The Great Wall 1/2 Marathon...Day Off

After yesterday's Inspection Day, and doing a bit more than expected, we were looking forward to an easy and relaxing day.  On the agenda was finding the marathon office and getting our packets, touring the Summer Palace, eating and going to bed early.

We headed out at 8:30am to find the office.  We invited a father/daughter team that we had met (two of the "Undocumented Five") to split a taxi, and then we ran into our friends from HK the night before as they were getting to the hotel and asked if they wanted to join us, too. So the seven of us in two taxis trekked out, not having a clue where we were going.  Luckily, Mr. Lam was on the case. In fact, he pulled out all the stops.  When he found out that our friends from HK were not Americans, and that they were from Belgium, he played the Belgium National Anthem and a couple other Belgium hits...it was hysterical.

When we got to where we were going, Mr. Lam actually walked us to the office...and thank goodness he did.  Otherwise, there was no way we would have found our way through a maze and up an elevator.  We even got there before it was scheduled to be open and found that there were people there waiting to help us.  We all got our packets in hand and let out a huge sigh of relief.  Then, after dropping everyone else off at the Forbidden City, Mr. Lam drove Andy and me to the Summer Palace.  This was a place that we didn't get to go to when we had brought the kids, and it was the only thing left on my list.  To describe it in words wouldn't do it justice.  The Lord blessed us with another beautiful day, and we walked around, talking and soaking it in, thoroughly enjoying it.

Uninterested school boys gaming to the side

We finally met up with Mr. Lam around 2:00pm, but didn't get back to the hotel until closer to 3pm.  Since we skipped lunch (yes, not really the plan the day before running) we decided to find some snacks at the stores across the street and eat dinner in our room.  Neither of us felt like getting out in the traffic again, and Andy had an important work conference call at 8pm. So we found a Watsons (familiar drugstore), came back and ordered room service, and caught up on some email until he got on his call.  I did some reading, he was off in an hour, we chatted for a bit, packed our stuff for Race Day, and was in bed and asleep by 10pm. We had about three different alarms and were determined not to oversleep.  Turns out, that would not be a problem:)