Free Race Pudong 5th April 2014
A race directors perspective by Mark Woodward
away before the race start.
After a quick stop in Metro to pick up
10kg of flour, organic of course, I met
Mike and we made our way to the
small park on the east side of Longyang Lu station. It is always a little
tricky starting any run from a public
park as the security guards can go
either way. They either call all of their
O
n April 5th of this year we
had scheduled our first Trail
Race in Suzhou, unfortunately there was a national holiday that
clashed with the date which could
have meant 3hrs plus in the bus each
way! We decided that no-one in their
right mind would have enjoyed that
so instead set a free, in-town race
around the rapidly disappearing old
village areas in Pudong. This is an
area I know extremely well as it was
my old training ground when I lived
“across the water”. It’s a real shame
that the whole area is so close to
town and the Maglev station that is
has become prime real estate land as
this was probably the nearest place
to Shanghai downtown that you
could actually hit a few dirt trails and
run through real working villages. As
such, before it completely disappears
we thought some of you would enjoy
seeing a part of the city that most
never will.
We set off with our bags of flour and
sticks of chalk along Longyang Lu to
the underpass and through the gardens, throwing flour every 10mtrs or
We arrived pretty early to set the
trail, but as this was an impromptu
event, the trail markings we normally
use wouldn’t really work so well. As
all of the Shanghai Running team are
hashers (see page 18) we decided to
set the trail using the format we do
on the hash, in flour and chalk, and
hoped that the local cleaners would
not have time to sweep everything
20
mates up to laugh at the idiots who
are running around or they try and
move you on so that they can sleep in
peace without any agro. Luckily for us
the security was away for the day so
we felt confident we co [ Z