The Marathon Nightmare

5/20/08, Qingdao office tower

I'm going back a few days to write some about the marathon. I did not prepare well. Because of irregularities in my sleep from travel, which were less due to jet lag and more to traveling for 35 hours straight, I slept much of the afternoon on Friday. This was a two-fold problem: I missed dinner, and I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night. Not having eaten any lunch Friday afternoon, I found myself in a bus seat on the way to the marathon not having eaten in 24 hours and having already been away since 9:30pm the previous night. I felt good anyway, and ate two of the breakfasts provided, each of which had a hardboiled egg (which they eat a lot of here) a banana, a sponge cake like thing filled with cream that was something like a Twinkie but not nauseating, and a bag of milk, which I did not drink. Yes, it really was milk in a bag.

I took in the scenery as the bus headed into the mountains. Even this far from the city, the Sun was kind of a pale brown. I joked that, while Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, China is the Land of the Sun You Can Stare At. There was a surprising amount of traffic on the way to the site, especially at 6:00am on Saturday. It didn't appear to be marathon related traffic, and they were driving like madmen, passing full length buses on mountain passes and around blind curves. There was one very near collision between a van and a three-wheeler that had the entire bus gasping at once, but it didn't seem to phase either of the drivers.

The waiting period was pretty dull. It was mostly people standing around chatting and stretching, and brought with it that impatience I've had prior to every run I've done. It was a good opportunity to take in the scenery from a stationary position, but the part of the Wall we would be running could not be seen from where we were, so I just stood around anxious to begin.

Without harping on every detail of the run, which would take all day to write, I'll start with the end of the marathon, a period I regret not shooting video of, as humiliating as it was. (I will try to post the video I did shoot once I get to Shanghai, where I expect to have a more reliable internet connection.) Around mile 18 I passed a water station where a member of the medical team waited to check out anyone who was having trouble. He approached me and put his hand on my shoulder, telling me I looked pale and asked if I would manage. I nodded with the confidence of someone who could not possibly manage. Less than a mile down the road, I finally sat down unable to go any further, at least for the moment. I threw up a little.

After several minutes, and several refused offers of help from passing runners, I stood and started walking, a few tens of paces after which I vomited five stomach loads of water. It was the best I'd felt since mile 1. I trotted for a while until I reached the paved road, where I was starting to feel ill again. The remainder of the marathon retraced the first seven miles, so I only needed to run the paved road to the start of the race, run the Wall again (a hefty task in 4 little words) and the last 3 miles would be almost entirely downhill. I walked the paved section, throwing up a little occasionally, but having no water in my stomach but the small sips I was taking since I emptied the tank earlier, it was mostly stomach acid.

Once I reached the Wall, I received a lot of unwanted encouragement. Its very frustrating to have a street lined with people yelling in your face when you're in that condition, even if they are encouraging you, but I did my best to ignore it. I climbed set of stairs, only 10 or 15, where police were telling mid-afternoon tourists to get out of the way. I rounded the corner and, no one being in sight, leaned over and threw up again. After waiting a few minutes, I found the resolve to push on when a photographer offered me help. First there was a flat bridge, which was easy enough, then some stairs, which were tougher, a steep dirt trail, which I covered quickly to take advantage of the good footing it offered, and then the nightmare began. The Wall was much steeper on the way back, and sections that did not have stairs but rather a steep sheer section of rock that only went down the first time all went up the second. These were really the toughest parts, because there was nowhere to stop halfway up. You had to cover each of these sections all at once.

I sat and threw up at the beginning and end of each one of them. It got harder as I went along, of course. With the constant fluctuations of nausea, I had trouble breathing. After each time I vomited, the ease of breathing would return and I'd be able to push my way up, but as I got higher the wind would pick up more and more. Because I was pale, I imagined my circulation was not good and my body was not regulating it's temperature very well. I was very cold. I wished I could have a blanket. I would have run with a blanket on, like a cape, looking like some Great Wall superhero. That would have been totally awesome.

I don't think I could ever actually show you were I sat at one point when I became dizzy and almost delirious. Watching my time closely, I tried to figure out a way I could do 4 miles in an hour in my condition, but there was nothing realistic I could come up with. I would have to run at least some of those miles. I threw up violently. When nothing was left in my stomach, my body kept pushing it out. My entire abdominal region seized uncontrollably, and I must have sounded like I was being beaten with the wails I was making trying to take short breaths. My eyes watered and my nasal passage was stuffed with mucous. A photographer ran down from one of the towers having heard me and he seemed as convinced as I did that I was dying. It only required him to say "I'm heading back that way in a half hour, you can go with me if you like…" for me to get up and keep going. I was having none of that.

It was a relief, obviously, to reach the end of the Wall. I could see it from the last tower. Approaching the last turn, I imagined someone popping out and telling me that I had to go straight to complete the marathon. I was imagining that this marathon was a living thing that wanted to make me suffer, but I was the one that was making me suffer, and willfully so. There was no way I was going home without doing one of two thing: finishing, or collapsing.

The last three miles, at last, and I could go down hill. I was well enough, somehow, after all that crazy vomiting, to trot down. Making new calculations, I could make it, but it was going to be close. The only time I slowed down on my way down the hill was a bend in the road where it went slightly up hill for about a hundred yards. I saw some people just ahead of me that were walking it as well, so I felt comfortable with it, but as soon as the road started going downhill again, I could no longer see them, and so ran.

Returning to the flat road in the valley, I did walk just a little more. Iwas very close to the finish, maybe 3/4 of a mile. With 12 minutes left, I was no longer trying for a good time, but merely to finish under the 8 hour time limit. There was no difference between 7:52 and 7:59. There was a lot of traffic down here, both pedestrians, cars, and large trucks. For the fourth time I passed a group of camels lounging on the side of the road. I looked at one and it had hardly more than change position since I'd seen it at the outset nearly 8 hours earlier. "You lazy worthless animal, you should be carrying me 26 miles," I mumbled to myself, in so many words.

I trotted again at this point, and rounding the bend I picked up speed through the finish line. After lying on the concrete with my eyes closed for a while, and after only one more runner crossing the finish line, they announced the marathon was over. My time was about 7:55. I was the penultimate finisher.

I took a few bites out of a Subway sandwich that had probably been sitting unrefrigerated for over 5 hours. Walking to the bus, I was overwhelmed again with illness and sat on the concrete. This prompted the medical staff to take me in. I received 2 litres of IV fluid and the backseat of a late bus where I could sleep on the way back to Beijing. It was late enough that I missed the Beijing Opera, which I was so excited to see, but at least I got back and had a room where I could sleep. I had enough strength to be hungry again, and luckily the hotel restaurant was open until midnight. I was in no mood for Chinese food, so ordered, with some reservations, a pizza, which I was sure wouldn't be much of one, a Coke, and green tea. The pizza was actually really good. It tasted like homemade dough, had no sauce (which I prefer) and cheese, sausage, and vegetables.

I fell asleep in my room to the only channel in English, listening to the continuous coverage of the earthquake.