It is Sunday morning here in Beijing, and both runners and organisers in The Great Wall Marathon have benefitted from a good night's sleep.

As mentioned, the marathon was a great succes with more runners than we have ever seen before - 1608 runners from 38 countries ran over the start line in the marathon, halfmarathon, 10K or 5K.

The weather forecasts had predicted heavy rains, so everybody was a little nervous thinking about how some of the trails would inevitably turn into sticky mud. But luckily it kept dry all day and a thick layer of clouds covered the blazing sun and kept the temperatures at around 18 degrees C - in other words perfect running weather.

We even saw a new marathon course record set by Romualdo Sanchez Garita from Mexico who finished in an astonishing 3:18:47. The first female marathoner to cross the finish line was Leanne Juul from South Africa with a time of 4:09:07. Winners in The Great Wall Halfmarathon was Andrew Dorobek, USA, 1:34:44 and Helene Rao, France, 1:55:51.

All reults in The Great Wall Marathon 2008 are available at www.ultimate.dk

Now, we are just waiting for the big gala dinner tonight, and then we can start looking forward to the Great Wall Marathon 2009. This will be the 10th race, and a few special treats for the anniversary are already in the making...

Labels: 2008, china, great, marathon, results, wall