Shenzhen marathon
Just run / Riding the deep horse
3.12.2023



Running in China

I have run 15 marathons in Asia: Singapore (12 times), Hong Kong (2 times) and Bangkok (1 time) but never in China. This is a bit surprising since I have visited China many times (mostly Shanghai and Shenzhen) including 10 months stay in 2019-2020 experiencing the arise of Covid pandemic. This time I will stay in Shenzhen where I am a visiting professor with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen campus) until summer 2024. It was time to change fill in the gap in my marathon records.

The main reason why I have not run in China yet, is that China is not easy for foreigners. It is a closed country built for Chinese citizens and Chinese language. To enter a Chinese marathon takes efforts. Second reason is the lack of information, especially in English. Information often comes very late and to register you need to Chinese.

During the longer visit in 2019-2020 I planned to run several marathons. I wanted to do a marathon especially in Shenzhen, which was rumored to be in December, but the unavailability of actual information was apparent like a sound in fog; you know it is there but cannot touch it. I found the information from a random guy in a mall wearing Shenzhen marathon T-shirts. He told the marathon would be soon, and that it was too late to register. People who run marathons know. Others do not. The event itself is a headline news and broadcasted live in CCTV5.

The lack of information became so annoying that in December 2019 I flew to Singapore (once more) to run a marathon, and then did another in Hong Kong January 2020. Simply because their information was easily available in English, and they both were “near-by”. I meanwhile made long-term plans and managed to register two other marathons in China in spring 2020: Hengyang (March) and Great Wall marathon near Beijing (May). The latter is a tourist marathon selling expensive one week travel packages. Fortunately, as having local residence, they accepted my registration with more reasonable price without the complete tour package.

Then came Covid. The first wave in Shenzhen was minimal and was over already in March. Many restrictions, however, remained and those two marathons were cancelled. To sum up, during my 10 months in China, I managed to run one marathon in Singapore, another one in Hong Kong, but none in China.

Now, 2023 I registered to Shenzhen marathon early enough as I did not want to travel further. The marathon is popular and uses a ballot (lottery system) to enter. It also has elite class and my previous race in Vilnius (3:20) would qualify as elite in my age group, so I could pass-by the lottery. However, here comes the Chinese way; the organizers accept only results made in China and my elite application was denied. I was later accepted by the lottery anyway. Fine. I would then run in whatever category they would put me in.

The race

WeChat App translates the Chinese version of the Shenzhen marathon in English as deep horse. I was going to take a full ride with this deep horse. The marathon started at Civic center, downtown, which is easy to reach by metro. The registration, bags drop-out, portable toilets, and the logistics in general were well organized as in any other big marathon. Shenzhen marathon accepts 20,000 runners but never revealed how many actually started or finished.

The route was almost straight road from Civic center to Baoan along Shennan boulevard passing by theme parks like Splendid China and Happy Valley. At 10 km the route took detour to south and returned along the Shenzhen Bay park with nice coastal view. Another detour was after 30 km in Baoan where the route circulated in south before finishing at the Haibin water park. Overall, the route consists of long straights. The good news is that the roads, especially the early part, are very wide and can accommodate thousands of runners.

There were two starts: Groups A and B at 7:30 following by groups C and D at 7:45. I was assigned to Group D. Another Chinese rule: you need to start from the bottom of the barrel. What a nice surprise, I was going to make thousands of passes during the early race just because of this. Before the start, I tried to squeeze in as front in my group as possible. At this point it looked annoying as typical mass marathons have thousands of very slow runners.

Reality was easier. When arriving to the venue, I had noticed that most runners seemed quite fit – more than average participant in other mass marathons. Most of the really slow runners also voluntarily started behind the pack in the group making the passing task a bit easier.

The first wave went of 7:30 unnoticeably. Soon after the groups moved (by running) to occupy the places before the start that were left empty by the first wave. It was not clear whether the race had already started or not as I never heard any start signal like gun fire. Once the group started to move again, it was about 7:30, and I passed the start line about 3:15. The race was on.

There were indeed lots of slower runners during the first 2 km forcing a constant Zig-zag through the traffic with full focus. The traffic was still tolerable, and I managed to keep 4:55 min/km pace for the first 2 km after which I started to clock 4:35 min/km pace for the following kilometers.

In some earlier marathons I did not mind the traffic so much as my main goal was to reach the finish line. A slower start can help in this. But this time I had become a bit more ambitious, and also told to my family the expected race pace in case they would come to watch. My previous marathon was 3:20, and my last test run in Tuesday (4:44 pace) predicted 3:18 finish time. I felt 3:15 was in reach.

My running was good, and the kilometer markers seemed to come faster than usually. My pace was good and indeed predicting a 3:15 finish. Surely, I should reach 3:20 with this pace. However, the first signs of hip tightness appeared around 15 km but rather mild and nothing alerting. Around here I reached the masses of group B at the Shenzhen Bay Park, but no traffic congestion despite road here was narrower.

PICTURES OF SHENZHEN BAY WILL APPEAR HERE

The first time I felt tiredness in legs was at 26 km, but nothing worrying. After 28 km my pace dropped a bit to 4:44 min/km, still within my original 4:45 target pace. I had some weaker moments later around 30 km but kept pushing to keep the pace. My energy felt good and no need to refuel. I usually do not eat much during the race, and this time, took two energy gels as usually, at 31 and 36 km.

The hip tightness became worse at around 35 km and eventually made my lower back stiff for the last 4 kilometers. I tried to keep pushing since only 4k remaining, but the pace downgraded to 5:10 min/km despite how hard I tried. The last 1 km I clocked 4:40 but could not come up with any final sprint which tends to be my trademark. The 3:15 was faint dream and even the 3:20 faded away. My finish time was 3:22. Still the second best of my marathons since 2018.

So finally, a marathon completed in (mainland) China, and in Shenzhen, my Chinese hometown. Deep horse fully conquered. The scenery was not the most spectacular compared to many smaller events in Europe or the China coast marathon in Hong Kong. Far from it. It was mostly long and wide streets almost like highway without much of spectators along the route. I did not mind. Any street side action like music bands can help to take your mind of from the boring running, but running alone peacefully can also be quite relaxing. The only action along the street I missed was seeing the kids, but that did not happen. The most interesting events during the race was to see others runners, whether a military group running in a form, runners carrying flags, or a father trolling a wagon with a kid in it.

I had even considered taking my daughter with wagon once but concluded that she might not have enough patient to sit still for 3-4 hours. I also remember Vienna marathon explicitly forbidden the possibility to use wagons. I probably should try this once before the kids grow too big. This might require multiple stops on the way but might be worth it. Once I told about the refreshments, my daughter asked me to bring some sponges and bananas from the race, showing some interest towards the event. I brought a banana.

PICS OF OTHER RUNNERS

After the finish line, some media person came to interview me. The same had happened long ago in Hong Kong 2009 resulting in a small funny story in South China Morning post . This time I was probably too boring person giving answers like “I just run” when asked for inspiration. At least I did not see any headlines “I just run” anywhere. This is the truth. I had no major ambitions for this race, others than just run, to complete a marathon in China.

To sum up, one more marathon completed. My Club-30 project progressed a bit. China is now #25 in my country list. Moreover, a good exercise is a good exercise, and the feeling after the race (both physical and mental) was great. Such good that already next day I started to make plans for my next marathons. RESULTS SUMMARY HERE

Post-race feelings

Marathons in a small idyllic town can be much better experience in many aspects. Big city marathons can be boring and more about just conquering the city. I still remember the security guy after New York marathon in central park shouting “move on, this is no time to make picnic” or something like that - hardly even allowing time to change dry cloths before heading back to hotel. Then again, cities like New York and London have more to see. Here we passed theme parks such as Splendid China and Happy Valley, but all you see is just their entrance gates and nothing more. Shenzhen is very modern and nice city in many ways, quite polished, but lacks a special feeling. The best part was the Shenzhen Bay Park with its coastal view. Otherwise, the route was just along big highway-like streets. Easy to run.

Will I run again in China? Probably yes but mainly for convenience. Not sure when and where. Maybe I would go for the Great Wall marathon. Seeing the wall and running on the top of it, even just for a kilometer or so still feels appealing. Would also look good in my running CV. Otherwise, I prefer to run in some new city (and country) that I have not visited before. Or a place I have others reason to visit like friends, colleagues, or a conference. The practicality of such multipurpose are appealing to me.

Deep horse organization

The marathon organization itself deserves a few comments. Logistics and other main things were well organized. Chinese know how to move masses of people fluently. Expo was easy and clear, bag drop-out places, portable toilets and signs to the starting places were all clear. Most important, there were no rush anywhere (except the starting corral). The service along the road was excellent, water and sport drink at every 2,5 km. Foods I did not try but I liked the dressed-up chefs serving various delicacies along the way. I was too busy to explore those and stick with my boring energy gels. I was anyway “just running” and did not care much about other things like the on-road culinary excitements.

There are two things in the organization that are annoying no matter how to look at it. First, asking your previous result which would qualify to elite group considering the age, I was still put into Group D. The organizers also provided no information about how the groups were formed. I saw also a story of a 72-year-old man who almost made new world record 3:09 in his age group. He also started from Group D. Why? Clearly, I was not the only one. To qualify for Boston marathon, I needed to send a proof for 3:15 result and scanned copy of the result in a local newspaper was enough back in 2007.

The second thing is that the complete race results were not available anywhere. You can find your own results and overall top-20 but nothing else. I would have been interested to see top results of my age group, and some random searches based on names or nationality. You would like to compare, see who else from your country (probably nobody), who were the top Chinese runners, who were the best in your age group and so on. You want to see the results. You would actually prefer to come back years later and still find the results. Results are also collected by various organizations. For example, Juoksija (Runner) magazine in Finland have pretty good marathon database for the runners in Finland. I suspect this result probably wont make it to that database.

The above problems root to hierarchical culture in Chinese society and unlikely to change. The organizers are at the top, runners at the bottom. The information is privilege of the upper level and is given to the lower-level on-the-need basis only. Giving too much information can be harmful for the upper levels. Chinese are born to this system and probably consider it as normal. The customer-first attitude itself exists but happens elsewhere at the grass-root level. Like if you go to a restaurant, you will get good service because of high competition and everyday information like quality of restaurants spread fast at the grass level via social media. But this does not apply to marathons.

The only document you got is a certificate of your result. This is a bit surprising as then again, people falsify certificates all the time about business lunches, purchases, and such. There are even companies who are specialized in making (fake) certificates for a fee. Then again, the organizers probably have access to the results of other major marathons even if normal runners do not. A proper certificate would be to have your result publicly available. Then anybody can verify that you were there, you ran, and you completed the race with the claimed time. This kind of openness would be the best proof, but openness is lacking.

Anyway, running big city streets in a marathon itself is always a privilege and result of major efforts, and collaboration with the city. We cannot therefore be too picky about all the details. But my vote goes for a marathon that is well-organized and results publicly available.

Pictures

More Pics here later


Figures: Pictures from the marathon.





Summary:

Time: 3:22:xx
Rank: 1499 / ~16000
Pace: 4:47 min/km
Weather:
Certificate  

Splits: