Hangzhou Marathon

 This weekend I went to Shanghai and Hangzhou. Mostly it was time spent to see friends, but the final event was the 2012 Hangzhou International Marathon. I ran in the mini marathon with Nicole, Kelsey, Sarah, David, Andy, and our Chinese friend Ivy. It was 7km full of unique obstacles...

We started out with an obstacle... we couldn't find where to check our bags... therefore we found some friends to hold them.

The first running obstacle happened in the beginning... look at this starting line! There were so many people we couldn't even think about running! We had to slowly inch our way to open places.

This is the "starting line" Nicole and I just pushed along until we could start running.

People in this mini marathon didn't always seem like very real athletes... you can run in just about anything...

I couldn't run 7km in those! Impressive!

Or with anyone by your side...

notice the same number on the backpack. That means they knew each other. I'm pretty sure the man is her grandfather cheering her on in the middle of the race. He was running alongside of her holding her bag.

I bet they held hands the entire race

Even large costumes are ok!

We also had obstacles of bridges. There were so many people that once we hit a bridge, and people wanted to walk up, we all had to squeeze onto it. It made some interesting dodging happen!

Bridge ahead!

Next obstacle: bikes/ motorbikes/ pedestrians. They didn't really stop just because we were running, we just had to make sure we avoided them. 

 It didn't matter what we had to avoid, we finished!

 

The end is almost in sight.