Beijing Marathon 2012

Beijing, China

25th November 2012

The Beijing Marathon has been taking place in Beijing, the capital city of China since 1981. It was the first mass participation event in China to allow international participants.

The race has been awarded a World Athletics Gold Label, and in 2019 attracted a full field of 30,000 runners. The event did not take place in 2020 due to Coronavirus.

It is one of the 'big 3' Chinese races that also include the Xiamen Marathon and the Shanghai Marathon.

Beijing is well reputed for having air pollution issues and whilst perhaps unbelievable for runners travelling from the West, there has been instances of the race where wearing a face mask has been strongly recommended.

The course record is 2:07:06 by Matthew Kisorio in 2019 which whilst incredibly quick is somewhat slower than the times that we see at many of the world major marathons. This suggests that either the event is not attracting the worlds top running talents or that the course is not particularly fast.

The race is organised by the Chinese Athletic Association, and was initially created to open up the country to the rest of the world. That said, the website for the marathon is not particularly easy to navigate and details/news in other languages is not particularly clear.

The race starts in Tiananmen Square and finishes at the National Stadium after navigating through the historic city.

The city is home to seven UNESCO world heritage sights, is home to one of the worlds largest airports, and is of extreme cultural significance to the Chinese.