Shanghai Running Magazine Volume 3 | Page 32

Dali Ultra SkyMarathon®  Yunnan, China
by Olya Korzh, Team Salomon
Hong Kong

a nice collection of goodies from
the sponsors and organizers. An
emergency blanket, a whistle, a
cool Li-Ning shirt, a Buff, a few
other gifts and four (!) Snickers
bars, all packed in a bright green
Li-Ning bag. Woop woop!
The night before the race, an informative race briefing conducted
in Chinese provided us with good
gear tips, photos of the race route
and safety instructions. Those
who did not understand Chinese
could easily find a helpful friend or
volunteer to assist with interpretation.

The 2nd edition of Dali Ultra
SkyMarathon®, the first SkyRunning race in China and part of the
Skyrunner® Series, took place on
May 24 in the town of Dali, a famous tourist destination of Yunnan
province. China Skyrunning Association, race director Yu Lei and
the large team of organizers and
volunteers put a lot of hard work
into planning and organizing this
event and made it a true success.

The race had three options of
100K, 50K and 10K with enough
choice to suite every runner. With
Yishan100 still in my legs from just
one week before, I opted for 50K
this time.

Before the race each participant
received a race pack containing

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The race for all participants, over
800 local and international runners, started at 8 o’clock in the
morning near the Golden Wing
Bird statue in the Three Pagodas
area of down town Dali, with the
air temperature climbing up to
near 30 degrees and clear skies
promising a hot day. The First
section was about 10 km long and
went through Dali town, providing
entertainment for the locals and
cheers for the runners. About
10km into the race, CP1 offered
water, drinks and snacks, followed
by a long gruelling climb from
about 1800 m to 4092 m altitude.
Before the race I was debating
whether to use hiking poles or
not and finally decided to leave
them in the hotel. It was the right
decision as the trail turned out to
be too steep
and in parts
too technical to make
good use of
hiking poles.
I remember
this section
as a “social
climb” – we
were climbing
up in steady
modest pace,
saving energy,
still fresh and

© Shanghai Running 2014

happy to chit-chat. I made a few
new friends during