Henry Bell with his wife, Lottie and their babyson, Oscar

When I moved to a Beijing last year, I did not think I would be running my first marathon here. The city is, after all, more famous for traffic and pollution than for aerobic exercise. However, having spent a large part of the summer running around Chaoyang Park, in October my wife and I finished the 42km course in just over four and a half hours, raising over $5,000 for the Belarusian Children's Hospice in the process.

The race itself was surprisingly fun. We started in a colourful Tiananmen Square, with the bright blue sky set against a sea of red flags announcing the different companies and organizations across China that were represented among the 30,000 runners. We made our way towards the north of the city, helped along by friendly Beijing folk, invariably shouting 'Laowai Jiayou!', before ending in the beautiful Olympic Park, alongside the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube, where we gratefully received our participants' medal, a bulging goody-bag and our son, Oscar, pictured here. The decision now is whether to sign up for the marathon in Xiamen, Hangzhou, Shanghai or Dalian...

By Henry John Arthur Bell, IMBA, Class of 2012