Men’s Marathon at Beijing(1) - At the start

It was August 24th, 2008, an important day for Marathon runners. Each one of the competitors aimed at winning the title of the “longest air bag” (長氣袋) in the world. Competitors had to assemble and do warm up exercise much earlier than 7:30 a.m.








Rough estimate gave me a figure of around a hundred runners ready to run the race of 42 km. A big “plastic” arch had been inflated and erected as the starting point next to Tien An Men Square(天安門廣場). The blue line on the road would give the shortest route to the athletes and lead them back to the National Stadium, “Bird’s Nest”.

Hearing the firing of the starting gun, the athletes ran like a swarm of “bees”, but soon merged into a long “dragon”. On the way, they could check their running time by looking at the time indicator on the roof of the official car leading them.








At first they saw the Tien An Men Gate Tower(天安門城樓). Soon they turned right into Chang An Avenue (長安大街). The wide avenue had six lanes on each side. Most of them ran in the shade of trees. On and on they ran…......