Josh wanted to visit Chongqing and the Chongqing International Half Marathon was a good excuse.

This race was deceptively hard! I went out too fast because the entire first half (until the turn around - it was a straight out and back) felt like it was downhill. It wasn't. I died on the second half, but beat my goal time of 2:13.1 by a few minutes. But my second half was 6 minutes slower than my first half, which was disappointing. This was a big race for being in a city you probably haven't heard of (3000 women, 9000 men) and I am proud of my finish even though I think that I could have paced myself better and been less miserable. It's a bit surprising to me because as far as I can tell, there were 6-8 weeks when there was a half, full, or trail ultra every weekend within a few hours of Chengdu. But running is getting to be a big thing here. I wasn't too sore though, unlike the trail race the weekend before. Also, it was fun to take the high speed train (300 km/hr) to and from Chongqing.