Genghis Khan Grasslands Marathon – Inner Mongolia

Useful Facts

• Distance: 42.2km
• Elevation: 550m along an undulating course. No steep hills
• Time taken: 4hr45
• Terrain: the marathon starts & ends in Xiwuqi town centre so there are a couple of kilometers of road running. Everything else is on sand paths across the stunning grasslands of Inner Mongolia
• Toilets at the start/end only. For ladies this presents a challenge. We found a deserted sheep pen at about kilometer 18 that my wife could hide behind, but otherwise its wide open most of the way.
• You can find the official website here

There is certainly a lot of grass in this part of the world

Yes, I know this isn’t in Hong Kong, but I just had to write about the beautiful grasslands of Inner Mongolia and the pleasure I had in running a marathon through that part of the world.

Kerry-Ann and I finishing the marathon together

Getting there

This isn’t too difficult, though a little time-consuming. We did the following:

1. A 3-hour flight from Hong Kong to Beijing, sleeping over in Beijing for the night. We stayed at the Jade Hotel, where they phoned me a 11:30pm to ask for my passport, then again at 7:30am, 8:00am and 8:15am. I was not amused.
2. A short flight north from Beijing to Xilinhot the next evening.
3. After arriving in Xilinhot we were met by the event organisers who transferred us to the event hotel in Xiwuqi – about a 2 hour bus trip.

Kerry-Ann on one of the long downhill sections

The Trail

Exceptional. I’d wanted to do this marathon since I saw it advertised in 2014. The thought of running through grasslands, on sand paths, surrounding by miles and miles of nothing with the odd sheep and cow for company was somehow appealing. Also, this was my wife’s first ever marathon and she was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect and whether she would be able to complete the entire 42km. It turns out she had nothing to worry about as she felt good through the entire race and finished in a pretty respectable time of 4hr45, more than 15 minutes ahead of what she had hoped.

The course advertised water stops every 5kms, with stops every 3kms after 30km, and this proved to be accurate. According to my GPS they were spot on. However, the course markings themselves proved confusing. At the beginning of the marathon there were signs for the marathon, half-marathon, 11km run and mountain-bike trail – all colour coded differently. At about kilometer three though they seemed to diverge: we passed the 2km distance marker and soon arrived at the next marker, which indicated 2km for marathon runners. It should have been 3, my watch told me I had run 3km, and the other signs all said 3km. The signs continued to be 1km behind the actual distance until around the 28km mark when they suddenly stopped aligning with my GPS. After a further 10km they were back in alignment with my GPS accurate to the actual distance, and both my watch and the distance markers showed 42km at the last sign before the finish.

The water stops were well attended and populated with water, energy drinks, bananas and sometimes other items such as snickers chocolate bars, which I delved into after the 21km mark after I suddenly became very hungry.

Kerry-Ann feeling strong at 21km

The course itself was undulating – flat in some places, some slight inclines and declines now and then for a total elevation gain of 550m. There were no steep hills – all hills were runnable in my opinion – and the trail itself was firm underfoot. I wore my normal New Balance running shoes, no special trail running shoes were required at any point of the course. If it had been raining perhaps it would have been different but I’m not able to say for sure whether the path would have become slippery or not. The winning time was 2hr40, so that should give you an idea that the course is not challenging nor technical, but it’s clearly not flat otherwise the winning time would be much quicker.

The weather was a dream – sunny and clear – and though my watch told me it reached 34 Celsius it didn’t feel too hot. The benefits of training in Hong Kong: if you can run here in summer only Death Valley will seem hot – everywhere else is pretty mild 🙂

 

Peter (in grey) and Kerry-Ann (in orange) at around the 9km mark

The Sights

Grass. Lots of grass, rolling hills, a few sheep and cattle and the odd farm. I found it beautiful and serene, and a man needs some serenity after living in the mad concrete junge of Hong Kong. I felt alive, fresh, as though I was expanding as I breathed in the wonderfully clean air of Mongolia and took in the distant horizon. It was totally therapeutic

Besides grass we passed a mine (I think it was a coal mine), and saw no other civilisation until we arrived back in town. It was a wonderful experience.

After the marathon the organisors had arranged an event evening at Yurt City (17km from Xiwuqi) where we ate local food (spit-bbq lamb), watched local entertainment and slept in a Yurt for the night. We booked a ‘superior yurt’, which had 2 twin beds and a small bathroom with flushing toilet and shower.

Yurt City at Sunset

The Event Hotel

We stayed at the event hotel, which is 1 km from the start/finish line and seems to have at least 3 different names, all mentioned in the hotel service book and  printed on the hotel sign itself, their stationary and towels:

• Wu Zhu Mu Qin
• Jinshan
• Ujimqin

It could be a 3-star or a 4-star, we aren’t sure, but I think we finally agreed it was a 4-star. I’ve stayed in many hotels in China and the experience is usually underwhelming, so I had no expectations that this would be any different. In summary, the hotel was fine. We stayed there for 5 nights and I had no complaints. The rooms were large, the food was reasonable (and reasonably priced), the staff were friendly, and though they did not speak a word of English we managed to communicate using an offline version of Google Translate (Google, Facebook, Youtube and others are not accessible in China).

Reception desk at the event hotel

Some useful information about the hotel:

• There are no safes in the rooms for valuables. The hotel service directory states that safes are available at the front desk, but they are not. There is no place to put valuables so we simply locked ours in our suitcase.
• Rooms are large, bedding and towels were clean.
• The location is excellent, at the head of the main road leading into town but about 100m from the road, so there is no traffic noise inside the hotel.
• Besides some half drunk locals talking at the top of their voices at 1am one morning, who promptly shut up when a half-naked foreigner walked into their room and politely (cough cough) asked them to please keep the noise down, the hotel was quiet and peaceful. Considering it was fully booked for the event, it never seemed busy or crowded.

The Event Organisation

Besides the issue with the distance markers I mentioned above, the event was well organised. Oh – one other small issue – I struggled to find the bag drop at the race start. Usually the bag drop is a tent near the start line, but in this case it was a bus on the other side of the road and there were no signs in any language pointing it out. None of the race officials I asked knew where it was, and I just happened to wander over the road to a suspicious looking bus and noticed it had a ‘bag drop’ sign on the window.

Race check-in at the event hotel

Otherwise I’ve no complaints about the race organisation. We were picked up at the airport as expected. Unfortunately one of my bags did not arrive on the flight to Xilinhot but the race organisor sorted this out the next day. My bag flew from Beijing to Xilinhot and was picked up by the next shuttle bus, arriving at our hotel that afternoon. Race registration was in the event hotel, so very convenient for us, and there were maps and other event paraphernalia dotted around the hotel, which just added to the atmosphere.

Xiwuqi

This little town is 2 hours from Xilinhot and hosts this event each year. The event coincides with the 3-day mountain bike race, part of which follows the marathon course, and some very fit people take part in the ‘King of the Grasslands’ event where you do both the 3-day MTB event and run the full marathon (marathon on Saturday morning and 2nd day of MTB event on Saturday afternoon).

The towns people are super friendly and stopped us often to take photos with us. I suspect they only see foreigners once a year. There are plenty of restaurants in town and also plenty of grocery shops selling fruit and the specialty of the area – milk products, such as fresh milk, yoghurt, ice cream and so on. We tried the ice cream and yoghurt and they were delicious, and surprisingly cheap. Something like 3-4RMB for an ice cream. Restaurants were also reasonable with prices around 20-40RMB for a meal. Food is traditionally lamb (probably mutton) or beef, and is generally quite oily, which I found unpleasant but worked around by not eating the oily bits.

Horse riding at Yurt City. Flora is just about to mount the horse near mine

There isn’t much to do in this part of the world. We hired a driver for a day to take in some of the local sights, which included driving out to a national park, eating at a local Yurt, and buying half a kilogram of dried beef, which was delicious and only cost 100RMB. I went horse riding the day after the marathon, which was not a good idea in retrospect. Mongolian horses are short and specially trained to make riding as uncomfortable as possible, with a gait that is between a trot and a canter. My tired legs found it difficult to get into a rhythm until I coaxed the horse into a canter, which proved to be soooo much more comfortable. Camel rides are also available, though we passed on them this time.

We did taste test a local delicacy – horse milk. Would I try it again? Errr – no. It’s terribly sour. When we bought it, the shop owner told us we had to keep it cold and that it would taste a ‘little sour’. He wasn’t joking.

The Map

Map and Elevation