April 19th, 2015
Living in China and being a runner means running at least one time the Great Wall Marathon is a must. But first of all it was necessary to decide for one of the different events. The name of the races are almost the same and therefore searching the internet for "Great Wall Marathon" can cause a lot of confusion. Below are links to the different events which I found on the Internet in 2015.
Due to time constraints and because it's advertised as a smaller event, I registered for the JinShanLing Marathon. Furthermore the distance to run "on the wall" was about 20km which is longer than at other "Great Wall Marathons". As it is probably the case with the other events, foreigners had to pay a "penalty" upon registration (170 USD instead of 260 RMB). But that's just one of the challenges foreigners had to overcome. On Friday, April 17, I left for Beijing. I had already booked a hotel near the bus meeting point, and the following day, Saturday, I used to pick up my race documents. The approximately 15 buses departed at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday morning for the nearly two-hour journey to JinShanLing. In the received documents the bus number and seat number for the participants were mentioned, but of course, the buses didn't have numbers. (Chinese...)
After arriving in JinShanLing, everything actually went pretty quickly. I swapped my T-shirt for a larger one, exchanged a few words with other German runners, looked around a bit, and was waiting for the start. It was still chilly in the morning, but the temperature rose over the course of the day. The time limit was seven hours, and I reached the finish line in that time. Time was secondary to me, though. Stopping, admiring the scenery, and watching the runners were more important to me than setting a personal best.
Have a look to the Picture Gallery for more pictures.
Here are some pictures:
Used running shoe: Saucony Kinvara TR2
Here are links to Marathon events on the Great Wall which I found in the internet for 2015:
JinShanLing Great Wall Marathon on April 19th, 2015:
http://www.gwmseries.com/index.php?c=index&a=index&sid=2
http://www.jslmarathon.com/index.php?c=index&a=index&sid=2
http://www.runchinamarathon.com/event/detail/2
Great Wall Of China Marathon on May 1st, 2015:
http://www.conquerthewallmarathon.com/
http://www.greatwallmarathon.com.cn/
http://chinesewallmarathon.com/index_e.html
Great Wall Marathon on May 16th, 2015:
http://great-wall-marathon.com/
http://www.interair.de/marathon-reise/great-wall-marathon-2015/reiseverlauf.html
Furthermore a German Travel Agency organizes a Marathon on the Wall in September (which takes not place in 2015)
Great Wall Marathon in September:
http://www.greatwall-marathon.com/
And here two links to websites on which the differences between the events are explained:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/marathon/
http://english.cri.cn/6566/2012/05/10/902s698571.htm