A weekend in the Gobi desert

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This weekend I’m hanging around in the Gobi desert in Northwestern Gansu province. Exactly I’m in Jiuquan, which is also the main city for the Chinese space program. The Chinese space rockets are launched not far away from here.

The 50k Gobi Ultra-Marathon is a pure invitational race. In total we are 300 runners from all around the world, sitting here at the edge of the Gobi desert and waiting for the start tomorrow morning. The price money is really high for such a small race. 10.000 USD for the first male and female. So there are also a lot of East-Africans here who will go for this award. It is funny to sit between all these 2:10 marathon finishers. 😉 I guess, Ford, as the main sponsor, must paid a lot of money to let this race happen.

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IMG_6302So beside a nice early morning run through this unknown city and the pickup of our race gear, it is a pure relaxing day, good for networking with all the other runners. This evening there will be a technical briefing and tomorrow morning 6:30AM some buses will bring us to the race track.

Jiuquan 50km route + profile

Stay tuned.

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