The Hangzhou Mountain Marathon

Having never run more than 3 hours before (and that was a hash run so it's not the most serious running), I opted to take the 28 kilometre option, knowing that it was going to be incredibly steep and would take ages. I was not wrong. After an hour, we had completed 6k. This involved a stretch where it was literally straight down the side of a very treacherous mountain for about 1,5k. I soon got into a good rhythm and was fairly well equipped with goos, sports bars and whatnot. At about the 2 hour mark, I was dropped by the group I was running with on the downhills, as it is a skill that I definitely have not acquired yet (you need to be a mountain goat to run fast down these things without breaking everything). I thus spent a period of 2 hours running alone, stopping along the way to buy and consume an entire packet of Bourbon-like biscuits that I found when we passed through a little village. After running up a hill named Heartbreak Hill (this thing went on forever, it took one guy 45 minutes to get up it), I entered a painful period of running around the hills on cobblestones, but was determined to catch those that had dropped me. After the occasional chat with walkers, I ascertained that I was finally close on their heels and, at last, dying, I caught up to them. We were at the 4 hour mark by this time. I asked them what distance we'd completely and to my utter devastation we'd only gone 23 kilometres. I had the impression that we'd be at something like 30 and was thus considering just toughing it out and going for the full Monty. After another hour/5k of slipping and sliding up and down hills, I reached the 28.5k mark and, knees on fire, agreed that it was definitely time to call it a day after 5 hours. The ending was pretty inglorious, there was no-one there and I had to try and find a taxi which took ages. Upon arrival at the Love Shack (our favourite hotel), they wouldn't let me in because I needed ID to confirm the room and I therefore had to spend a good 20 minutes trying to explain to them that I just wanted to leave my bags in the reception while I went to McDonald's (I was in serious hypoglycemia) but they were having a lot of trouble understanding my reasoning, even when I said I'VE JUST RUN FOR 5 HOURS I NEED FOOD. This feast was followed up with another feast a few hours later (and a healthy quantity of beer)...followed by a burrito feast right after that.
The next morning, I was hungry again. Unfortunately, while I can happily Chinese food for lunch and dinner, all Westerners are in agreement that the breakfast is un-stomachable. By 12 o clock, we still hadn't found an open place so we settled for the Shangri-La Hotel's buffet. Here hatched a scheme: I would take the buffet while everyone else bought a small course and over the course of an hour and a half I would bring back food for everyone whilst trying not to get caught. This plan worked, and aside from the food I shared with the rest, I managed to consume about 11 stocked-up plates of buffet food. I was shamelessly emptying the dishes on the buffet table and can safely say that on November 20th, 2011 they made a loss off me. Unfortunately the rest of the afternoon was spent climbing up hills again to create a hashing trail. This was hard for me as I had such a vast quantity of food inside me so I spent a lot of time huffing, puffing and sweating intensely. On the way back, I was hoping I could sleep in the train but I was struck by the Baby Curse: a little child, two rows down from me, actually spent the entire ride SCREAMING... But he wasn't actually upset about anything, there was no crying or sad expressions. He was just enjoying screaming and making me very angry indeed.