Yes, I Am That Idiot Who Ran the Beijing Marathon

On October 19, 2014, after half a year of anticipation, I finally reached my first marathon. The night before, I dreamed all night long, praying to the heavens to funnel the wind from Zhangjiakou down into the capital so that blue skies might appear as if by miracle — but when I woke and looked outside, the sky was still disappointingly filthy. By 5 a.m. the PM2.5 had already passed 200, and then it climbed rapidly to nearly 400.

To run or not to run — by this moment, on this foggy morning, had become a moot question. Half a year of preparation, all for this one day; giving up would take more willpower than pressing on. What I found hardest to swallow was that I had no idea when I’d get another chance to run the Beijing Marathon.

In the morning I met up with running friends from my neighborhood and headed to Qianmen together, and the talk was all about the smog. Of course there was worry — as long as you live in Beijing and happen to be a runner, you can rattle off a whole basket of DOs and DON’Ts about smog, PM2.5, and health. Everyone knew running in this weather was a bad idea, but no one was being reckless; each person had his own non-negotiable reason for running this marathon.

Before the start, I gathered with my colleagues for a group photo, and then we scattered to our assigned corrals. Tony and I, being newbies, were placed in Corral 6, so we stayed together, warming up and chatting. Tony is in great shape — he can do 30 km in two hours and forty-odd minutes — and there was no way I could keep up with him, so I told him not to wait for me; I’d run at my own pace, nice and slow.

Once, on a business trip, I’d run a full marathon alone along a lake; that time I hit the wall and fell apart after thirty-some kilometers, then brisk-walked ten kilometers, finishing in 4:40. This time I set myself a goal of finishing within five hours — while running. My colleague Max told me that to avoid hitting the wall, or at least to delay it, I had to hold back from the start, keeping my pace just a touch faster than a five-hour finish. So the Sunday after National Day I ran a half marathon: from Xiaocun Bridge all the way to Chaoyang Park Bridge, then west onto the Third Ring Road, then south to Shuangjing Bridge, holding my pace at 6’45 the whole way and finishing comfortably.

I decided that would be my race pace.

By the time Tony and I neared the starting line, it was already nine minutes after the gun. My family called — one last attempt to talk me out of it. I said that if I felt unwell I would stop, and that nobody cherished my body more than I did. After hanging up, I waved my arms at the cameras and dashed across the starting line.

Tony vanished in no time. I took a deep breath and started off at a leisurely jog. Around the corner was Tiananmen, where the excited crowd began striking poses for photos. I admired the scenery while keeping an eye on my stride. After 1 km, Codoon announced my pace: 6’18, a bit fast. I eased off, ignored the runners whizzing past on either side, steadied my breathing, and just ran my own run.

The marathon is a punishing sport: beyond diligent day-to-day training, you need to ration your strength wisely on race day. So the key is to settle your mindset, master your desires, defeat your inner demons, and hold on to your “self” amid the crowd. I’d never been good at pacing myself — always fast at the front and slow at the back — so this time I paid extra attention.

Soon I reached the first 5 km checkpoint, and I shuffled back and forth in tiny steps over the sensor timing mat, terrified of losing my result. Past the checkpoint it quickly grew congested; long queues had formed at the portable toilets, breaking the rhythm of the runners ahead. I’d used the toilet about twenty minutes before the race, but the humid weather had given me a fairly urgent need to pee. Since the organizers claimed to have provided plenty of toilets, I decided to run another 10 km and deal with it once the crowds thinned.

That turned out to be a mistake. Thirty thousand people ran the half, twenty thousand the full; at one meter of space per person, the entire course would be packed end to end — and everyone wasn’t standing still, they were jostling in a mass over several hours. Runners at my pace (a four-to-five-hour finish) made up roughly a quarter of the field, right in the middle of the bell curve, so from start to finish there was never any shortage of people in front of me, behind me, or beside me.

Before the race I’d planned to follow the 5:00 official pacers (the “official rabbits”) through the first half, then see whether I could push ahead in the second. But after 5 km I had only just caught up with the 5:30 pacers. I followed the pretty 5:30 pacer for a short while, ran kilometer 6 at a 7’18 pace, found it too slow, and promptly got back to around 6’30. That pace felt comfortable — breathing through my nose, not the least bit strained.

Hydration and fueling are the keys to staving off the wall in a marathon. In training I’m the tough-it-out type: on a half marathon, unless the weather is sweltering, I just run straight through and drink afterward; as for fuel, apart from that lakeside full marathon, I’d never taken any. A race is different from training. For this Beijing Marathon my strategy was: half a cup of sports drink at every aid station; after 10 km, two bite-sized chocolates every 5 km; a whole Snickers at 25 km; then bananas and whatever else the organizers provided. When taking on fuel, I’d drink plain water.

The upside of this strategy was that I never really hit the wall; the downside, of course, was that my need to pee kept growing. After 15 km it had become so urgent that for the next kilometer I kept berating myself for not queueing for the toilet at the 15 km mark! Even if a toilet stop would cost me several minutes — ten, even — even if it would wreck my rhythm, even if stopping abruptly would leave my body cold, what were any of those compared with running 5 km in miserable discomfort, bladder bursting, before the next batch of toilets?

Mid-self-reproach, a wave of booing suddenly erupted from the crowd. It turned out that on the other side of the course along Landianchang North Road ran an irrigation canal, and a great many runners had gone over to pee into the bushes. More and more joined in, until the scale rivaled the famous “peeing on the red wall” of an earlier Beijing Marathon. I ran on a bit, checked the map, and saw that the course would soon leave the canal behind, so I threw caution to the wind, dashed over, and joined the booed ranks. It was neither civilized nor classy; for the next stretch along the river I ran with my head down, deeply ashamed. Given the weather, if I kept hydrating like this I’d probably need the toilet again en route, so from then on, at each aid station, I dared take only a small sip.

From 5 km on, there were constantly runners stopping to rest or massage their thighs; by the time we neared Zhichun Road, plenty were walking, and I had to dodge them now and then. Some would stop dead mid-run, or move sideways without signaling, which made it miserable to keep a steady rhythm. But it was all understandable. Over the course of the race I stepped on the shoes of people who’d stopped abruptly in front of me, elbowed people who came “overtaking” from behind, got hit by someone spitting on the ground, and had my legs struck by flying cups and bottles. We’d exchange a smile and an apology and let it go — with so many people, what can you expect?

The half marathon finish was at Zhichun Road, where the runners began to split off. But so many were running the full that even after the split, the marathon course still felt crowded. A friend says the real marathon begins after the half; to my mind, nothing before 30 km counts as a marathon. In training I’d done several half marathons and several 30 km runs. A half, run slowly, was (for me) no big deal, but 30 km was a different beast entirely — every time I finished one I felt like I’d hit the wall, and once I hit it at 26 km.

After choking down the Snickers at 25 km, I had a feeling my fuel wouldn’t last, and my stomach was still growling. Just then I spotted the Tsinghua University cheering squad on the sidelines, quietly handing Snickers to runners who were presumably Tsinghua people. I hesitated, then sidled over and asked for one. They looked a bit uncertain, but gave it to me anyway.

Around the 26 km mark I finally spotted the first 5:00 pacer; I’d been running two hours and forty-some minutes. The pacer seemed to have gone out a bit fast in the first half. I still felt great, cruising easily at a 6’30–6’40 pace, not the least bit tired, and the pain in my left knee hadn’t returned.

About two months earlier, my left knee had developed iliotibial band friction syndrome. At the time I was too eager to get faster and pushed my training beyond what my body could take at that stage. In the gym I’d been training steadily at 12.5–13 km/h — mind you, a colleague with over a year of running experience was only training at that speed. Finally, one day while running at 13 km/h in my neighborhood, I had to brake hard to avoid a bicycle that shot out from the side; the small injuries accumulated over days became a big one. After that run I rested for over a week, and from then on, whenever my pace went above 11 km/h my knee would hurt — and so would running for an hour at 10 km/h or more.

After a great deal of stretching, I finally got my knee into the best shape, and several trial runs before the race confirmed that as long as I didn’t drop into a 6’30 pace, the knee would be fine.

With nothing to worry about, I began to reel in the 5:00 pacers one by one, passing them all — not because I was speeding up, but because my pace was a dozen or so seconds per kilometer faster. And so I ran on to 30 km, still full of energy.

“30 km — my race has just begun.” I posted that on Moments, then shut off WeChat. The iPhone 4S’s battery was useless, down to under 40 percent, and I had to conserve it. Just then my wife called; she’d brought the whole family out to cheer me on, but they were stuck in traffic at Lincui Bridge. I told them to go straight to the finish and wait for me.

The stretch before entering the Olympic Forest Park was uneventful; once or twice my pace even dipped to 6’10 — something I’d never have dared imagine. I’d have been happy just not to fall apart, yet I actually had the strength to go a little faster.

Once inside the Forest Park I saw the legendary army of walkers, and quite a few sub-3 runners were among them, which gave me a small, secret thrill. Catching up to sub-5 runners was no surprise, and passing sub-4 runners was nothing much, but seeing those sub-3 marvels genuinely excited me. At 36 km, despite having cut back on fluids along the way, I still felt the urge to pee; luckily the park has plenty of toilets, and around 37 km I spotted one by the road and followed the crowd in.

By this stage of the race, any change of rhythm can trigger an accident. Perhaps I slowed too abruptly, and then washed my face in the toilet, lingering a bit too long; when I came out I was limping — my knee and leg muscles had started to ache. I forced myself through a few steps and found it impossible: my feet hurt too, and the road felt like a bed of nails. So I switched to walking — little did I know that once I walked, I would never run again. I tried a few more times and sadly realized I had joined the Forest Park walking army myself.

After about two minutes of walking, the fastest of the 5:00 pacers caught up. They shouted from behind: “Only 5 km to go — hang in there, start running!” The people around them were swept up and began to jog, and I too was caught up in it and forced myself to run. As I ran on, perhaps out of sheer momentum, the pain actually faded. Kilometers 37–38 came in at 8’22, and the next few kilometers recovered to around 7 minutes.

Past 40 km, after my last water stop, I began my “sprint.” Kilometers 40–41 at 6’48 — by then I’d reached the Scenic Boulevard, where wave after wave of cheering rolled over the course. Suddenly a voice burst out of the crowd shouting my name — it was my colleague Wendy, who’d come to watch. What joy! I kept accelerating while calling to find my wife and family. Four hundred meters from the finish, they spotted me. I was overjoyed, scooped up my little one and showered him with kisses; he shouted happily, “Daddy’s running a marathon!” and for once cooperated with the photos. I put him down and sped up again, finishing the full 42.195 km (Codoon showed 43.26 km).

Finally, I’d finished. One of my three big goals for the year, done just like that.

All day yesterday, a piece titled “Are You That Idiot Who Ran the Beijing Marathon?” was circulating madly on Moments. I read it and laughed; I get the reasoning. We live in smog every single day — living in Beijing, can you escape it? We don’t run marathons every day, and it’s not as if we don’t know how to take care of our bodies. Is it really worth exhausting every sarcastic word in your repertoire just to court attention?

A marathon isn’t fitness. If it’s only for fitness, a 5K or a 10K is probably more suitable. A marathon is a challenge to oneself, a contest with oneself: a lowly office worker sliding into middle age, somewhere in the middle or bottom of society, with a life that’s placid and unchanging, can still do something for himself, can still chase a dream.

How many great goals does a person set for himself in a lifetime (I mean the kind that can make life different)? And how many of them does he actually achieve? The author who stands there with his hands on his hips, dishing out cheap sarcasm, doesn’t understand how precious it is to achieve a goal. I think of Andy, chipping away at the wall with his little hammer, crawling through hundreds of yards of sewage on a stormy night to win his freedom — did he not know that breathing lime dust every day would ruin his health, that crawling through the sewage could mean ammonia poisoning, that he might never crawl out?

What right do people who may never in their lives have achieved more than a couple of “great” goals have to point fingers at a group of people who, quietly, overcome every obstacle and simply strive for themselves?

Yes, I am that idiot who ran the Beijing Marathon.