It's all now done & dusted!

After 7 gruelling hours we have now conquered the Great Wall Marathon and now that it's done I must admit I loved it!

At the half way mark, however, I wasn't feeling as endearing.

A slight calf strain threatened to de-rail my plans of smashing this mission & is proof that the body is very unpredictable for endurance events.

The first 20km went to plan and all the training was paying off and then 'bang', without warning my left leg is in pain (similar to rolling an ankle) and I had to choose between keeping going & risking a huge injury or conceding defeat.

With medical staff all around I decided to keep rolling and eventually got it done.

The last leg was doing a section of the 'wall' backwards and I don't remember anything in my life being this difficult! When you see advertisements for this event you see people on all '4's' climbing the stairs in pain.

That's exactly what it's like!! Fortunately it was a cool day and fluids were abundant and our little stash of glucose jelly beans (thanks Lucy & Lara) helped get us across the line.

Jodi did her first half marathon in 3.5 hours which was also an unbelievable effort.

The winners of the full marathon came in at 3. 08 hours which is hard to believe.

Even guys like Nick Carling & Steve Moneghetti would even struggle to match that and it means they sprinted the Wall twice.

It's hard to fathom how hard that would be, but one must dip the hat!

What a great way to see China & we met some great people along the way.

Thanks to all involved for this trip (yes that's you Sam & Bruno) but unfortunately I can now not honour my commitment of working the next two 'Great Barrier Reef' events as I'll be to busy running them. Yep, I've got the bug!!

Hope Carnivale is a hoot for you all.

Lots of love from N & J