While preparing for the Hong Kong trip, I also looked around for some races. HK didn’t disappoint and I stumbled upon Ultra Trail Tai Mo Shan. It’s a trail running competition featuring three distances. The longest one is 162 km long (and 9000 meters of elevation gain). If you’d care for something shorter, there’s the medium distance – 115 km (5300 m+). Finally, the short race (and my choice) is just 50 km long (3600 m+). The 162 and 115 km events had the start on the 31st of December, so they were a very unusual way to spend the New Year. My race start was a relaxed 9 AM on January 1st. The time limit was 17 hours, with my estimate somewhere around 11 hours.

There were a total of 1200 participants (500 at the short race). 70% of them were locals, another 20% were from mainland China, 5% from Japan and the remaining 5% from the rest of the world (pretty much the guys that won and me).

Attended the tech briefing. Pretty boring. Having to translate in 3 languages, it was a pretty slow presentation. Among the things I remembered:
– there will be no disposable cups at checkpoints; you had to carry a plastic cup, a plastic bowl (for food) and a spork (these last two were included in the race kit)
– there will be cooked food in some checkpoints, such as noodle soup, rice and the local specialty of roast duck

January 1st. Happy New Year wake-up at 6 AM. One subway and one bus later, I was at the start point. It was sunny and warm, so I left the cold weather clothes in my drop bag.

The 50 km I had to run can be divided into 5 section:

Wavy ridge (km 0 – 12.5)
Started fast (too fast?). I was fresh and excited to run. Lots of steps (most steep trails were maintained like this). Reached the checkpoint in less than 2 hours, with the best ranking I ever had throughout the race: 41st out of 493 that started. Just before the checkpoint, after a kilometer of running on flat tarmac, I started feeling a ligament pain in the back of my right knee. Nooo…

First climb (km 12.5 – 19.5)
Started the first serious climb, about 600 vertical meters. Going up was easy on my knee, but I I was dreading flat or down hill sections. On flat I could fast walk, but doing the same for descends didn’t feel like an option. Not gonna finish a 50k by walking.

I reduced the pace. On the downhill I developed a slight limp, which only seemed to highlight some old problems with my left leg. My heart rate was high – I don’t know why, I was barely moving down the mountain. The temperature was just above 20 degrees, but the sun in this exposed terrain felt unbearable. I started day dreaming about spending the rest of the day in bed, eating sugar rich foods and sleeping. I had little motivation to keep pushing. I came for fun, but I was getting quite the opposite. I decided the quit. I got to the checkpoint, but it didn’t have anything to eat! Just.. yuck.. water. That sugar craving pushed me to do the following climb as well. I knew the next checkpoint was a fully stocked one.

Needed about 1h40′ for this section and, with my slow pace, I dropped to 62nd place.

Second climb (km 19.5 – 27.5)
I started noticing my knee pain slowly fading. Probably having to do with my slow pace. I kept it slow, gently running just on the descents. Started feeling better. At the checkpoint, I decided to keep going. They had a drink called Cream Soda. I’d usually describe it as something halfway between horrible and disgusting. But at that moment I couldn’t have enough of it.

Needed over 2 hours for this climb and dropped even further in the ranking, to 71st place.

Third climb (km 27.5 – 39.5)
I was past the mid point of the race. This was the longest climb, up to about 780 meters elevation, just nearby HK’s largest peak, Tai Mo Shan. Caught the sunset here, with great views towards the sparkling urban areas in the distance.

Needed 2h30′ for this climb and went a little higher in the ranking, 62nd spot.

Final climb (km 39.5 – 49.5)
OMG, last climb. Almost finished. Tarmac + steps to the top (640 m elevation). Tarmac + steps to the finish line. Great views towards this part of Hong Kong (Fo Tan).

It got dark on the ascent. The trail was well marked (reflective tape and some blinking lights) and there were still people around me, so no chance of getting lost. Was really looking forward to running down some trail in the dark, but there were no more trail sections left.

Tried to beat the 10 hour mark, only to be slowed back down by my knee. Managed to pull off a sprint finish, as some other dude wanted to overtake me. Obviously he didn’t succeed. Finished in 10h09′, an unexpectedly good time given how I felt during the race. 66th overall, out of 493 at the start and 375 finishers. Got a great finish photo, cudos to the organisers.

They had an online scoreboard. Pretty cool system. Besides the instant results, friends at home could also see average speed per checkpoint, how somebody’s ranking evolved throughout the race and how they compared with the leader. Here’s how my race page looked like.

They offered beer mugs instead of medals. Will be pretty hard (not to mention awkward) hanging it from my neck. But definitely not as hard as this race.