Posted 01 January 2013 - 09:20 PM
Both marathons are pretty good. The Great Wall China Marathon held on May 1st is more of an adventure marathon and tours are not required. You'll run almost complete on the Great Wall itself, there are some parts on the full marathon course where you'll have to exit the Wall and run on the trail due to extreme hazards. You'll encounter loose and crumbling steps, missing stones/steps, trees and branches. You'll run on restored parts of the Wall as well as parts that are in its natural state and in ruins. It's a smaller marathon with about 200-500 runners each year. They offer a 5K, 10K, 1/2 Marathon and a Full. www.greatwallchinamarathon.com if you want to use a credit card or www.greatwallmarathon.com.cn if you would prefer a bank transfer for a 50$ discount. katie@greatwallchinamarathon.com
The Great Wall Marathon that is held mid May each year will require you to sign up for a tour unless you live in China. The race is well organized, I've run it twice myself. The run about 3.5 miles on the restored part of the Wall. The rest are run through the local villages and towns. If you are running the full you'll want to kick it into high gear when going out. You'll have a two mile up hill trek to get to the Wall as you hit the Wall you'll want to go as fast as you can due to bottlenecking on the Wall which will bring you to a standpoint due to 2000 runners. As you make your way off the Wall and head down to the village you could run into runners coming up the mountain and hit a bottleneck again. This happened last year, 2012, stopped me from completing the full marathon as i was not able reach the cutoff time before they closed off the Wall and was directed to the finish line. It was not a big deal for me since i live in China but other had spent thousands of $$$$ and were disappointed that they couldn't finish the full marathon. They offer a mini marathon, 1/2 and full marathons.
Both races have their good points and their bad points, and each runner should always pick what race is best for them. But i recommend them both. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at katie@greatwallchinamarathon.com
reach me on my facebook at peacefool@hotmail.com to contact me there too! 
