At the 2014 Beijing International Marathon held last Sunday (the 19th), 44-year-old Wei Jing easily completed the full course with a time of 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 43 seconds, ranking 34th in the 40–50 age group — marking her second time achieving a second-tier women's marathon result after the Hangzhou Marathon last year.
The Beijing Marathon is one of the most fiercely competitive marathons. This event saw 30,000 athletes from 55 countries and regions participating in both the full and half marathons.
The race is an endurance challenge, with the full marathon spanning 42.195 kilometers and the half marathon 21.0975 kilometers. Starting from Tiananmen Square, runners pass through four districts: Dongcheng, Xicheng, Haidian, and Chaoyang.
This wasn’t Wei Jing’s first long-distance marathon. As early as March 2013, she competed in the Chongqing International Marathon while injured, finishing 41st in the women’s full marathon. In June of the same year, she ranked 30th in the women’s full marathon and 23rd in the amateur category at the Lanzhou International Marathon. In November, she placed 24th in the women’s full marathon at the Hangzhou International Marathon. In 2014, she also took part in the Xiamen Marathon, the Chongqing International Marathon, and the Lanzhou International Marathon. The Beijing Marathon was her seventh marathon.
Wei Jing isn’t a professional athlete, but among amateurs, she’s considered top-tier. She used to run a women’s clothing store in Pengshan County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province. Since 2006, she has been climbing famous peaks. In 2011, at the age of 41, she successfully summited the world’s highest peak — Mount Everest, which stands at 8,844.43 meters above sea level. This feat earned her several “firsts”: the oldest Chinese woman to summit Everest (at age 41); the shortest time for a female to reach the summit from the 8,300-meter assault camp (4 hours and 45 minutes); the fastest female ascent of Everest; the shortest time for a Chinese woman to return from the summit to 6,500 meters on the same day; and the first Sichuan woman to summit Everest.
Not many people can maintain such good health at the age of 44. Wei Jing said, “For over eight months a year, I wear short sleeves and shorts — even the week before the Winter Solstice. In all of Pengshan, there’s almost no one else who dresses like me in winter.”
Her strong physique comes from regular exercise — Wei Jing said she goes jogging almost every day — and from maintaining a healthy diet. She eats lightly, pays attention to her intake of protein and carbohydrates, and rarely consumes greasy foods like hot pot, common in Sichuan cuisine.
However, Wei Jing said the deepest insight she gained from the Beijing International Marathon is that, besides regular training and diet control, amateur athletes aiming for top results must also match professional athletes when it comes to professional nutritional supplements to achieve success.
Wei Jing said that although she had seen some athletes drinking specially prepared drinks during previous races, she always thought they were just placebos with no real effect. But before the Beijing Marathon, she was appointed as the brand ambassador for Yeuxingjia energy bars and received professional pre-race, during-race, and post-race nutritional guidance. During the race, she didn’t experience the usual fatigue and felt full of energy and light on her feet.
As an amateur athlete, if you want to challenge professionals, Wei Jing said, you have to do everything like a professional.