The People's Republic of Running?

And despite all the odds, it was a real race for the elites. Ren Longyun, China's top marathoner, kept pace with Nephat Kinyanjui, 30, a Kenyan who won the Nagano Marathon last year, until they neared the stadium finish, where two demurely attired flight attendants in ANA blue-gray uniforms held the white tape. Kinyanjui edged away and then stormed to a personal best of 2:08:09. Ren, 20, strained to keep up and swept across the finish six seconds later, setting a new national record of 2:08:15, a time that sliced seven minutes off his previous best. On the women's side, the race to the finish involved three Chinese teenagers, a dash that was won by 19-year-old Chen Rong; her time of 2:27:05 was a personal best as well.

Alas, for Chen Rong, her victory earned her $5,000 less than Nephat Kinyanjui, who walked away with $20,000 in prize money. Recreational marathoners received their shiny gold-colored medals in their prerace packets.

The Fritz Lang landscape of the course did not seem to bother everyone. Li Sujun, a lilliputian 18-year-old high school student from the far northeast province of Heilongjiang, effervesced as she talked about her 3:13 finish, her fourth marathon. "It was great," she said, slightly wide-eyed at being in her nation's capital. "I came with five girls from my school, and we all had a great time. I'm hoping to do better next year." Li's bubbling happiness at finishing wasn't shared by all; scarcely half of the 1,067 women who started completed the race. Of the 5,685 men who competed, 71 percent crossed the finish line.

As tiny gaggles of final runners and solitary, perspiration-drenched, pain-riven competitors struggled over the final mile, I sidled up to a policeman fidgeting with the volume button on his walkie-talkie. What, I asked, did he think of such exertion on the broad, pollution-shrouded boulevards of northern Beijing? "Kuangren," he laughed. "Mad people, mad people."

Traffic was still stanched by roadblocks as I walked home. I stopped at a stationery store a few blocks south of the race route, and as I rummaged through a bin of pens, I noticed the shop girls sitting on stools in front of a television hung on a wall, where an elaborately coiffed woman was berating a Qing Dynasty official in a stiff black hat with red pom-poms on either side.

Did you watch the marathon? I asked as I paid for my fistful of pens. "Marathon?" the sales girl asked, "What marathon?" I was about to explain, but her eyes had swung back to the TV.