Two years ago, our friend Leslie decided to run a 1/2 marathon on the Great Wall of China. I was so excited...for her. But deep down, I had no desire to do what she was doing. Then I started to run with her...it was a great way to catch up and chat, and finding a soccer league was challenging, so I needed an easy way to exercise. This developed into "almost" an enjoyment of running. Leslie even got me to run a couple 10k's before she left last year. The other person who enjoyed the fact that I was running was my husband. Soon he brought up that we should do the Great Wall Marathon together. I thought he was crazy...but it did get me thinking that maybe I actually could do a 1/2 marathon, and it would be a great experience for the two of us to do together while we live in Asia. I told him that I would run the 1/2 with him...which made him very happy. In fact, he continues to comment that he never thought we would be doing this race together.
So that was about 18 months ago. We started seriously training the end of January, running our Saturday runs together, and probably another shorter run during the week together. The rest of the training we did apart. This has been challenging, because at least when we ran together we could chat and it made the run go faster. Running alone was not nearly as fun...but, it was necessary. Our travel schedules didn't help things, but I found that the turning point in my confidence came on my two solo long runs in the US. I had never run longer than 6 miles...so when I did consecutive 8 and 9 mile runs by myself, I knew that I could do this. I have also found that Andy and I complement each other in our running, having different strengths and weaknesses. It has been a great opportunity to catch up during some weeks when that has been hard as well as encourage and support each other as we strive towards this goal.
Two days ago we made it to Beijing...leaving on a Wednesday evening so we could say goodbye to the kids after school. It still amazes me how easy it is to travel without children. Andy did work on the plane while I watched the movie, "McFarland" to get me in the mood. If you don't know the movie, it's a fun film about a high school cross-country team in California. Yes, appropriate. When we got to Beijing, we zipped through passport, grabbed our luggage, and was picked up by Mr. Lam. He is a taxi driver that was hired for us by a Gore associate who lives in Beijing. Mr. Lam was great...I've never had a sign at the airport before, and he got us to the hotel without a problem. The funniest part was when he put in an eclectic compilation of American music...starting with the Star Spangled Banner, the Carpenters, Whitney Houston, John Denver, Richard Marx, the Eagles and the Backstreet Boys...it was hysterical! He doesn't speak English, but you could tell he was trying so hard to give us good service.
We arrived at the hotel around 11pm and went straight to bed. We had an early 6:30am bus to catch...tomorrow was Inspection Day! To Be Continued....
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