Ningbo held its first marathon race in Jiangbei's Suhubaxia Sports Park at 8:00 am on May 31, the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. With the theme of "Run for love", the 2014 Ningbo Mountain Marathon attracted 3,000 runners from cites in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces. Apart from full marathon race, the event also includes an 8.5km mini-marathon and a half marathon. 

A mountain marathon race has the same course distance of 42.195 kilometers as road marathon but is more challenging as most of the trails are designed with climbs around or over mountains. At 8:00 in the morning, 500 full marathon participants set off. Three hours and 48 minutes and 02 seconds later, Wu Jian, the former men's team champion from Wenzhou, first finished the race.

 

"This is my first try of a mountain marathon," said Wu Jian, "I started to run marathon 8 years ago when I suffered stomach trouble. I was scared of doing gastroscope so I began climbing exercise to keep fit. Later on, I felt mountain climbing exercise is not enough for me, so I took up long-distance running and make it a routine. Miraculously, I never had any stomach trouble since then."

Wu Jian has a number of followers, including his his wife and daughter, who participated in the mini marathon.

If the full and half marathon are too hard for starters, the 8.5 km mini marathon is a good choice for new runners. The mini marathon attracted the largest number of 1,500 runners. As mini marathon race aims to promote participation and thus is unscored and noncompetitive, many runners choose to participate in the race with their family members.

The Mini marathon started at 9:00 in the morning. About an hour later, the participants began to reach the finish line. A group of young runners held their finisher certificates and posed for photos at the finish line. They are graduate students from Zhejiang University who rent a car to participate in the competition from Hangzhou. "We decide to spend this long weekend by combining exercises and tours," said one of them.  
About four kilometers from the starting point is the first aid station, where volunteers were handing water to passing runners. The volunteers include former world gymnastics champion Li Chunyang and former Olympic gymnastics champion Jiang Yuyuan.