tapering

It is now race minus 6 days. I am feeling a variety of emotions—nerves, excitement, anticipation of the inevitable post-race letdown. According to weather.com, the currently predicted high for race day is 92 degrees. I think it probably goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that that is a Very Bad Thing. I’m guessing that anything resembling shade will be a precious commodity along the race course, given the overall lack of trees here and the exposure on the Great Wall section in particular.

I have actually never run a marathon alone, so this will be a very different experience for me in a number of ways. All of my races except one have been with Jim, and the exception I ran with my friend Bubbles (a.k.a. Kathy). I’ve also never trained so much on my own, which has had its difficult moments but has also been really good for my psyche. I feel more like I have made “friends with myself” in ways that I never did before.

In my running, I’ve been tapering this week, which is good because work has been busy. First I made a short trip to a town in rural Hebei province to meet a female village head, which was interesting. China has elections at the village level that are genuinely competitive, but villages also have a Communist Party structure that provides a competing source of authority, and so although this woman was elected by a landslide by her fellow villagers, she often lacks the clout to actually govern, and was in tears describing her frustrations.

I also attended a conference of six women’s NGOs, which was a good reminder of how, anywhere you go in the world, some things are basically the same. This meeting was like any other academic conference I’ve attended where people are given 10 minutes to summarize their report/paper and are completely incapable of being anything resembling succinct. This leads to an escalating series of maneuvers by the panel moderator to get them to shut up—first finger waving (“2 minutes to go!”) then verbal intervention (“time’s up!”), more verbal intervention (“TIME’S UP!!!!”) and finally, application of duct tape. People at this conference also adopted the strategy of speaking as fast as they possibly could and of going through their Powerpoint slides at a brisk pace, and since it was all in Chinese, this was extra-challenging for me.

On a somewhat different note, there is an excellent article about Beijing, describing many of the things I also love about the city, in today’s Washington Post:

Beijing’s Moment

One correction from a Zhongguotong (“Old China Hand”—something people here sometimes call me). The photo at the top of the article is not Mao’s Mausoleum, but Tiananmen Gate (“the Gate of Heavenly Peace”), which is the entrance to the Forbidden City.

I don’t know if I will blog again between now and when I leave for the race (4:45 a.m. on Thursday morning, bleh). I will be spending the two nights prior to the race at the Wall. If you think of it at 7:30 p.m. Friday night eastern standard time, please send some good vibes my way, as the race starts here Saturday at 7:30 a.m. Many thanks to all who have been reading this and offering support!