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The 34th Beijing International Marathon has acquired a new name among some disappointed participants: Smogathon.

About 30,000 runners, many from other parts of China or abroad, awoke in the Chinese capital on Sunday to an orange sun glowing weakly through a dirty haze. The air was “severely polluted” or “hazardous,” depending on whether a person read the Chinese government’s air quality index or one maintained by the United States embassy in Beijing.

Some ran anyway. Some ran away. But no one canceled on the advice of the organizers, the Chinese Athletic Association and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports, because those organizations did not call it off. That sparked calls from participants for the International Association of Athletics Federations, which has approved the 26-mile, or 42-kilometer, race, to set air quality standards in the future to avoid damaging the runners’ health. The association could not be reached by telephone on Sunday.



“Does the IAAF have guidelines?” asked Chas Pope, a British engineer who took part in the marathon on Sunday. “If they don’t, they should consider it,” said Mr. Pope, who has lived in Beijing for 11 years and runs several long-distance races each year.

Skeptical that the air on Sunday would be good after what has been a smoggy autumn, Mr. Pope said he had only entered the half-marathon, which was on offer in addition to other, shorter distances.



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He started out wearing a face mask — a common defense against Beijing’s gray air. Then, at the 10-kilometer mark, he took the mask off to see what it was catching. It was dark with dirt.

“It’s meant to be fun and good for your health,” Mr. Pope said of the marathon. But in such air, “it’s just plain ridiculous to be running,” he said. He abandoned the course.

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“Most of my expat friends pulled out,” he said. “And quite a few of my Chinese friends too, but a lot didn’t. I think they don’t know as much about the health impact.”

Images on Twitter and Chinese social media showed Chinese runners sporting a variety of face protection, from light cloth masks to World War I-style gas masks.

“Today’s race should definitely have been called off or rescheduled,” said Zhang Kai, Beijing-based campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

“What happened today to this iconic sports even is just another reminder to the government that much remains to be done to China’s energy and industrial structure” to solve pollution, said Mr. Zhang. “If the battle against pollution is a marathon, it is now time to catch up on speed.”

Still, many completed the race without masks, said Chen Mei, a mother of two who finished the 10-kilometer race she entered.

“For me it wasn’t too bad,” Ms. Chen said “I’m not a person who always wears a face mask.”

“I love Beijing, the city, and the pollution and the traffic,” she said. “It’s not Beijing’s fault, it’s everyone’s fault and we should all do something about it. Everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything. Nobody rides a bicycle instead of driving a car. And everyone wants more shops, more cars.”

Despite air pollution that reached a “severely polluted” score of 444 at a Chinese government air quality monitoring station near the marathon’s starting point on Sunday — an inauspicious number that sounds like the Chinese words for “death death death” — organizers decided not to halt the event on the grounds it would be “too difficult.” The reading represents a compilation of fine particulate matter or PM 2.5; coarser particulate matter, or PM10; and ozone, sulphur, carbon and nitrogen dioxide levels.

At that pollution level the Chinese government advises: “Outdoor Sports Not Suitable, Avoid Outdoor Activities, Open Windows Not Recommended, Masks Necessary and Air Purifier Necessary.” But instead of following this advice, municipal authorities advised runners to “watch weather conditions” and make a decision about running based on their personal health.

The previous evening, with smog building, the organizers issued a text message alerting runners to the possibility of “light to medium” smog. Runners should drink more water and eat foods that would cause them to spit more, they said.

“I’m sure many people dropped out, but I was surprised how many people finished,” Ms. Chen said.

“I saw a lot of young people running and I remembered how when I ran it once before a lot of young people dropped out,” she said. “You know, Chinese people didn’t use to have very strong physiques, but that’s really getting better.”

In the end, the race was won by two Ethiopians: Girmay Birhanu Gebru won the men’s race in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 42 seconds while Fatuma Sado Dergo won the women’s in 2 hours, 30 minutes and 3 seconds, breaking Chinese women’s dominance of the race for the last 22 years.

The favored Chinese woman runner, Gong Lihua, told China News Net that the smog didn’t affect her too much but it interfered with many people’s ability to sweat, affecting their performance.

The men’s winner, Mr. Gebru, teold China News Net that he was satisfied with his performance given the adverse conditions.

“Being able to run with this result under these weather conditions was not easy,” he said, in remarks translated from the Chinese.