The Great Wall of China . . . Marathon?

One of the destinations on my bucket list is China. I know - it's a large country and a whole lot of places and culture to see. Ideally I would love to spend a month or more there just to get a teasing glimpse of everything.

One particular destination I'd like to see is the Great Wall. According to Wikipedia, "the Great Wall line stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia." While that doesn't really mean much to me, since I know nothing about China and its geographical lay out, it sounds pretty intense. So I read a little further. Because many ancient dynasties contributed to building the wall, you can divide it up into sections. The Ming Dynasty walls are estimated to be 5,500 miles long. To give that a little more perspective I can understand, driving from Panama to Alberta Canada is about 5,200 miles. Wow. The entire length of the wall including all of its branches measures over 13,100miles.

Incredible. You could spend a month alone just at the wall.

So then I did a little more digging and found there is a Great Wall of China Marathon. It includes over 4,000 steps. Because a marathon isn't hard enough, let's make it going up and down steps on a mountain. This has to be the hardest marathon on the planet.

The really sick part? There's a part of me that actually wants to do this insane event. How amazing to run a marathon on such an iconic world monument! I'm fairly certain this would be the death of me IF I even made it to the finish line. But I bet the t-shirt is fantastic, along with the unprecedented scenery and life changing experience. Fortunately or unfortunately, I haven't los my mind enough yet to go for it. But given the right incentive I might be crazy enough to attempt. For now I'm content sleeping in and eating gelato and European chocolates. Would you do this marathon if given the opportunity?