For my first international marathon in my entire life, I decided not to take it easy with a trip to familiar territory, like Europe or Canada. I decided to go for it with a trip to a continent that is 16 hours by direct flight away, with a foreign language, culture, and people. When I had to mail in my $60 non-refundable registration fee a few months before the marathon, the wire transfer form said from “New York,” to “China,” with a mysterious routing number. With the blind faith that my registration would make it to its destination in a country of 1.3 billion people, I packed my carry-on (yes, a carry-on for a two week trip to Asia…we’re setting all sorts of world records for women here), and set off for marathon number one on my seven marathon and continent itinerary. There’s something about when the plane is descending into Asia for your first trip to the continent that gives you this eerie sense of wow…this is really different. I was able to negotiate a two week trip to Asia by volunteering to work at my company’s Hong Kong office for the first week of the trip. Upon learning of my ambition to run the ANA Beijing Marathon, my co-workers in the Hong Kong office asked in shocked disbelief if I was aware that the air quality would be worse in Beijing than Hong Kong. I took a look out the window. “It’s not that bad here,” I said. “Erin,” my coworker Michael said, “those windows aren’t tinted.” Point taken.
Hong Kong was a good starting point since English is the official language, and the small mountainous island is inhabited by a significant population of American and European ex-pats. Hong Kong may just be one of the final frontiers on earth: it is a wild west of adventurous ex-pats living a lifestyle that is too lavish for their age and experience, with a work hard play harder mentality seven days a week. I had to pull myself away before the point of no return, and departed Hong Kong for stops in Shanghai and Beijing. The VP of In the Running Dana Worth was working in Tokyo, so he came to China to support In the Running’s debut in Asia. The only proper way to describe Shanghai would be in its palpable ambition. Cranes dominate the skyline and Shanghai’s neon, blinking advertisements are a who’s who of successful international businesses. I stayed in the highest hotel in the world (at the time) while in Shanghai, and also in the highest room, so maybe the highest hotel room in the world is some kind of world record or something too. Before I could get too used to the cosmopolitan, modern, heck even free speech (sort of) feel of Shanghai, it was onto the imperial culture of Beijing, and time to rock and roll at the marathon.
The air quality in Beijing is everything my Hong Kong colleagues warned me of and more. It is literally like the sun has been banished from the sky on most days. Everything in Beijing is gray, but there is a frenzy of expansion and beautification thanks to the upcoming 2008 Olympics. I will be very interested to see how China reveals itself to the world on the Olympic stage. Rumor has it the Communist government has “cloud machines” to blow all the pollution away from Beijing, probably toward some hapless small town in the countryside. One of the more interesting habits of Chinese men and women that shocks the western hygienic palette is the act of spitting. The Chinese fire loogies left and right like it’s nobody’s business- watch your feet (for further validation, see The New York Times, “No Spitting on the Road to Olympic Glory,” April 17, 2007). The idea of waiting in line is also something that was as foreign as I was in this country. Dana and I decided we could muster the occasional loose spitball and disorderly conduct…and immediately set off for exploration.
You know you’re really serious about competition when you climb the Great Wall of China the day before a race…oops! Come on, I was in China and I don’t get enough hill workouts in New York anyway. Dana and I, both about six feet tall and blonde, became quite the celebrities on the Great Wall. We made t-shirts that said In the Running, or more specifically pronounced “way ren min pow poo.” The literal translation to preserve the pun turned out as “run for the people.” People ran up to us on the Great Wall, read our shirts, looked at us, and then burst out laughing and demanded a picture with us. When we got back down to the entrance of the Great Wall monument area, the guards at the gate said, “look, it’s the way ren min pow poo people!” In the Running at the very least, has made it into the digital photo collections of many admiring Chinese.
After climbing the Great Wall I went for a short run to loosen up for the race, and noticed something interesting. Our hotel was in downtown Beijing right near the starting line, and I did not see a single other runner. I didn’t see a single sign, or any sign of infrastructure in Tiananman Square (the start), less than half a day before the marathon. The New York and Boston Marathons are extreme examples, but during the weeks and days before the event, runners and non-runners alike catch marathon fever. Runners and signs of “infrastructure” are everywhere with spectators, expos, goodie bags, inspirational posters on the subways, crowded Italian restaurants, and even if you’re just wearing running shoes everyone automatically wishes you good luck in the race! Later I went to an unmarked building to pick up my race number, which was organized by a random travel agency apparently outside of the official marathon infrastructure. The very unsympathetic travel agent handed me both my number and official finisher’s medal, to which I asked, “um, aren’t I supposed to get this after I finish?” He grunted something, which I was probably not intended to understand.
Back at the hotel I was stretching in the lobby, when a panicked manager came over and franticly waved at me to cease and desist. I am not a particularly flexible person, so I thought perhaps my lunges had tempered the ambience for his paying customers. Turns out the hotel staff members were not familiar with “stretching,” and were scared of what I was doing to myself. In a huff over this interruption to my pre-race routine, I realized that I needed my pre-race morning fuel of a bagel, a banana and peanut butter… not the Peking duck I had been eating for the past three days. I went up to the concierge, got up in his face and said…”I NEED A BANANA. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS??? B-A-N-A-N-A.” The concierge smiled, and said in perfect English, “Yes. We had bananas at Northwestern where I went to school.” Sheepishly I thanked him for pointing me to the bananas. I’m embarrassed I let the challenge of difference get to me at that moment of cultural insensitivity…so I did what any American marathoner in Beijing would do, and made a beeline for the one Italian restaurant in town.
The day of the marathon dawned (gray, like every other day in Beijing), and as I put on my lucky red, white and blue sweatband and my “run for the people shirt” I hoped beyond all hope…that there would be a starting line. Dana and I arrived at Tiananmen Square just after the daily flag raising…and boy was there a starting line! Complete with bright colors, dragons, huge signs, calisthenics girls, balloons, runners from all over Asia competing in the pan-Asia championship, a runner smoking a little pre-race cigarette, and lots of old Chinese men fascinated by the tall, western girl with the water bottles on her hip. Note: The Beijing Marathon ran out of water and two people died in 2004, hence my personal water supply. I guess this is really the beauty of living in a Communist country: the soldiers provide a ready labor supply to either invade Mongolia or set up the Beijing Marathon starting area overnight. Dana stood in the middle of the entire mess as a devoted if bewildered coach, questioning 1) why people run; and 2) why he was in Beijing with people who run.
The gun went off and I took off for a very inspiring first two miles, through Tiananmen and the heart of Beijing…at which point the race veered onto Beijing’s rim-highway system, only partially closed to traffic. There were so few westerners at the starting line and in the race that seeing another one was an excuse just to strike up a conversation…because if you’re originally from outside of China and running the Beijing Marathon, it’s safe to assume you must have an interesting story. The best example of this was actually when I was coming out of a port o potty at mile 13 and a German woman started chatting me up…I was like, “honey, not really the time.” Throughout the race, any runner who had had some English training would pull up along side me and start practicing their English. Admirable multi-tasking, but by mile 17 I was barely remembering English myself. The whole way spectators lined the course, not so much out of interest, but pure and utter bewilderment. I spent a lot of energy slapping high fives and shouting at little kids, but it was awesome to connect with the people in this way. I was a favorite among many of the older Chinese men too, who would run alongside me and refuse to change pace for several miles. It was a very endearing sort of protectionism. With all these hilarious incidents, I had a good time, and managed to run a modestly good time given the circumstances. The best part of the whole story actually has nothing to do with me. Apparently the winner was running the last .2 miles in the marathon, and took a wrong turn so he never actually crossed the finish line. The race director decided well, he would have won anyway, there was just the technicality of not crossing the finish line, and awarded him first place anyway. A fascinating episode in a country founded upon rules.
During In the Running’s trip to Asia, Dana also visited Shihoko Fujiwara at The Polaris Project’s Tokyo office to discuss their latest anti-human trafficking initiatives in Asia. The Polaris Project is In the Running’s exclusive sponsor for the continent of Asia, and they build local programs in Japan to combat the demand-side of human trafficking. It has been estimated that Fujiwara-san is the only full time professional dedicated to human trafficking in Japan, and much of her support comes from American companies and the U.S. State Department. Dana and I also visited Cambodia and Thailand during our trip, where we obtained an understanding of the economic hardship and lack of police enforcement that feeds the supply side of human trafficking. For more information on The Polaris Project, visit http://www.intherunning.org