BEIJING (5/22/04) -- THIS puts a whole new meaning on "hitting the wall."

"THIS" being what happens to you at the 21.5-mile mark of the Great Wall of China Marathon, not only redefining "hitting," but introducing a bunch of other verbs such as "slapping," "pounding," "stunning,"

"crushing," "demolishing" ... and, OK, "astonishing" and "exhilarating."

"THIS" is a preposterous ascent up a place so steep that Wall builders 2,000 years ago had to briefly give up work here.

The official Wall stops way up there. We are way down here in the bottom of a valley, in a nice square just a few yards away from a nearly- dry river bed. The square is filled with rows of bleacher seats and spectators howling and yelling. We are about 34.5 kilometers into this crazy event and there's a finish line in the middle of the square, but we don't get to finish. We have to wave to our friends and loved ones, then head back out of the square and up the face of the cliff looming straight in front of us.

Up and up a series of steep switchbacks, some mere dirt trail, some carved from stone, some made more civilized by bits of rock cemented into place to form rough steps.

The Danes, who organized this event, are known for being literal and Teutonic. They must have thought "the wall" everyone talks about in marathons needed to be literal, not merely metaphorical. So they hit us with the steepest portion of the greatest Wall on earth.

Years later, when we have finished the switchbacks, we come to the base of the Wall itself, and more climbing commences. Step, crawl, scramble up five or six or seven of those monstrous 18-inch-high steps -- no one is running or even close to it -- then stop to gasp for thin air on this glorious sunny day. Lean over the Wall, gasping both for air and at the surreal views of green, snaggle-tooth mountainside. Then scramble and crawl up more of those too-high steps.

There are supposed to be 2,700 steps on the Wall; I think I lost track at about 5,000.

It is less than 4K up and over the switchback and Wall to a blacktopped road that will carry us down steep grades the last 5K back to the square. It is the longest, toughest 4K most of us -- those of us who haven't crested Mt. Everest, perhaps -- will ever see or feel.

Maybe another outbreak of SARS wouldn't have been so bad. ~~~ We were supposed to make this trip last year, only to have it canceled at the last minute by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Two years ago, always looking for fodder for my Detroit News and Michigan Runner columns, I had spotted an ad with a picture of the Great Wall in Running Times magazine.

An interview revealed that the owner of the company doing tours to China and other "destination" marathons (Kilimanjaro, Bali, South Africa, Cambodia) had a Michigan connection. In the early 1970s, Kathy Loper was a pioneer of Michigan women's running. In 1974 she became one of the first state women to run the Boston Marathon, and she'd founded the long-running Paul Bunyan run in Oscoda.

Loper moved to San Diego and continued to put on races, then joined Asian tour business veteran Kurt Loder offering trips to exotic marathon locales. The 2003 Great Wall Marathon was to have been their third trip to China.

When SARS reared its ugly head, Loper offered my wife, Kathleen, and I a substitute trip to last fall's Angkor Wat Half-Marathon in Cambodia, subject of a previous MR piece. But there is only one Great Wall -- no substitutes possible -- so on departure day, May 14, Kathleen and I found ourselves at Detroit Metro Airport with a group of Michigan runners we would grow friends with in coming days.

They included:

Michael and Audrey Owens and their children, Matt Jenkins, 15, and Brian Jenkins, 11. Michael, a former college runner at Ohio Wesleyan, was entered in the half-marathon, the training for a full one not in an ER doctor's schedule. Audrey and the boys, all road-race rookies, were entered in the Great Wall 10K.

Katie Merx, 31, of Plymouth, is a former Detroit News reporter who covers healthcare for Crain's Detroit Business and is an Iron Man triathlete. In Chicago, we picked up her friend and another ex-News reporter, Tonya Albert, 32, a non-runner who planned on walking the half.

In Beijing we met others with Michigan connections, including Scott Shelton, a Tennessee resident who flies for Northwest Airlines, based out of Detroit. Scott was a marathon veteran. His wife, Gwen, was taking on the half-marathon, as was their older boy, Nevada, 13. Son Cooper, 7, would play avid spectator.

Northwest flight attendant Teresa McCabe of Dexter, a self-described 3- mile runner, was determined to finish the half.

The flight from Chicago on United set the tone for the trip. We left at mid- day and flew over the top of the world, heading just about due north. Looking out the window we could see spring turn back into winter, green giving way to gray, then white. The Hudson Bay was frozen white. We flew over sheets of Arctic ice, huge cracks looking like rivers.

We missed the North Pole by 350 miles, then flew south (What other way was there?) over barren mountains of Siberia, then the mountains of northern China.

I had expected Beijing to be a dull, gray city, looking something like East Berlin of the 1960s. Instead, we were hit by a gleaming, bustling, neon metropolis that seemed half Manhattan and half Las Vegas. Construction cranes -- surely the world's entire allotment -- stretched atop new skyscrapers, literally dozens in all directions.

Loper and Loder broke down our group of 140 into sub-groups for sundry tours. Our four-star hotel, the Capital, was conveniently located two blocks from Tiananmen Square. There, a McDonald's sat directly across from Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall and mausoleum; a juxtaposition so ironic the Communist icon must be spinning in his grave.

Friendly people. Lots of smiles. Not a speck of litter.

The Wall loomed figuratively over the week's events, but that didn't stop us from enjoying plenty of activities, including a tour of the Forbidden City adjacent to Tiananmen, the Temple of Heaven, a boat trip to the Summer Palace, a two-day side excursion to Xian and the famous Terracotta Warrior digs -- now that's a spectacle to rival anything the Mayans or Egyptian pharaohs did -- and a bicycle tour through the old Hutong section, complete with a lunch (banquet) in a family's home.

Unofficial sidetrips included shopping sprees at Silk Alley and the Pearl Market. Deals on silk rugs and garments, pearls and jade of every shape and size were beyond belief. So were market stalls filled with furiously-wiggling scorpions on skewers, waiting to be deep fried as fast food for passers by. If you didn't like scorpions, you could get skewered beetles, starfish or horsefish, too.

And then there was the Wall, and its marathon.

The first kilometer was flat, leading out of the square to 4K of steady uphill -- more than gradual, less than steep -- to a parking lot and our access site to the Wall. We returned by Wall about 4K to the square, then headed out for a 26K loop through the countryside. This segment used to be flat, but a new dam routed us away from the flooded river bed and up, up, up, climbing nonstop from 15K to 22K, at first gradually, then steeply.

We made a thigh-pounding descent at the village of Quinshanling, climbed steeply into Chedaoyu, did another thigh-pounder on a dirt trail into Duanzhuang, then hit flat ground for the last few K into the square.

Here's where we hit/crashed/pounded the Wall in reverse -- or in perverse, which is what you would have to be to design a course with

THIS at 34.5K.

Finally, I crested the monstrous first rise. Steep downhill, another monster climb, another steep downhill, one last climb, then down a flight of stairs to the same blacktop road that brought us up here hours, or weeks, ago.

I somehow had the reserves to push the last 5K of downhill, both legs threatening to seize with cramps the last K to the finish, where the clock read 5:47:15.

The first of the Loper tour, Erik Zeitlow of Denver, came in in 4:15:18, seventh overall. Some mountain man/freak of fitness named Josef Miesracher of Austria somehow -- check for new steroids -- finished first among 181 men in 3:38:35, more than 27 minutes ahead of American Behzad Rajabian, the runnerup.

Two weeks earlier, Zeitlow had run the Ft. Collins Marathon in 3:08 as a training run. His PR, set last fall, is 2:56. "I was crashing on that Wall," he said. "It was a lot harder than I imagined. I was crawling."

Young Nevada Shelton, who had run only one half-marathon before, decided two days before race day he wanted to do the entire marathon. He ran with his dad, Scott, a while before Scott took off on his own.

Scott finished in 5:49:25. Nevada, looking fresh, waving at the crowd, crossed the line in 6:25:48, the youngest competitor this year. The next morning, he felt good enough to go for another run.

Katie Merx finished in 6:28:17. "The Wall was spectacular. That was my favorite part, even the second time," she said. "I was thinking, 'I've got all the time in the world. I just gotta make it to the airport gate (on Monday).' It was the most difficult effort I've ever made."

The first of 66 women finishers was Sarah Cook of England, in 4:26:03, with Greth Tvilling of Denmark more than two minutes back and Lindsay Finch the first American in 4:46:30.

Merx's joy was tempered the next night at the big banquet for all entrants when sponsors announced that results were posted on the wall. She and many others were listed as disqualified, for not having registered on one of the tiny scoring mats on the course. It was a long way to go and a long, hard way to run to be branded a cheat. Gwen Shelton was DQ'd in the half. Many others -- 3 out of 8 at my table, and 3 out of 8 at the table next to us -- said their times were off by seven or eight minutes. Some of the mistakes, including Merx's, were corrected for the Web site.

Like everyone, Michael Owens raved about the Wall and villagers, who turned out in throngs to cheer us along the way. Kids, wearing dress-up clothes, cheered us half-naked tourists running by, proudly yelling out in their practiced English, "HI! HELLO!"

When I hit the first town, it was like the entire population was there," said Owens, who finished 21st among men in the half in 2:13:18. "I probably ran an extra half-mile going back and forth across the street, to 'high- five' kids."

Ninety-nine men and 92 women entered the half. Klaus Messner and Werner Vogel, both of Austria, led the way, finishing in 1:47:54 and 1:49:57, respectively. The women's race was a thriller, with Laura MacDonald finishing in 2:10:23 to nip her Canadian countrywoman, Amy Foley, by 16 seconds. Amy Pontius was the top American, finishing third in 2:11:41.

I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't say Loper-Loder lead the best trips, by far, to exotic destinations. They both love to run, Hash and travel. To find out more, go to www.kathyloperevents.com. MR