Hitting the Wall: How to Sign Up to Run on the Great Wall

So you’ve decided to run the Great Wall Marathon. Are you insane? Even on a perfectly flat racecourse, 26.2 miles (42km) is no easy feat, and the Great Wall Marathon is definitely not your average marathon. In addition to covering all that horizontal distance, you’ll also be scaling a mountain and climbing 5,000+ steps. The sheer difficulty of running this trail is reflected in the amount of time it takes to complete; the course record for the Great Wall Marathon is 3 hours, 24 minutes and 42 seconds. By comparison, the course record for the Boston Marathon is 2 hours, 3 minutes and 2 seconds.

Those who have run marathons before will be familiar with the term “hitting the wall,” a phrase endurance runners use to describe the point of pure exhaustion, or more specifically, the point where the body has burned through all of its glycogen stores – the fuel you need to produce energy. Hitting the wall is the biological equivalent of running on empty, causing an overwhelming heaviness in the legs, a sense of despair, and in some cases, total collapse. If ever there was a place to hit the wall, it’s on the wall. 

If you don't think you can handle a full-on marathon, but still want to experience running on the wall, a fun alternative would be BOOM's 2016 Great Wall Run, which combines a 5km run on the Simaitai section of the wall – far less grueling than 42km – with an electronic music festival. That sounds much more fun, doesn't it.

Oh, you're still set on running the full marathon? Alright you crazy bastard, time to sign up. That starts with a Google search, which confusingly, will return results showing multiple marathons on multiple days organized by multiple companies. What?!

There is an explanation – most of the marathons you’ve heard of take place in major urban centers, such as Boston, New York, Tokyo, and London. Closing down 26.2 miles of roads – often through busy city centers – is logistically complicated and creates a traffic nightmare for the rest of the city. The logistical realities are such that big city marathons happen strictly once a year, with just one official race run by a single organizing body.

None of these conditions apply to the Great Wall, which extends for thousands of miles through isolated rural areas. There are literally thousands of sections where one can organize a race, and many of the villages alongside the wall rely heavily on tourism, making them more than happy to host a few thousand runners once a year.

The result is that you have multiple races happening all over the wall, which we’ve listed below with some information to help you make your decision:

Great Wall Marathon
The marathon that started them all. Organized by Albatross Adventure Marathons on the Huangyaguan section of the Wall, their 1999 marathon was the first ever race held on the Great Wall. The company specializes in six to seven-day tours for those traveling from outside the country, but Chinese citizens and expats with residence permits can opt simply to run the race and skip the tour for RMB 1,880. Race day is May 21, and while the registration deadline has passed (March 23), you can still sign up with a late fee.

Conquer the Wall Marathon
This race will be held on May 15, spanning the Badaling section of the Wall. I would suggest that you sign up (and train) in advance, but if you’re inclined to leave this till the last possible moment, the registration deadline is luckily on May 15. Eek. Registration fee is USD 250.

Jinshanling Marathon
As you can gather from the name, this race will be held on the Jingshanling section of the wall on April 17. The registration fee is USD 200 and the deadline for registration is March 31.

Great Wall of China Marathon
This group first organized a race on the Wall in 2001 and apparently has not updated its website since. When I visited it I thought I had traveled back in time to the age of dial-up internet, and found myself questioning why all the helicopter clipart is necessary on a webpage about a marathon. However, the race itself is apparently still up and running and commences May 1, along the Badaling section of the Wall. Registration deadline is April 15.

The Verdict
Yours truly will be running with Albatross Adventure Marathons, one of the first ever companies to organize a race on the Great Wall. Since then, the Danish brand has expanded, and offer marathons in Myanmar, Jordan, South Africa, and even a polar circle marathon in Greenland. They are the top search result on Google, their website is by far the most attractive, and they are the most experienced and the best organized of their competitors. Be sure to check the Beijinger after May 21 for a firsthand account of what it’s like to run one of the Great Wall Marathons.

Don't think you're quite ready to run the Great Wall? There are plenty of other marathons and races running throughout China this year.

Photos courtesy of Jens Schott Knudsen