The 33rd year of the Beijing Marathon yesterday saw 30,000 participants run underneath a blue sky and a beautiful little sun. Those who completed the full course started west from Tiananmen and then turned north toward Olympic Green, with Ethiopian Tadese Tola winning the men’s race with a new event record time of 2:07:16 and China’s Zhang Yingying winning the women’s title in 2:31:19. By all accounts, it was glorious.
Leave it to the media to point this out though:
“Runners left quite a bit behind,” says the CCTV news anchor.
Don’t worry, it’s a non-story. Trash is left behind at marathons the world over, and one eyewitness’s statement about a lack of refuse bins was countered by another eyewitness’s statement about how it only takes an hour to clean up all the litter.
This is more amusing:
A Great Wall of runners who somehow didn’t perspire enough while running a marathon. A Yellow River runs wild in the heart of Beijing.
You know who we really feel for in that above picture? The runner in red, who’s probably getting a healthy dose of urine on the top of his shoe. If ever there were a time for a funnel…
UPDATE, 6:49 pm: Below are two more pictures. “A participant surnamed Zhou, who claims to have run the Beijing Marathon numerous times, said that runners urinate in the streets almost every year,” accoring to Global Times. Organizers probably should have placed some porta potties along the route, as Area Man points out in the comments.
I was a participant in the race yesterday. It’s common pre-race practice to hydrate to the bursting point because, well, you sweat a hell of a lot over the course of 26 miles. There were a lot of bathrooms at the start, but I saw absolutely none beyond that point.
I’ve run 200-person marathons in the middle of nowhere in the Midwestern US that still managed to throw out a few porta-potties along the route. So to be fair to the Chinese runners, it’s really just more poor planning from a race that aspires to be ‘world-class’ but has a long, long ways to go.
It only needs to be “world class” at the beginning and finish line
this is outrageous, the marathon should be banned. how dare they desecrate our sacred governemnt buildings? Capitalist running dogs.
“A Yellow River runs wild in the heart of Beijing.”
So, in other words, no news?
“how dare they desecrate our sacred governemnt buildings?”
Nothing is sacred in China. You must be new in town.