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

It's almost midnight here in Beijing and it's been a long day, but also an amazing and wonderful day!
Details about The Great Wall Marathon 2008 will follow tomorrow after a good and much needed sleep. The Great Wall Marathon 2008 went very well and 2 records were set:
1: Most runers ever to participate with more than 1700 from 49 different countries.
2: A new time record was set this year in the mens Full marathon with an astonishing time of 3hrs:18min.

As mentioned more details tomorrow, now it's time for bed!

In 8 hours (7.30AM GMT+7) the start of The Great Wall Marathon 2008 will be shot off. The runners have been preparing themselves mentally as well as physically during the day and in the evening most of them went to the big Pasta Party to ensure that they got a healthy and useful meal before the demanding race tomorrow.
Hopefully the runners are all sleeping now as they have to get up early in the morning for departure to the wall. It takes about 2-2½ hours to get there from Beijing, which may seem weird to spend that much time in a bus before such a tough event. But I assure you, it is well worth the drive!
Everything is ready for the race except the weather... The forecast says rain...!? I really hope they are wrong, but kindly ask everyone of you to send positive and sunny thoughts to Huangyaguan, Tianjin Province, China! Thank you :-)
With hopes of a sunny, joyful and successful race tomorrow, it's time to say good night.

The whole Adventure Marathon team and all the runners here in Beijing are counting the hours till Saturday 8 a.m. - the start of The Great Wall Marathon. Today was Route Inspection Day, many runners' first meeting with the wall's 5164 steps.

In blazing sunshine all runners and spectators met at the yin-yang square right below the steps of the Wall for a quick peptalk. Then everybody was taken by bus along a short section of the marathon route - a 5 km long hill winding all the way up to where the really funny business begins. The first steps on The Great Wall were taken, while cries of admiration over the spectacular views were let out and cameras were clicking away. The pulse went up as the world's toughest runners encountered just a hint of what awaits them on Saturday.

After a couple of hours of climbing the steep and rugged steps, the runners were - if possible - even more excited than before hitting the Wall. Some people even decided to upgrade from the half to the full marathon, and a lot of spectators decided to run too. So now the field of runners consists of more than 1700 excited and courageous runners.

Noe we are just waiting for that start gun to go off.

When you are not flying Business Class on a 9 hour night flight is not giving you the best of rests... But we arrived on time at the impressive Beijing Int. Airport, they are definitely ready to receive the masses of the Olympic Games in August. Perfect sign guiding, spacious terminals, effective passport control and fast bagage delivery helped us get through the vast airport in just 30 minutes. All good except for one little hurdle... Customs!
Arriving with several huge boxes including radios, time keeping equipment, medical equipment and other nescessities for a marathon of course wakes the attention of customs and although all the papers have been checked and confirmed a thousand times from home it still isn't always enough... So the 30 minutes suddenly grew till 4½ hours before we could leave the airport, still leaving a few things behind waiting for final clearance...

The Danish Athletic Federation Team and Officials went directly to Huangyagun to start setting up the route and preparing for Inspection Day tomorrow (Thursday). They will be joined by the Medical Team later today as well as the Photo Team. The bulletins from the Wall states that everything is under control. I will go tomorrow and check it out for myself along with all the runners who are going for the inspection of the route.

Today the remaining runners will arrive while those on the longer itineraries are on sightseeing in Beijing. Here they can see that the city is getting ready for the Olympics although there is still a lot of construction going on, but compared to last year they have come a long way.

As mentioned a couple of times, tomorrow is Inspection Day and this is when the runners start realising what they have actually got themselves in to...

Little more than a week and the start for The Great Wall Marathon will go off for the 9th time.
Runners will start arriving in Beijing this weekend where they will be up for city sightseeing and jet lag adjustment before the challenging and astonishing race next Saturday, May 17th.
During the past couple of weeks the Great Wall Marathon staff has been working full time to get everything set and ready for the big event. It has been another great experience this year to get everything ready in time as the Great Wall Marathon once again breaks the record of participants; 1664 runners (1197 particiapted last year) will go for the challenge of either Full- or Half Marathon or 10 or 5 KM. 135 family members and friends has taken the trip as well to cheer along the route and give moral support to their loved ones. Also along the route runners will be praised and supported by the local population of Huangyaguan who are proud and honoured that this big event takes place in their district.
It is going to be a festive event, which we all look forward to!

You can follow the events before, during and after the marathon on this blog starting from Tuesday when the International Staff & Officials arrive in China.
We will keep you updated!