No stranger to the challenge of iconic race-cation Marathons, LUPA Crew legend Sharyn Mitchell takes us through lacing up and completing the Great Wall of China Marathon recently. A tough course with an iconic 5164 stairs on an oppressively hot day would make this one of the hardest and rewarding Marathons Sharyn has completed.
My story of getting to the Great Wall Marathon really starts when I finally finished the Abbott World Marathon Majors. Completing all 6 of the Major world marathons was a dream I never thought I would complete but I did! It took me ten years but I got there. My last marathon of the six was the Tokyo Marathon and I completed it with Plantar Fasciitis in both feet. It ended up being a walk / run affair with mostly walking towards the end and I needed to take some time off after the marathon to sort my feet out properly.
I ended up feeling quite lost after I had finished the Tokyo Marathon. I didn’t have another goal to work towards and didn’t quite realise how much my identity was linked to me being ‘an athlete’. So, as I am sure we have all done, I was sitting on my couch googling and stumbled across the Great Wall Marathon. I usually spend time in the countries after completing a marathon and I quite liked the idea of a couple of weeks looking around China for a holiday. All I had to do was focus on resolving my Plantar Fasciitis.
It took quite a while for the pain and inflammation to really settle down so that I could run again without pain. I’d made great progress but then I had a weird weakness turn up in my hip flexor of my right leg (after long runs I would have to lift my right leg into the car as it wouldn’t work properly). I incorporated some additional and targeted strength training and managed to get to a point where I could run about 20km without my leg failing on me. I was feeling positive that everything was on track, I could definitely complete a Half Marathon option but I really wanted to do the full. I felt it would be prudent give it a proper test before heading off to China and make sure I felt my body could handle the Full.
There was an Xterra event in the lead up to heading off to China and I decided that if I could make it through then I would be good to do the marathon. Thankfully the Xterra and my recovery went pretty well, so my head was really ready to be focused on the marathon space.
I must have been sufficiently distracted by life (and work was stupidly busy) and my dicky leg issues; that I hadn’t really done much research for my actual holiday part, so when I googled the temperatures for the main cities I was visiting I was very surprised that they were all high 20 degrees Celsius! At this stage I realised maybe some heat acclimatisation might have been useful given we were in cooler Autumn conditions; but a week out it was a bit late now!
Anyhoo, onto the plane I got and headed off to Beijing to go for a run! I had booked my trip through Marathon Tours and Travel (and I’d highly recommend them). Part of the package included a ‘wall inspection’ two days prior to the marathon. This was brilliant! It was a walk over the wall that we were to run over twice (you run over one 8km part of the wall, do a 25km loop though a number of small villages and then go back over the wall to the end. You might notice the slight downhill at the 8km mark – this is known as ‘the goat track’ and I was slightly horrified by the thought of going back up it at the end of a marathon!
After the wall inspection my legs were so sore! This did not bode well and I considered changing to the half marathon distance. Luckily everyone else was also complaining about their very sore legs and I found that rather comforting to stick with the plan to do the full.
The day before the marathon I went to visit Emperor Qing’s tombs. I walked way too much in the heat but since I was only going to be here once I wanted to see as much as I could. I made one last check of what the temperature was going to be on race day, high 20’s so not too bad; and I locked myself into doing the marathon.
Why am I worrying so much about the heat I hear you wonder? I went through menopause about ten years ago when training for Ironman and one of the many changes my body has gifted me is the complete lack of any capacity to regulate itself with temperature. I don’t do well in heat. It will usually impact me at about 26km and I have to slow down, cool down and then I’m good to keep going. So temperatures in the high 20s, a bit of a dicky leg and 5,164 steps to climb – what could possibly go wrong! Bring on race day!
I woke to perfect running weather, cool and a little bit overcast. At about 7:55am, five minutes before race time, the sun burnt off most of the clouds and it had started to really heat up – oh no… But it was a super exciting atmosphere with about 800 other people doing the marathon. The marathon hadn’t been run since before Covid and the streets were lined with people watching the crazy Europeans run past! It was all GO – and we were off!
We had such fabulous views from the wall and running though the small villages was incredible. We were cheered on the whole way along. It was amazing. Around 15km my body started to meltdown. This was a lot earlier than I expected and it was just getting hotter; above 34 degrees in the shade so it was probably closer to 40 degrees running under open baking sun and I had a long way still to go. I quickly had to change my race plan to survival mode – I was going to make sure I finished. I found myself clipping along at a very fast very fast walk pace doing mental arithmetic to ensure I could make it within the cut-off in time. My body really wasn’t coping with the effort associated with running but with so many others around me struggling in the heat at least I knew I wasn’t alone in the fight to finish.
I made it back to the entrance to the wall inside the cut-off time and started trudging up the goat track – this was really the last hurdle to tackle. It was truly an effort in mental strength by this stage. I knew I had to keep moving forward in order to make it to the finish. I started passing a number of other competitors, urging them to keep moving forward, while I just kept my own tempo and focus to make it to the finish.
This about sums up how I was feeling at this point! I was absolutely running on empty in the heat and the steps kept going up.
But I made it!
This was easily the hardest marathon I have ever done. It was not so much the climbing, but the astounding heat. I would absolutely recommend going to China to take part in this event as it is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – but I would also recommend doing a heap of heat acclimation before you go!
