Hong Kong - nothing goes Wrong but race takes Long...

Marathon Number 117 would take my marathon adventures to the Orient for the first time, with Hong Kong (China I guess?) also to be the 31^st country in which I have completed a marathon*. 

 

Thanks exclusively to Gill, our accommodation in Hong Kong – the Mandarin Oriental - was probably the most fancy pre-race hotel I have enjoyed to date.  This was assisted by an unexpected upgrade to a suite with Harbour Views, which boasted significantly more floor space than our apartment in Dubai, in a city where space is notoriously at a premium.  Swish…

 

Away from the luxury of the room, our first two and a half days in Hong Kong represented far from ideal marathon preparation.  On the first day we tackled the ridiculously steep walk down from the iconic Victoria Peak (after a lengthy, slightly lost, trek around the summit), which overlooks Hong Kong, which resulted in extremely sore glutes and quads for the next two days.  Our efforts were put somewhat into context when we were passed by more than one grey haired runner taking on the uphill version of the route.  Incredible.  On Friday, we headed out on the MTR train for a walk along the “Dragon’s Back”, a walk which started with a near vertical climb up 300 steps through an incredible vertical cemetery.  The views from the top of the lush, undulating, trek were well worth the initial effort, although the combination of the two walks rendered us shuffling cripples as we headed to Victoria Park in the afternoon to collect my runner’s pack from the impressive marathon expo.  Although we took things steadily on the Saturday night before the race (catching up with my old boss – Stephen Kitts – who was impressed by my reformed character and self-control in limiting myself to a handful of beers only), over the course of the 60 hours we had spent in Hong Kong, we had chalked up over 60 kilometers, gorging ourselves on delicious local cuisine and (expensive) beer in between our efforts.

 

Despite the relatively early night on the Saturday night before run day, my 5am alarm call was not entirely welcome and my hobble around the suite to get ready for the marathon revealed that the walking tours had taken their toll.  At least my journey to the start line, over the Harbour in Kowloon, was straightforward.  I just had to travel two MTR stops on a train full of marathon runners – which reduced the risks of not finding the start line to zero – before climbing steps out of the station onto Nathan Road where my race would start at 6:35am.  The marathon was starting in waves so I joined my waiting area on the street in time to see the 6:10am wave, including the elite runners, set off into the pleasantly cool, still dark, Hong Kong morning.  By 6:20am, the waiting area was a swarming mass of people, although (possibly thanks to British heritage?) the waiting was very polite and orderly and people obediently joined at the back and queued without complaint.  At around 6:25am we were marched up the road to the start line by a linked arm chain of race volunteers.  There was a very post-modern take on “grid girls” at the start line – a middle aged man appearing with banners counting down to the start time (“5 Minutes Until Start”; “4 Minutes Until Start”, etc.).  A decent crowd of people had braved the early morning to see us off and there were some (presumably inspirational) Chinese words and cheering before we got underway, bang on 6:35am.

 

My body quickly provided feedback that it may be a tough day of the office as we ran through the quiet streets of Kowloon, with towers on either side of us before heading out towards the port area and crossing a large suspension bridge.  It was around this point that we caught up with a number of the slower/fancy dress runners (including one protesting against Shark Fin Soup) from the earlier and I was quite pleased to use this as an excuse to slow down as we climbed up to the top of the impressive bridge.  At the end of the bridge we entered into a long tunnel, the air in which was fairly unpleasant, which it was something of a relief to leave, although when we did so we were buffeted by the wind and joined a stretch where the course doubled back on itself a number of times, narrowing the course and causing pretty heavy running traffic.  Again, this was actually something of a convenient excuse for me to slow down further as I was generally finding the going tough, although enjoying the views of the outskirts of Hong Kong – which was still shrouded in morning mist – offered by our lofty position.  Soon enough we doubled back through the tunnel on the opposite side and by now at least we were heading towards the main island, where the finish line and end of my misery would end (eventually).

 

 

The benefit of the return to the main island was the increase in crowd numbers, which were somewhat thin on the ground in the outskirts.  A number of the crowd were dressed as/holding pig related items, something of a novelty in my current homeland of the UAE and enough to cheer me along.  Sadly, even the pork injection was not enough to prompt much of an upturn in my pace and I was scuttling my way to the finish line - g-rinding it out with a little trot(ter) if you will and seeking not to do anything rash(er)…

 

 

Gill had managed to battle her way through the crowds and was a very welcome sight as I hit the final few hundred metres of the course and sought to accelerate to the finish line (later playback of the video from Gill’s phone revealed that rather than a Usain Bolt-esque sprint this looked rather like a very low powered car full of passengers and metal based goods trying to start on a steep hill).  My finishing time was eventually a non-disastrous 3:43:27, although it transpired that I had managed to do a decent amount of damage to my body, including total nipple erosion (taken as standard) and crippling my left heel.  A few beers in Soho and then Macau helped ease the not insubstantial pain of Marathon 117 but nothing could detract from a fabulous few days in Hong Kong…

 

*I have recently signed up to a couple of Global Marathon Clubs (late mid-life crisis?) and initially faced difficulty in substantiating certain of my overseas’ marathons (for example, my name is incorrectly spelt in some; I appear as a number only in the Dublin Marathon).  I overcame most of the challenges, although thanks to one pedantic fellow member was not allowed to count Spartathlon in Greece as, despite having completed 4 marathons in a row, the fact that I did not finish the race means that it could not count.  What a cruel world…