Race Date: 27^th October 2024

As a sister city of Sheffield, the Chengdu Foreign Affairs Office invited three runners to represent Sheffield in the Chengdu marathon on a fully funded trip including all cultural experiences, accommodation, flights and food. Thankfully, the half marathon option was available. After submitting a one hundred word application the successful candidates were myself, Dan Haworth (Hallamshire) and Che Wigfield-Turner (Hallamshire).

We flew from Manchester to Chengdu via Dohar on 24th October. With an eight hour time time difference and an awful night’s sleep in economy it was a challenging, jet lagged, start.

Throughout the trip we were never without our translator who was soon found to be indispensable as the language barrier was extreme. We were taken to various museums and cultural sites the favourite being the Panda sanctuary. The days were very busy and our hosts didn’t really understand our need to fit in training each day. Trying to run around a city with a population bigger than the whole of Australia where everyone is either driving or on a moped and there are few road rules was interesting/tiring/dangerous.

We were pleased to have closed roads for race day but the the size of the holding pens was a concern with no guarantee that we could get to the front to be off at the gun. The race included the East Asian half marathon championships which set off an hour before the mass start. The full marathon also set off before our race. In total there were about 50,000 people running in an event bigger than London marathon and I will never complain about a queue or a portaloo at a race every again. The Chinese toilets are all squat toilets (you can imagine….).

Working as a team and battling through the hordes of Chinese people wanting selfies with us (not many of them had ever seen westerners before) we managed to get near the front of the pen for a decent start. However, 3k in to the race we collided with a wall of people as we hit the back markers of the marathon i.e. those running six hours.  It made for a challenging ten miles of ducking and diving but with two miles to go we finally peeled off to finish our race. It was at this point that I realised I was in a battle for first place with an exciting and dramatic finish for me. The girl who was leading had a group of male pacers who really got the battle going between us and were shouting all sorts in Chinese. It was a gruelling back and forth contest with her. She put in a big acceleration coming down to what we both thought was the finishing straight and she got away from me. I thought that it was all over until we turned the corner and realised there was 100m to go. At this point my opponent’s legs completely gave way and she actually fell to the floor in front of me. There was a brief moment of indecision –  should I help her up or carry on? – but the male pacers came to her aid so I went for it to break the tape. She stumbled through 20 seconds later and we embraced and shook hands. All very friendly (I think, although unable to verbally communicate anything).

Dan ran 72:34 to in finish seventh after really struggling with the dodging around people and Che came in a couple of minutes later in 82:25, taking fourth in the women’s race.

The next day we put our glad rags on for a posh dinner with some of the Governors from the Foreign Affairs Office. We were on our best behaviour and I had to try my best with the chop sticks but they soon came out with a knife and fork for me…