What we do on long weekends

This last weekend there was a traditional Chinese holiday called Dragon Boat Festival. Almost everyone gets to play hooky from school for it in China. During the holiday families celebrate by racing little toy boats down rivers and by eating zongzi (traditional leaf-wrapped rice dumplings).

As for me, I started a campfire with a koala bear.

Photos by Ben Elmakias

A fellow Peace Corps volunteer in Gansu came to my city to go backpacking during the long weekend. He brought along a small two-person tent that he had packed for China, but hadn’t used here yet.

Ooo la la

His name is Ben and he was the first other China volunteer I met during Staging in San Francisco.

Photo by Ben Elmakias

That was nearly one year ago today. We were on the shuttle bus from the airport to our hotel and I, foaming at the mouth, asked aloud on public transportation if “anyone else was going to China?”

Thankfully Ben spoke up with a “ni hao.” Turns out he actually studied Chinese in college and can speak it pretty well.

During our time together we got to interact with a lot of locals and I admittedly felt extra nervous speaking Chinese in front of him. But he complimented my abilities, saying something along the lines of:

“I think you can speak Chinese better now after a year than I could after three years of college. And I majored in it!”

Killn it …also photo by Ben Elmakias

It felt good to hear that from someone so knowledgeable in Chinese and who, relatively speaking, had a similar upbringing to my own (he also grew up in the Midwest – Madison, WI).

For a minute I was even inspired to sit down and really put in some work towards further improving my Chinese. For a minute.

The first day of our hike Ben and I headed to Feng Huang Mountain. We went to the Temple of the Sleeping God, explored some dry goat-feces carpeted caves, walked through a rural farming village where a family was pouring the foundation of a new house, and peaked the mountain before walking back to my apartment. It was fun!

Ben was awe-struck by the beauty of this area and took many pictures of the land and people. We were there during the late afternoon, which is like the Golden Hour for photo lighting and getting epic pictures. We both got our fair share.

Most of these were taken by Ben, though.

We had lots of good, sometimes deep, sometimes funny talks along the way. He’s a pretty smart guy and our conversation was full of interesting stories.

We talked about spoken word poetry and the difficulty involved in writing, which reminded me of something I once heard back at camp in Colorado.

Somebody had asked our talented family camp guitarist, James Hersch, how he had gotten so good at writing songs. I’m glad I was there to listen to his response. He told us this story:

Growing up I loved music and writing song lyrics. When I was eighteen I had about ten songs that I thought were pretty good. So I went to a local studio and they laughed me right back out the door. My songs were all trash, apparently. I had an older friend who had been writing lyrics and playing guitar his whole life. So I asked him, “why didn’t they like my songs? What should I do now?” He told me to, “fill a wooden barrel with your songs.” …what? “Fill a big empty wooden barrel with your sheet music. It’s not until then that your songs will be any good.” So I got to work.

James used to do special concerts with all the kids at family camp. They would, over the course of one hour, write a song together about any topic the kids wanted. Then they’d perform it for us all, with James plucking away a new guitar riff while the kids sang fresh and funny verses packed with real story. We’d be blown away. I think he filled his barrel.

James Hersch

These are the kinds of things you can talk about no matter where you are – whether in the mountains of China or in the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. James’ story vibed well with my long weekend breather mountain hiking because it reminded me that everything is a process, including the Peace Corps. If you can just stick to the process you’ll be alright, kid.

The next day we slept in, ate a lot and went to hike Ji Feng Mountain, the most prominent peak in my county. We also wanted to camp out that night, so we had to get a move on.

Hiking Ji Feng Mountain is like stepping back in time…

 

Photo by Ben Elmakias

yikes

Mixed with a little modernity.

Photo by Ben Elmakias

 

It was on Ji Feng Mountain where I first tried Soylent, an FDA-approved concoction of all the nutrients a human body needs for a day.

It tasted like pancake mix to me, so I greedily snarfed it down like a meth addict.

The monks at the monastery offered us cigarettes and a bowl of noodles, but we were determined to leave the mountain as fast as possible. Daylight was running out and we needed to hit the next trailhead and find our campsite on South Mountain.

We ended up finding a good place to camp underneath a sheer cliff face. It moved more than my bowels to watch the waning pink-orange light play off the cliff while building our koala bear fire as the sun set in the West.

…your what fire?

Photos by Ben Elmakias

 

The next morning we went up to another monastery nearby and drank tea with the locals. One of them, a 77 year old man missing his left hand at the wrist, is an expert at traditional Chinese handwriting. We got to enjoy watching him write a few lines for us.

me not understanding a single word this guy said

 

 

Photos by Ben Elmakias

This guy is seriously a stud. We’ve met before and he thought my name was Luke!

Seriously check out that bamboo pipe… I know what I’m buying before moving back to Colorado

 

All in all Ben and I had a great time hiking together, full of everything we needed to feel reset for the final push of the semester.

Ben was happy that he came down and wants to come again with his Chinese girlfriend next time… and maybe even one of her friends!

Great Wall Marathon 2016

Friday:

We arrived in Beijing and immediately went to McDonalds. I ate two cheeseburgers, fries and drank a Coca Cola, or, as the Chinese pronounce it, “Kah Kah Kuh Luhh;” the perfect pre-marathon day meal. My buddy Ryan ordered the same thing. I ate too fast and a sewer wave of nostalgia crashed into the pit of my stomach. Ahh McDonalds. Standing up from the table felt like running a marathon in and of itself. I had almost forgotten that feeling. It was going to be a good race the next day.

After this meal of champions we took the actually-quite-well-organized Beijing subway to meet up with everyone else at Sihui East bus station, which would take us to our hostel right by the start line.

I was doing the full Great Wall Marathon in Tianjin Province, China as my first legitimate marathon that I actually registered for (unlike the one in Denver back in October 2013…).

 

Saturday (Race Day):

Jagged peaks covered in dark green reflected the morning sun and stood guard over bucolic Chinese roads and villages, much like the two-thousand year old Great Wall itself. It was going to be bright and hot on the road. There were runners from all around the world and the U.S. Peace Corps was well represented on the Wall. As were Shaolin monks, cancer-charity tank tops and even Save the Rhino. Here’s some pictures of the volunteers and Ying and Yang square where we started:

I had given myself twenty weeks to train and had only achieved the first twelve of that. The last eight I put virtually zero running in the books. I knew I was getting myself in deep here in a very stupid way. Running marathons is no joke, especially when you’ve signed up for one of the toughest in the world, at least according to Red Bull.

“If only Red Bull really did give you wings,” I incidentally remember thinking at least three hundred and twenty seven times during the race.

I did end up hallucinating a duck at one point, though

My wave took off at 7:50am. I’ll break it down by every 5K (~3 miles aka 12 laps on a track):

 

0K – switch backing to the Wall

Started off very slow, but after a few minutes two half-marathoner volunteers caught up to me with a “hey Matt,” so I quickened my pace slightly. This worried me, as I knew I had A LOT of road and Wall left ahead. It was okay because I slacked off and let them take off after five minutes. The spool of road we were on passed the hostel we stayed in the night before as it unraveled up the side of the mountain.

 

5K – hitting the Wall

Running the Wall the first time was like trying to bake a cake without a kitchen floor – you’ll eventually finish it, but it’s gonna take a little gymnastics. The path was packed with people so I was able to take standing breaks while waiting to move ahead. This took a while.

SCRAMBLE!!!

I passed two blind runners coming down the narrow goat trail near the end. It was very impressive to see them and I felt accomplished somehow by there presence. They later passed me again.

By the end of this stretch I remember thinking, “I’m only six miles into this thing? Oh no.”

 

10K – on the road

I didn’t notice the toll that the Wall took on my legs until reaching this point. The long road is testament to the need to follow and complete a full training regimen for this race. I was slightly embarrassed because my pace really slacked off and people started to pass me in a steady stream. To me getting passed has always siphoned my race confidence and aided the desire to quit. Realising this I quickly developed a mental schema to combat it. Run two-minutes, walk two-minutes, run two-minutes, walk two-minutes and ignore all other runners. It worked and I did it as we passed on through busy roads and excited villages.

Before reaching the point where the half-marathoners schismed away from full-marathoners I ran into a halfer coming back to finish. He took one look at my dark blue tank top, which was an old racing jersey from my alma mater, Luther College, and yelled, “GO NORSE!!!”

And then later on this stretch some other middle-aged guy, who looked like he was a small Midwestern college cross-country coach cheering on his team on the side, cheered me on with a, “Go Luther! Mad respect man, mad respect.” At least I think he said that. I was too busy trying not to die.

It was cool seeing all the Luther pride in China like that. I tried to find the half-marathon guy hours later when I finished, but he probably left already.

 

15K – uphill struggle

A volunteer who had previously run this marathon had told me that there was a stretch of about seven or eight miles of constant uphill that he wasn’t expecting, but that had been so punishing that he had to get his knee popped back into place during it. This is where that all started. Both ahead and behind me there was a line of walking runners stretching out as far as I could see. And I was one of them. The nagging thought this time was, “What if I don’t make the 8-hour cutoff time limit?!”

 

21K – halfway bus

We continued running uphill as we passed the half marathon 13.1-mile point. I had reached this spot in a little over three-hours, so my confidence soared as I realized that I would make the cutoff even if I walked the rest of the way. But there was a big bus parked nearby collecting runners who had given up. I was determined not to be one of them even though I mainly walked during this stretch. The sun was very hot and bright. At one point we passed marathoners coming down the mountain in full-stride, which gave me surges of confidence and envy.

 

25K – runner’s high

Downhill. Finally. The road, complete with careening buses and coal-laden trucks, wound down the mountain we had just climbed. Eventually my stream of running companions became the envy of all those slogging up the other way as we passed them going down. Running became pretty consistent again and I stopped walking for long, painful periods of time. I ate at least three bananas during this stretch.

 

30K – viral cramping

I get my picture taken by Chinese people all the time. But this was different. We were once again running the road back to the starting line, which was a main artery of traffic and Chinese shopping through this area. There were more than a few spectators the first time my calves cramped up and I’m pretty sure some people got some edge-of-your-seat, will-he-make-it-any-further quality footage here.

exactly like this, yeah

It was the first time I really stopped on the road to just stand there and wait it out. I kept cramping up consistently on this stretch so I had to once again start taking some serious walk breaks.

 

35K – hitting the Wall again

Even if I had been squatting my whole life I doubt I would have been ready for that Wall again. It took me the better part of an hour, but I made sure to not take any breaks and to focus on every step. There was only numbness in my legs, with the occasional echo of pain deep within, which always whispered, “give up, you asshole.”

In all honesty, I wanted to run this race so that I could conquer the Wall, but once I got back to it the second time I knew that it had really conquered me. There was nothing I could do but keep slogging along. I couldn’t gracefully Legolas my way up like I had been picturing for weeks.

whatever

We went up the Wall again, but in reverse, meaning we had to traverse the steep rocky goat path for nearly three quarters of a mile before reaching the actual two thousand year-old Wall portion. I’ve never seen so many people throwing up in one place. But we had our wristbands signalling our defiant return to the Wall and were determined to make it.

Looking around it felt like the Wall had beaten everyone until I heard a woman behind me shout, “We’re gonna be missing this tomorrow!”

 

40K – euphoria

Getting off the Wall for the second time was like finishing the race. The remainder was simply the pathway to glory and would be no problem. It was a downhill stride of delirium the entire way, snaking along the same winding road that we initially took to get up to the Wall.

 

42K – finish

No words – just a vigorous sense of accomplishment and relief as they draped the medal around my neck.

I did it! I beat the Wall! My official time was 7:00:27. I just about broke seven hours! Ahh so close! I’m proud of myself regardless. I feel very accomplished!

Around fifty minutes later the first Rhino crossed the finish line just before the eight-hour cutoff. It was an eye-watering moment for a lot of people as he took off the heavy suit for the first time.

screw rhinos, get this guy a beer!

If you’d like to check out some more pictures from my race day (and a video of my finish) click this link:

http://www.marathon-photos.com/scripts/event.py?event=Sports/2016/Great%20Wall%20Marathon&match=669&name=Matthew&new_search=1

All in all, I would highly recommend this marathon. Every step of the course was beautiful and challenging. So where next? Antarctica? The North Pole? Anything is possible. Beast.

Albatros Adventure Marathons released a short, drone fuelled highlight video from Race Day. Enjoy!