Jinquaio 8k, Shanghai

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 6^th 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.