Turkey, Burger King, and Cramps!

Donuts in Shanghai!

Parents setting up their kids on dates.

Hanging out at the Bund in downtown Shanghai

Decorating our Christmas tree in Daniel's apartment

Hey everyone. The last few weeks have been pretty eventful, so here it goes!

The weekend following Thanksgiving, the Wuhan crew traveled to Huangshi to have our Zhong Relations team Thanksgiving. Gavin and Kelly McGraw, who lived in China last year and are now on the Zhong board sent our team some of the foods we'd been missing. Thanks guys! We enjoyed eating, hanging out, "prying," and talking about how the first few months of this year have been. It's always a great time when we can get together. I really like visiting Huangshi. It's a "small" city of about 1 million people compared to Wuhan's 10 million. I really like the small-town feel of being able to walk pretty much everywhere. Plus, foreigners get even more stares there, which is funny.

This past weekend was the Shanghai Marathon. I've been excited about this race since before I even returned to China. I had run a marathon just under 3 1/2 hours in Iowa a few years ago. I felt like I hadn't trained as well as I'd liked for that race, so I wanted to train really well this time to see what time I could get. I had some knee problems early on, and then ankle problems towards the end of my training about which I mentioned last week. Fortunately, I figured out that a certain pair of shoes had been causing the problems even though I wasn't running in them and they were even one of my nicer pairs of shoes! By last weekend, while not as prepared as I wanted to be, I had no injury problems and felt better prepared than my first marathon, so I was excited.

Kirk, Rebecca, Patrick (a really fun Chinese guy we met and became good friends with at Mr. Mai's), and I arrived in Shanghai Friday morning. Rebecca was the only one who had been to Shanghai before, so we had a blast walking around one of the biggest cities in the world. There were so many western restaurants. We didn't eat any Chinese food the whole weekend. I wanted to eat unhealthy all weekend, but I tried to minimize that until after the race on Sunday! I think our entire eating consisted of Subway, Burger King, Carl's Jr, Pizza Hut, Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and Coldstone (twice). It was great!

Another highlight of our visit was a "set-up" park. It was a park where hundreds of parents would meet and try to bargain with other parents and set their kids up on dates! It was crazy. We walked around and looked at all the mini-ads/personals with the parents. While we were there, a mom even approached Kirk and I to talk about her daughter!

As far as the marathon, here are a few of the highlights and lowlights:

1. When we arrived at the starting line, there were no corrals (places where runners who want to run a certain time can start). Instead, Kirk and I had to start behind a few thousand people. It was frustrating. It was about 6 miles before I was out of a crowd and could run my pace.

2. Around the 10 mile mark, I passed a runner who was smoking a cigarette!

3. At the half-way mark, I was supposed to meet Rebecca and Patrick so they could give me some energy gels. Unfortunately, they were having troubles of their own trying to get to that spot and couldn't get there in time! They felt terrible, but it wasn't their fault. They tried to find me at another spot in the race, but missed me there too.

4. Around the 16-mile mark, I passed a guy who was running the full marathon in bare feet!

5. Through about 20 miles, I was just a little behind my pace, but not too much. I had pushed it pretty hard trying to get caught up after the crowd at the beginning. Not smart! Because...

6. Around mile 22....body breakdown! I think it was a mix of things: walking around Shanghai a lot the days before, not having the gels that I was planning on getting, pushing myself too hard at the beginning of the race, and maybe just not being as prepared as I thought I was. I started to get cramps in my quad muscles. While I was stretching those out, I got a cramp in my left hamstring!

7. I ran and walked a little towards the finish feeling awful. With about a half mile left, my left hamstring completely locked up. I couldn't bend it or even stand up completely straight. I just sort of stood there hunched over for a minute or two and stretched it out the best I could. Finally, I was able to slowly jog to the finish.

8. My finish time was about 3 hours and 45 minutes. It was very frustrating since I had been training for over 3 months for this race, only to fail with 4 miles left. But I guess that's what happens sometimes when you're running so far. I hope to run another one in the next year or two, so hopefully that will have a happier ending!

9. Kirk ran the half-marathon in 2 hours and 5 minutes. His goal was to break two hours, but his time was pretty good considering he was having knee problems the last few days before the race. This was his first long race, so he did a great job. Unfortunately, Rebeeca wasn't able to run because of her sickness, but her and Patrick had a crazy day anyways trying to find us along the course!

That's what's been going on here lately. The next few weeks, we have a few Christmas parties that we're leading and/or volunteering at. So it should be another busy but fun season. Not sure if I'll post another update until after Christmas, so have a great holiday. Let's be thankful for all that we have and what this time is really about!