After a 10 hour flight to Beijing, I got picked up at the airport and went straight to my hotel where I had to stay for 1 night only. Next morning we were taken to another hotel where we would stay for 2 nights. Lots of the marathoners went to the Great Wall to have a look over the course, take some photos and see where the start of the race was because when you leave Ying and Yang Square you have a 5km uphill run before you actually get to the wall. The first sight of the wall was nothing short of breathtaking; nothing can prepare you for a sight like that, when I looked at it from ground level through the clouds it looked as though it was painted in the sky.

This Wall is steeped in hundreds of years of history and I was here looking at it… about to run it, it was unbelievable. When I started to check out the course my initial thought was that I was going to have difficulty with it because of the height, imagine opting to run the Great Wall of China when you don’t like heights!!

When we were on the Wall we walked some of the course, there were 3,700 steps and I can honestly say that after walking for 20 minutes on the Wall my legs were sore. I could see fear on the faces of lots of the runners and knew you would be able to see it on mine, everyone knew that this was going to be a very difficult race. On the way down on the Wall there was an American couple not that far in front of me who were sitting down having a break because of the tough climb. After a few minutes the man got up and tripped and fell off the side of the wall, we were about 1000 feet up and it was unbelievable what happened, there was one bush on the way down and he hit it, the impact bounced him back onto a part of the wall, everyone was frozen to the spot, we all feared for his life.

There was a doctor there who came to his aid, he was lucky to survive, it really shook me up and I think it brought it home to everyone how dangerous the course was. From the height I was at when this happened I went all the way to the bottom on my bum I was so scared. I really hated heights now!! When I arrived in China, I couldn’t eat anything; I didn’t like the food at all. I had 1 meal out of McDonalds every day – the worst preparation for a marathon you could imagine. There was a man who had come to run the marathon from London in the room next to me and he spoke Chinese, he arranged for me to have a massage, the massage was given by a blind man .I had a bald, blind man with a beard just about down to his waist in my room in China giving me a massage - how much more bizarre could it get!! On reflection, it was one of the best massages I have ever had.

As usual I had all my kit organised the night before the race, after doing so I thought I would try and get some sleep – I got around 2 hours sleep if I was lucky.

RACE DAY

Got up and got my war dress on, my Scotland vest and my kilt and I felt good; I didn’t feel tired or hungry. I got the bus to the race and arrived with an hour to spare and for that whole hour people took my photo because of my kilt, everyone thought it was great, they were amazed that I was going to run a marathon with a kilt on. I lay my St Andrews flag down at the start of the race and when all the runners ran over it they let out a great cheer, another flag….another country! The first 5km was tough, some runners had started walking at 2km but I was determined to rise to this challenge. I got to the beginning of the Wall and the race was getting tougher and tougher but no one had overtaken me which was good. I then came to a section of the wall that had a 200 feet drop down 2 feet high steps with a four inch tread and at this point my kilt was really flapping, I couldn’t really see where my feet were going I had to go down sideways.

I then reached the part of the wall that is really starting to fall down, there was a rope at one side of the wall about 3.5 feet high but there was nothing at the other side but a 1500 feet drop and the crumbling path was 2.5 feet wide. Believe it or not at this stage there were guys overtaking me on the outside because I was holding people up, I was holding onto the rope on the wall. After getting off the wall  we ran through small farming villages where they have probably never had much contact with white people and here was me a very pale Scotsman with a skirt on I got some very strange looks from some of the older Chinese men and women. There were lots of kids there who ran with the marathoners, that part was great. At this stage in the race we had no idea really how far we had run, all we knew was that we had started at the Wall and had to finish there so I reckoned I had around another 12km to do once we were on the Wall again. It was at this point that I had a crazy idea, I decided I wanted to run more than the marathon distance of 26.2 miles so I stopped and asked one of the committee and we decided it would be okay if I done a little detour and added another 3.8 miles onto the 26.2 miles which would mean I would run 30 miles which meant I would run an ultra marathon!

I couldn’t believe this I was being overtaken by a pig!! I ran into Ying and Yang Square to a standing ovation and an almighty cheer, there were hundreds of people there that I had my photo taken earlier with that had waited to see me cross the finish line. I got my medal for completing the marathon, a gold medal for running 30 miles and a huge Chinese scroll with my name and marathon number on it along with an inscription saying that I was the 1st man to run 30 miles on the Great Wall of China. Now this trip was definitely one I wasn’t going to forget in a hurry.

3 down…..5 to go

How difficult was it?...........................8/10