Wow, dude, what is this stuff? A Californian pro adventure racer and life-style coach Paul Romero asked me. Paul looked like he just walked off a front page of a surfing magazine and into a dining hall of a fourth-tier city hotel in Shandong. A fat topless Chinese guy, busy piling prawns onto his plate, stared with great interest at this superb human specimen. Its dogmeat, Paul. I replied. And this is starfish.
Yishan 100km Trail Challenge had the best prize money on offer of all trail races in China: 40,000 yuan in cash, tax free, to the winner, with decent chunks of money available down to the 15th or so place. Tucked away in the middle of horrendously polluted interior of Shandong, the Yishan Scenic Area must rank alongside Moldova or Chad on the list of places to visit. The idea behind staging a race of this caliber in such an unlikely and hard to reach location was lure foreigners to its natural beauty and splendor.
The money attracted the top road runners in China, 2:15, 2:20, 2:17…. Wei Jun, the organizer, was giving me the marathon times of the runners who turned up. Look, ta hen lihai! (he is gnarley!) He would say excitedly pointing at yet another skinny and hungry-looking gaoshou (expert or someone very good at something) in a cheap tracksuit. Amateur runners were milling excitedly in the hotel lobby, taking photos and making a great deal of noise. Gaoshous ignored them with a mixture of contempt and aloofness a professional assassin might show towards a paintball enthusiast; they had every right to, those guys could not run half a lap a the gaoshou’s marathon pace.
The foreign runners were a motley collection of foreigners that knew the organizers and owned a pair of running shoes, triathletes, adventure racers and elite runners. Paul Romero and his glamorous athletic girlfriend looked almost unnaturally healthy and tanned. They were accompanied by a Belgian triathlete who was a bit bewildered by the culture shock. There was another triathlete, an extremely muscled Slovakian with male model looks. Then there was Puzi, a diminutive, middle-aged Malaysian veteran of every adventure race under the sun, who was complaining how hard it was in Malaysia to get a good girl for an adventure racing team since the last one he found died of food poisoning in China after a race. Clement Dumont, an elite French ultra marathoner from Hong Kong was cornered by a strange Chinese runner, a teacher of English at university, who bombarded him with bizarre questions, one of which later became one of mine and Rudy’s catch phrases: are you afraid of snake in grass in rural area?
The special foreigner table had a selection of the best foreigner-food available in the town – jam, white bread and lots of cold burgers from a KFC. The manager hovered like an attack drone around the table, swooping on the Chinese who tried to sit down. After we showed insufficient enthusiasm for yesterday’s chicken burghers and jam, the manager visibly panicked, and I had to reassure him that his selection was spot on, but the foreigners simply wanted to try local specialties.
Rudy was bouncing around, he was in a fantastic form and wanted both the glory and the cash. I was skeptical of his race hydration plan (the amount of water he planned to carry and how much salts he wanted to take) and the speed that planned to stick to on the flats, but he dismissed me as too conservative, negative and slow.
The road pros had obviously never run a trail ultra race before, and neither did they have the gear required. At the start line some turned up with schoolboy backpacks (one had a Mickey Mouse picture on it) with a bottle of water inside.
The goashous took off at the marathon speed to which they are programmed. We bombed it down the dirt road and then straight into a farmer’s field (who screamed in futile fury) never dropping below a 5:30 mile pace. After three miles of flying through yet more fields (and angry peasants), up hills and through barely visible trails in thick shrubbery I decided that this was a silly way to start a 100k race. It was also very hot. I slowed down and soon was overtaken by a swarm of weekend runners riding a short-lived wave of excitement and enthusiasm, Puzi flew buy. The heat was oppressive and I was almost soon out of water, and took a massive dose of salts at a water point, fearing cramps. The weekend runners were now jogging or trudging, looking miserable, knowing that they still had more than 80 km to go and that they were spent.
I was soon joined by a Taiwanese runner and the Chinese ultra marathon female superstar, Dong Li. We cruised at the same pace, chatting about the course and complaining about the heat, wondering how long would the gaoshous last at the pace they took off at. The answer soon revealed itself. An elite Hong Kong runner, a fireman, whom I had seen many times before, but could never remember his name, was in sight, stumbling up a hill. I went past him, trying to look as comfortable as possible. I made a point to turn around to have a look at his face when tiny Dong Li went past him. It was a look of a broken man, and he indeed dropped out soon afterwards. After 40k we found three gaoshous sitting down on the trail, deadly pale and out of water. They had enough courtesy to clap and jiayou (Chinese version of come on, or go for it, literally means add fuel) us. 10k later an elite guy was hugging a pine tree, absolutely spent. Then, suddenly I saw a white t-shirt, and that was Rudy. He was walking. I could see from the back that this was what we called a walk of shame, a DNF (did not finish). I am done, was all that he said. He was not happy, the next checkpoint was 10km away where a meat vagon (a van where the dropped out runners were collected before being driven back to the hotel) awaited. The thought of a 10km walk of shame, being overtaken by gleeful runners basking in their tactical sagacity, made me shudder. I felt extremely sorry for Rudy but all I could do for him was a pat on the back.
Dong Li, the Taiwanese guy and me were refilling at a water point at the 70km mark, when Dong Li suddenly scrambled and took off. I never saw her again until the finish line, it was an impressive demonstration of athletic ability and willpower. The Taiwanese shrugged: ta hen lihai (she is really gnarley) he nonchalantly added. We took off.
A few km later the Taiwanese guy said that he was cramping up, and told me to go for it. There was nobody for the next 10km and I put in my headphones and to take my mind off the pain and discomfort. On a bend I almost fell over a skinny guy in tiny track shirts, sprawled in the dust, his schoolboy rucksack thrown on the ground, the lad ran himself into the ground. I was trying to speed up, there was a incredibly steep climb over boulders though a dense forest ahead, the organizers told us that there was no trail. I had to do it while it was still light. I scrambled over the last boulders and fallen trees just as the sun set, feeling sorry for the people who had to do it in the dark. I put on my headlamp and bombed it downhill on the country road. I could see two headlights ahead, bobbing up and down. They suddenly stopped bobbing and started to jump around in all directions. The runners were obviously lost and were looking for route markers. Two young gaoshous appeared in the light of my headlamp: no markings here, big brother, one of them said, with desperation. I remembered an unmarked turnoff I had passed a minute earlier and told them to follow me. My hunch was right, the turnoff was correct, but someone had stolen all the markings.
The young guys stayed with me, relying on my route finding rather than risking getting lost. We chatted amicably. I heard a noise behind and soon two headlamps appeared, two more gaoshous caught up and joined our pack. We had 10k to go and there were five of us now, being overtaken by one runner reduced your prize money by at least 1000 yuan (100 pounds). We stopped chatting and the desperate battle began. Seven minute miles feel hard after 90k, and soon two of gaoshous faded, falling back, but still fighting it out between each other. I was fading too, desperately trying to hang on, hoping to stay with the front two and then try to take at least one in a sprint finish, but with 3k to go they pulled away and I was left alone in the dark. It also started to rain.
I was tenth in that race, taking 6000RMB(1000 US)in prize money. Dong Li was 6th overall and the first girl by more than 2 hours. The Taiwanese runner finished forty minutes behind me.