Gruelling With a Hint of Jasmine

Stage 1 of the Gobi March started today here in China. Without a clear favorite, the race is really anyone's at this point. Tran Chen Peng from China went out like a bolt of lightening. I'd like to say 'followed closely by' but he wasn't. The next closest runner was Jimmy Olsen from Denmark and Tran was just a silhouette by the time Jimmy was a kilometer in. Behind Jimmy was Dan Parr, then a small clump of front runners with Christian Scheister running 6th.


The funny story about Tran is that he showed up last year to this race a week prior to the start saying that he wanted to compete. However, he had no inclination of actually paying the registration fee so the organization turned him away only to find him at the starting line of Stage 1, complete with a support crew riding motorcycles. In China, the land is the 'People's Land' so there was actually nothing prohibiting him from 'coincidentally' running the same course as the competitors. So sans rucksack, off he went fueled by food and liquids from his trusty motorcycle crew. By the start of Stage 3 he would have been winning the race, had he actually been an official competitor. At some point during Stage 3, the flags that mark the course suddenly and without explanation began heading off into no-man's land. Interestingly enough, it was just after Tran had passed through so only affecting the 170 runners in his dust. He was 'removed' by police and didn't finish the race.

Tran is back this time but with full financial backing from Mountain Hardwear. With Tran out front with a big lead I can only assume that Jimmy, Dan, and Christian just steadied their pace and essentially hunted him. By the last leg, a 15km uphill slog through enormous rolling hills, the result became much different from the start. Dan took first place, followed by Christian and Jimmy. Tran rolled in at 5th place.

I had a nice first Stage, placing 10th overall, covering the full up and down 20 miles in 4:15:00. The first leg was 9km and ran with a gravel road on a slight uphill climb. Other than a view of the mountains in the distance, it was non-decript and frankly, boring. Between checkpoint 1 and 2 made up for the lack of beauty and wound us uphill into green hills crisscrossing a lovely little stream. I had a 'moment' when I found myself face to face with a herd of cattle on the move. Several of the bulls took great interest in me and all I could think was that I didn't pick the right day to wear my red jersey. I think they were more interested in why some idiot would be running through the desert than in charging me.

Coming out of Checkpoint 2 took us up the most steep hill climb that I've ever experienced. Call it 80 degrees and 500m straight up. The next 15km was up and down and the last 7km was again straight up. Gruelling! The craziest thing is that these hills are essentially hardened sand dunes and are covered by jasmine. You're cursing on the way up but it smells lovely...ha

I had some issues with cramping and lost a lot of salt but I downed my recoverite after getting into camp and feel great. More importantly, NO BLISTERS. Some 'raw' spots on my feet but harmless. Fingers crossed that the Hyropel foot cream keeps treating me right!

It's unbelievably cold and windy here at camp so I'm off to make some soup and climb into my sleeping bag.

I hope everyone is doing well at home. I'm thinking of you out here.

All the best and good running!

Rp