The Pyongyang Marathon

In honor of the second Pyongyang Marathon open to foreign amateur runners, we post some photos from last year's marathon - the first ever open to foreign amateur runners in which KBC's Chris Fujita ran the half marathon. 
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“I want to run like a horse pulling a pine tree.”

“I’m sorry, you want to what?”

“I want to run like a horse pulling a pine tree.”

“What are you talking about?”

This is how I imagined the conversation. Even though my boss speaks English I thought I might get extra points if I asked for time off to run the Pyongyang half Marathon in Chinese, but thought I’d probably mess it up. I looked up the Chinese word for “marathon,” which is made of three words: horse (ma), pull (la), pine tree (song). I kept practicing the sentence in my head.

At the last second, I asked in English. My boss laughed and said “yeah, no problem.”

The Pyongyang Marathon, the first in which amateur foreigners were invited to participate, was nine weeks away and I hadn’t run regularly in over two years. I had some work to do if I was going to pull this tree. Beijing is one of those cities where it’s actually unhealthy to run outside, so I mostly stuck to the dreadful, mind-numbing treadmill.

Read the rest at NK News.