China Day 1

The trip that I was dreading and anticipating for months was finally here!  I was so excited frankly to get this race OVER WITH, I was so tired of training!  I wanted to move on with my life, and not have to get up at 5 every morning!

One of my favorite things in Japan!  Mount Fuji from the plane...

We settled into bed pretty late and had to be up before 6 to catch a ride up into the mountains to find the wall.  Our hotels and bus rides between cities were all put together by race organizers.  In order to run the Great wall race-you have to sign up through a travel company that takes care of major logistics.  It made things very nice.

The drive to the mountains was pretty...

Our first day was spent getting race information and surveying the course!  Driving up to the wall and seeing it for the first time was pretty awesome!

At one of the entrances

First views

They all wanted us to sit in bleachers to listen to instruction for an hour but we rebelled, and found a rock wall in the shade and listened from there.

The big group meeting was held here in 'yin' and 'yang' square.  The start and finish of the race was here as well.  We all had been prepping for this for months, so it was very surreal to be here and finally seeing the Wall...ready to run!

Great ladies

We spent 3 hours on the wall checking it out, it was exhausting!  After the race, we decided that walking it, in many ways was harder than running it!  As 'Great" as the wall is-stairs are only entertaining for so long!  We got bored pretty fast!

Everything below here is race route pictures...we would be running this in 2 days!

East Coast on the Wall!

Ouch!

Rocking our hats!

This photo is a great example of the old Wall, and newer Wall...

This section was VERY steep, the rock was very slick, and much harder to maneuver than the brick.

We also ran on a section that was not touristy at all, we only saw one other group here.

Most steps were not uniform, but these little ones drove me crazy, 1 was awkward, 2 even more so...

OHIO...we four have all lived in Ohio at some point!

After several hours, we made it back to yin and yang square for more pictures, it was beautiful.

He is saying No!  No pictures!  Too late!

After a long day of walking, we were bused to a small town called Jixian.  Our hotel was AMAZING...now for one day of rest before the big day!