The Great Wall of China

On Wednesday afternoon Mark and I took the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing. This train travels at 180 miles per hour and is as smooth as a airplane. It was pretty amazing. The trip took us about 4 1/2 hours and we got to see a lot of the country side of China. It is so nice to get out of the city for a change. We saw a lot of people working in the fields as we sped past. We got to Beijing about 9 pm so we didn't really get to see much of the city. On Thursday morning we woke up early and got on a bus with a bunch of runners all heading to walk the portion of The Great Wall that they were going to run on Saturday. It was about a couple of hour bus ride to The Wall.  When we got there, we all sat in the Yin/Yang square to hear the details of how the races where scheduled etc. The race is in Huangyaguan, Tianjin Province, China. I will blog more about the race details tomorrow.

The Wall itself is pretty amazing. The portion that we walked on has quite a bit of elevated and a ton of stairs. The steps are not uniform steps that we are used to walking on. The height of each step varies and some of them are very steep grades. We walked about 3 km on The Wall and this took us over a couple of hours. It was a hot and sweaty job that day. The Wall was built to keep the enemies out...all the while I thought it was to keep the Chinese people in!

We are staying in a hotel that is supposed to be 4-stars but not the American stars that we are used to, but Chinese standards. We are staying with a lot of runners and took a tour today (Friday) with a lot of them. We went to see the Qing Dynasty emporor's tombs and a Market. Tonight is the pasta dinner at the hotel and then early to bed. We have a early start tomorrow at 4:00 a.m. and the bus leaves at 5:20 a.m. for the big race.



Mark at the Yin and Yang square where they will start and finish The Great Wall race.