The Beijing Marathon is one of the top 10 international marathon events. This year Peng Liu from Arup Beijing office ran the full marathon for the first time in his life to raise money for the Yucai School, a school in Beijing which accepts the children of migrant workers.

Peng has run a half marathon before, but he found the real challenge was to convince people to part with their money to meet his target of RMB 6,000 for the repainting of the school buildings. Another runner from the Beijing office was Chas Pope, who also signed up for the full marathon and contributed to the donations. It was a bright day and some 30,000 runners ran through the starting gate at Tiananmen Square. Half of them were joining the 42km full marathon and others running the half and mini marathons, which are 21km and 4km respectively. The course, after 25km, constituted a big challenge for many of participants. The beautiful jogging path in the Olympic Park on the final 5km ‘attracted’ many runners to walk on their unbearable legs.

Finally Peng ran into the end gate successfully and finished his debut full marathon in five hours and 22 minutes. Chas also finished the full course. Thanks to the warm support from colleagues and friends the final donation exceeded RMB10,000. The extra money was used to purchase books for the school library.