I
traveled to Shanghai last week to join Namban teammate Charles Bergere in the
Jinquaio 8k. According to Chuck, Jinquaio 8k is one of Shanghai's
Big Two Run Events (along with the Shanghai Marathon). Jinquiao
is an expat enclave in the newer Pudong area of Shanghai. I feel a bit
like I am in Orange County, California -- spacious McMansion-style stucco homes
with red tile roofs, strip malls with smoothie shops and pilates studios,
blonde children along the course shouting "good job". It feels like Tokyo's TELL
race, yet even more expat oriented.
Chuck
lives 2 kilometers from the race start, so jogging to the starting line makes
for a pleasant warmup. Getting to the front of the starting line is more
challenging though - everyone, no matter their anticipated 8k pace, seems to be
trying to cram to the front line. I loop around the block, do some strides and then, with only 3
minutes until the starting gun, I dodge race officials and sprint back up and
under the startling line rope.
There I join a group of boisterous, costumed Australians and a blond,
grade school boy in a Superman outfit. I am worried for the boy. I can just sense the pent-up energy
of the 2,000 inexperienced runners and school-kids packed into the narrow road
behind us ready to blow out like a champagne cork.
Sure
enough, when the gun goes off it is like some frenzied herd of crazed antelope dashing for their lives out of the gates of hell. I
am sprinting for my survival
at my all-out, 400-meter pace. I glance
back and am relieved to see super boy is still on his feet, but then to my left
a teenage kid goes down. I
assume he is trampled by the stampeding herd, but there is nothing I can do to
help him at this point. I make it around
the first corner, the crowd of runners around me begins to thin out and the
pace begins to settle down.
At about the 1-kilometer mark I settle in
behind a tall American guy (Ben). I always like to race at an even pace, or
even negative splits if I can -- this pacing makes the race so much more
enjoyable. The crazed, high speed start
at Jinquaio means I am laboring at 1k and for the remaining, painful 7
kilometers of running I will simply try to hang on.
Also within
the first kilometer I get an extremely dry, “cotton-mouth” feeling in my throat
and felt it necessary to drink at every aid station – something I would never
do in an 8k distance race. Was this because of the fast start? The surprisingly
warm spring day? Or because of the Chinese
Airpocalypse?
I
was worried about the "Airpocalypse" a dark grey miasma of
coal-fired haze that has strangled China in recent months, but the
air quality reading on Sunday morning was a relatively low 125. Some of
the Shanghai based runners told
me how they had struggled to train this past winter with so many days over 200.
I
was coming off a week of high altitude training in Yunnan Province, which perhaps helped me survive the airpocalypse and hang on to
Ben, and to ultimately finish 6th place overall in a time of 29:57. The top 10 male and female runners were showered with
prizes and accolades at the festive post-race carnival.
