TRAVEL | CHINA
t was still dark when the bus dropped us at the base of the wall.
We had left Beijing just after 2am, the city quiet and emptied of its usual urgency. Now, in the mountains, the air was unexpectedly cold. Runners stood in small clusters, arms folded, shoulders hunched, waiting. No one had anticipated this kind of cold in May. We had packed for heat.
Above us, the Great Wall rose into the hills, climbing and disappearing into itself. The air was clean, and you could see its full outline stretching across the ridgelines. Clarity isn’ t always guaranteed; often the landscape is softened by haze, the horizon obscured. In a few hours, we would run across it.
TRAINING IN SUZHOU At the time, I had been living and working in China for about a year. Running was something I did mostly on the edges of my life. In the mornings before work, I ran through the streets of the city while it was still waking up.
Before leaving my apartment, I would check the Air Quality Index on my phone before checking the weather. On days when the numbers were too high, I shortened my runs or stayed indoors. Sometimes I would head out anyway, only to turn back early if the air felt heavy in my lungs.
When I returned to my apartment building, I would enter through the side stairwell and climb all 28 floors to the top. Then down again. Sometimes three repetitions. It was the only way I could think of preparing for a race I had been told involved thousands of steps.
Where I lived, in Suzhou, a city of 12 million people near Shanghai, there were no trails or hills. Just concrete and vertical space. In winter, temperatures dropped below freezing, and I learned to run in layers, my breath visible in the early morning air. In summer, the humidity was so thick it slowed everything, forcing a different kind of rhythm and greater patience.
STEPPING FORWARD By the time the Great Wall Marathon started, the cold had begun to lift, but as the sun rose higher, the temperature shifted again, and the stones beneath our feet began to radiate heat. The steps came relentlessly – high steps, shallow steps, uneven steps worn by centuries of use – and there was no rhythm to them, no way to move without paying attention. Every stride demanded something from you.
Only about 6km of the race was actually on the wall itself, but those kilometres stretched in time. Running there felt less like racing and more like moving through history, each step placed on something ancient and indifferent to your effort.
Near the end of the race, with about 4km remaining, I found myself climbing another endless staircase beside a Chinese runner. We had been moving alongside each other for some time, sharing an understanding that comes from matching pace.
He gestured ahead.“ First lady,” he said. I followed his gaze and saw her, small in the distance.
Until that moment, I hadn’ t been thinking about position. I had been absorbed entirely in the effort, in the physical act of moving forward over something so vast. But suddenly, the
26 | RUN FOR YOUR LIFE