair descent continuing to hear seemingly irrelevant comments about the way back. Time check, 2 hours.

KM 8.5-16 – Now at the bottom of the wall and able to make my own pace I take off for the midpoint, my goal. Once reached it’s all downhill from there, no? (what a terrible analogy in this story)  KM 16 is notable because it is the first time I see a distance sign. After running for what seems like an hour (probably was) I am only at KM 16. What the hell. This sucks, I’m tired, they didn’t shut down traffic so not only do I have to give high 5’s to every village child that I run by, but also I have to run through dust clouds and tractor smoke from passing traffic. Oh yeah, and now I’m looking uphill again.

KM 16-22 – A mental test. Where the strategy of marathon-ing comes into play. The alpha in me decides that I can’t walk to much, so up to km17 I try this jog 100m walk 100m strategy. N-o-w-a-y. Running uphill at this point is just stupid, it’s so dumb. Kinda like that rapist in Alabama was..so stupid, man he duuumb!! Thinking that I’ve only run 2km more than my singular training session I feel as though I’m nearing my tank. I begin to think of excuses of why I won’t make the 6hr cutoff back at the wall. I won’t recite any of them because they were all shit, and stupid, so duuumb. I relegate myself to a fast walk and jogging on flat surfaces. There are no flat surfaces though, just a hill whose incline increases as we reach km22. WHAT THE F@ck! Who designed this course? Clearly Satan.

KM 22-26 – Finally a runners rejoice. The top of an uphill also known as the top of a downhill. I begin to cruise pretty well and realize that my abs are not tired nor legs. I am just in pain. Things hurt. Most specifically between my shoulder blades, my right knee, the bottoms of my feet, and the two large blisters I can feel forming. At km sign 26 I ask the guy for a time check, 4:15, I manage to burst out, “I’m gonna make it!”. The assistant laughs at me, perhaps scornfully because he knows as I’m shouting this the winner of the marathon has been already rested for 30 minutes…L

KM 26-27 – Another fucking hill! No chance..I power walk and meet some old people. The dude has done 60+ marathons, he reminds me that no matter what today will be my personal best..Motivation!

KM 27-30 – This section I think was actually made by the devil. It was actually probably harder then running anything normal. Some idiot made this section billy-goal-trail style with all sorts of rocks sticking up as you run on a 1m wide path. Not difficult except for the fact that any cartilage I had in my knee was destroyed from the uneven surface.

KM 30-34 – Off the billy goat trail from hell and back on hot pavement, I begin to learn what it’s like to run without cartilage in a knee. Ouchies! Besides running from leftßàright on the road staying to the shaded side, I get honked at by a car. Fuck you, douche! At this point top speed is about 4-5km/hr. I can maybe get 300m in one stretch until undone by pain. I do the math, time is on my side. I reach the final section at a time of 5:10 and 8.5km to go.

KM 34-42.195 – Great Wall section 2. 

This picture is a lie, at this moment it was nowhere near this beautiful.

I take my first step and a deep breath and decide I’m going to bang them out. BANG, BANg, BAng, Bang, bang, flop. That’s me sitting down for the first time. I look down, I’ve gone maybe 10m vertical. Only 290 more to go. I get into this rhythm of moving until I feel like collapsing and then sitting for a while. I do this a few more times and look down again. Now I’ve gone maybe 15m vertical. Shit, maybe I should I have trained. Overrated! These things are about willpower, not wasting your time! Not much to say about the next 290meters except that I a) ended up baby crawling up some portions and covering myself in grime and dirt b) completely lied down for 10-15 minutes because my feet/hands/lips were all numb and was getting dizzy and c) have never been closer to seriously considering pissing my pants, while sitting down, with energy, just because it would take more energy and two hands to pee normally (I thought I might just fall down the side of the mountain – at the time it made sense..i swear).  So at some point while I was hitting rock bottom, thinking about adding pee to the filth that I was lying in already, and getting no sympathy from a medic, it all sort of just..passed. Who knows what it was, or why it happened, but some dude walked by me who I’d seen some X kilometers back and it happened to be about the same time I decided to keep making an effort, and for whatever reason this whole “phase” just passed (yes it sounds like puberty or some emotional cycle, but apparently it was..I guess I was just being a little bitch and had to get over it!). I slowly managed to climb with my new friend, an air traffic controller from Miami, to the top of the incline and it was downhill from there on. Nevermind that at this point my knee was so busted from overcompensating for other weak muscles and it felt like there was no cartilage, but I managed to meet another person with 0 knees and we paced ourselves to the finish line over the last 5km. And I won’t lie, I walked right up to the point where you re-entered the village to cross the finish line, and as soon as I was about to walk through the wall, I started jogging, and you know what? It felt good, my knee didn’t hurt, and just like that I crossed the finish line.

Obviously I’d like to mention that while this was a fantastic experience, I don’t recommend it by any means. Somehow, though, I feel that no one else besides me needs this type of encouragement or advice and do not lack the common sense function that I must be missing. This was my first distance race ever, 5k, 10k, half, full, whatever. First of all, mad respect for everyone who finished this trek. I got beaten easily by geezers over twice my age and have absolutely no shame about it. This shit was HARD. And those old people ran the shit out of it. Also, the culture and atmosphere surrounding this event was so unique. Honestly, I think the most accurate comparison would be to a music festival where you substitute energy gels for acid and a little bit of crazy for the pot that people would be smoking.  I was with people on the wall at first that I lost and didn’t see until I was on it a second time. KM 17-22 I went back and forth with some guy who was in the group with the girl that I walked the final 5km with. You see the same people over and over and have this snippets of conversation that provide considerable amounts of motivation, inspiration, and goodwill. It was like in a music festival when you’re next to that guy who needs a lighter so you give him one and in return he smokes you out. And then you see him the next day say hi again then realize he has taken too much acid or something and you get him an ambulance. Very cyclical with many paths crossing and re-crossing. I found that I was able to pull a lot of support from the other runners. That e-mail to JP and Kenny also didn't hurt, because I knew I’d have to answer to someone whenever I was finished.

All the recognition I need

In the end, whatever be the motivation you need, it’s all gravy, all inconsequential. I reminded myself that when you step up to the plate and you need to get something done..well, you just do it.