It’s time for your weekly update on all things China!  Remember last week when I told you we weren’t prepared for this trip, we really aren’t!  But this week we are two steps closer.  Our passports arrived in the mail this week which meant I needed to make the trek down to the Chinese consulate.  That is why this blog post is happening so late in the day.

Wondering why I had to go there? When you go to China for any reason you have to get a visa. It goes inside your passport and you’re not allowed to enter into the country unless you have visa. We’re just regular ole tourists so that’s the visa we applied for. Hopefully, we’ll get approved rather quickly because this is really the last big hurdle we have to jump over before boarding the plane.

This week, I also got the information on the The Great Wall of China Marathon! This was really exciting for me to read through the information. The only thing I’m not too jazzed about is having to get on a bus at 2 AM for a 6 AM start! But hey, it’s not really that bad, right? We’re going to be running ON, THROUGH, AROUND, etc. so much history! You should have seen me reading through the information, I was very excited! I am a little scared of the race but the great Courtney Kerr told us, “If your dreams don’t scare you, then they probably aren’t big enough!”

It’s going to be very hot on race day and we have 10 hours to complete the course. There are several loops that we have to maneuver our way through. There are going to be lots of stairs and rocky parts! It’s going to be SO FUN! I can’t wait to share this experience with all you! Willie says we can run it in 6 hours but I’m leaning more towards 8 hours.  What do you think?

So how is the training going?  It’s going good for me.  Not so much for Willie!  He’s coming back from an injury that has kept him sidelined.  He should be fine as long as he stretches, ices and compresses.  He hasn’t been following Dr. Angie’s orders very well, but the’s doing ok. Yesterday, we did some run/walk intervals and he did fine!  His marathon training is about to kick off into high gear. He’s going to have to kick in some high miles.  ME, I’m just crazy because I’m running every weekend with high miles.  I’m ready to rock my 5th marathon.

Right now, we’re just trying to finalize the touristy things like what to see and do while we are there.  We haven’t really done much research into that whole bit but there’s plenty of time to get cracking on that.  Hopefully, next week I’ll have more of that kind of stuff to talk about.  But as for right now, all the official documents needed to get into China are almost within arms reach and that’s a huge load off my shoulders.