November 12th, 2011
The first big running event in Guangzhou took place on November 12, 2011. There had been a few corporate runs and charity runs before, such as the Terry Fox Run, but according to my knowledge the Nike Lunar Run was the first big and professional organized 10K run in downtown Guangzhou.
According to official media the number of participants was around 15,000 runners. The start was at Huacheng Plaza and the route went from there to the Ersha Dao peninsula and then, after a lap around the peninsula, back to the finish at Huacheng Plaza.
My GPS watch was showing a distance of only 9.6km at the finish. My final time of 47min. 15sec. would correspond to a time of about 50min for 10km. As I could motivate some colleagues from our company to join as well we had overall a lot of fun.