After almost three years of running, I finally chose to run a marathon when I was about to graduate from university.
By this year, the Nanchang Marathon has also been run twice. And after more than two years of training, I could already go up to 5 or 6km and could press my time to 5km/26 minutes, so I decided to participate in this year’s Nanchang Marathon. Unfortunately, the registration process was a mixed bag and I didn’t win the first registration. I was really not that enthusiastic like some of my family or close friends would be to compete out of town. But fortunately I won the second registration with no problem. So it was time to start my training schedule. <! – more –>
To protect my knees, I started running 10km every other day, not for speed, but mainly for consistency. Finally, it was possible to compress from 1 hour to 55 minutes. Finally, for the last training session before the race, I ran the first 15km of my life.
This 15km training gave me a lot of confidence and I ran the whole race with a 5.33 minute pace and felt like I still had a lot of energy left. It gave me a lot of confidence for the race in five days. After all, I was just hoping to finish the race.
Two days before the race, the sun was shining and I went to Wanda Mao with Kang to collect my equipment.
On November 10, 2019, it was finally the day of the marathon. I woke up at 6am, washed up, and took a taxi to the metro with Kang. By this time it was around 06:40, less than an hour before the marathon start, and my companion and I were a bit worried about being late. After getting off the underground, we found that the starting point was still at the other end of Bayi Square, so we simply took off our jackets and changed into our running clothes and ran ~~~~
It felt like this section of the road was at least 3 or 4 kilometres, but luckily I finally made it to the field before the end of the entry, and by this time the luggage car assigned to me was driving away. I’m glad I’ve been working out, I’m a bit out of breath but I’m not tired yet. I hurriedly threw my luggage to the other luggage carts and arrived at the starting position.
As we waited for the start, we found that there was still a lot of enthusiasm. Many people had invited friends, some had signed up in the name of the running group, and there were also runners from advertisers. Everyone gathered to chat and take photos together. According to the registration data, there were about 30,000 to 40,000 people gathered on the road for a kilometre or two. There were so many people that the base stations were overcrowded and there was no mobile phone signal, so it was impossible to make calls or access the internet.
After waiting for the starting gun, the line started to move slowly and I was over eight minutes from my starting position to the start (out of Bayi Square).
You can see a performance stage in the bottom left corner of the photo above, and the MC was cheering everyone on pretty hard!
Just as I was running out of 8-1 Square, many people gradually passed me. But I was in no hurry and ran at my usual training pace, keeping the pace at around six and a half minutes.
I was happy at the beginning of the race, and I had time to broadcast live to my friends at home. It was just under two kilometres to the first turn and three kilometres to the 8-1 bridge.
At the time of crossing the Bayi Bridge, it was almost just three kilometres. I used to think that the Bayi Bridge to Bayi Square was so far away, but in fact the run is just that.
The course was filled with elderly people, disabled wheelchair walkers and “mini-first” girls.
Running across the August 1st Bridge, the full/half marathon and mini marathon were split.
As I ran up this section of the course at Honggu Beach, the fast full marathon runners were already coming in on my right.
The first few were mostly black runners and when there was a Chinese national, many of the half-marathon runners stopped to cheer him on.
There were also some contestants who advertised and were supposed to be doing business. There was another Sun Wukong in front of us. It seems that Monkey is still running a bit faster.
Unfortunately, after the sports centre, there was nothing to see, the road was still lined with construction sites and there were fences on both sides of the road, which was a bit boring for me without headphones. But with such a noisy environment, bringing headphones might not do much good. My phone’s battery was dwindling, but I had to use it to keep track of my run and control my speed with my bracelet.
Despite taking a break at the 10km mark to go to the toilet (actually unnecessary when I thought about it later, the queue took too long), my pace was still slipping to the naked eye. I was thinking before the run that I would try to keep it to 6 minutes or 6”30’, but I realised after the run that it would actually be good to have a 7+ minute pace by the end of the 10km. I still gritted my teeth and controlled myself not to slow down so much that I kept passing people later in the race. And luckily there weren’t too many people behind.
Finally, breaking 20km. Unfortunately, the half-marathon was 21.0975km (about 21,100m), which is not a whole number. If I had run two ten kilometres, I would have felt great. And now there was still one kilometre to go, having run one kilometre and the last 100 metres. I had to grit my teeth and encourage myself to walk a hundred miles. T_T
Finally, crossed the finish line in 2:16. It was also the first time I participated in a marathon without experience. I saw a lot of people stopping to wait for cameras to take photos at places like the Bayi Bridge, and even at the last 100m there were people stopping to pose, but I didn’t dare to waste this time, mainly because I was afraid I wouldn’t want to run if I stopped at the end.
The final text message informed me that my finish time was 2 hours 8 minutes, which was good compared to my previous estimate of aiming for a 2:30 finish, I guess.
Although I didn’t run with Kang, it was his encouragement that gave me the courage to sign up, thanks to him and to my lab mates.
