Finally the much feared day – 15 October – is history and I finished my 4th marathon in a row, all in Beijing. First one was in 2003, les than two years after starting to do some sports and … running. I remember one day in 2002 I came home and proudly announced I had managed to run 1 Km on the treadmill. That machine looked so menacing to me and I could not imagine I could actually RUN. Here we are now and also 6 to 7 Kg lighter:
Year Official Time
2003 4h 48m 21s
2004 4h 45m 40s
2005 4h 39m 40s
2006 4h 31m 24s – real time 4h 30m
This year the weather and organization were both OK. Not like that horrible 2004 one when it was unusually warm and water was not available after Km 30. And you could drop dead also after Km 35 without anybody in sight to help you. Unfortunately two runners did drop dead, not to speak the over 100 others who needed to go to the hospital (of course official figures were lower…).

We had a grey sky, around 18C, low wind and pollution level (API) between 105 and 125 (not that great but for Beijing already “good”).
The good point:
Lots of volunteers, water stands, pickup buses all the way till the finish. This time, little nuisance from passing traffic.
The weak points were at the start – too chaotic – and the finish: impossible to get the certificate (at least 200 runners waiting), so I left without. Nobody could come to watch the arrival nor pick up the runners so other confusion of lost runners and friends. Especially foreigners who came to cheer were very unhappy. Somehow my family managed to shout a cryptic message before I entered the Asian Games complex (National Olympic Sports Center) so I knew I had to look for them at the East Gate.
My new training program did help me and I gained again several minutes. My time was 4 Hours and 30 minutes for the 42.195 Km. And it took exactly 41,000 steps – the reason why my leg muscles were all banana for the rest of the day. But on Monday I was “running” around to the usual busy meetings. Staircases were a bit tough to handle tough.

That pales of course compared to my friend Carl-Ludwig Doerwald who was close to me at the starting point and finished in 3H 40M real time.

The Marathon is getting a bit too crowded – about 25,000 runners packed on Tiananmen in the morning, for the 4K, 8K, half marathon and full marathon. As usual in China, messy, disorganized and easy to get hurt at the start as nobody really cares to follow orders.
But I am not going to miss the next chaos and I will again see how to improve my training schedule. As for now, salvation! Back to my cigar, a good wine, my whisky and all the stuff that I am not supposed to do. Santé!