HK50- Sai Kung

The other weekend saw the HK50-Sai Kung and it promised to be the most competitive of the three event series. Even after my rather soft second place in the HK Island race I didnt really hold out much hope of a decent placing this time in such a competitive field. Several international runners were flown in from as far away as the UK, US, Italy and Australia with others joining from China and the Philipines to compete alongside a strong line up of HK talent. I think some of them were invited by a combination of the organisers (Action Asia Events) and the ISF (International Skyrunning Federation)....not sure exactly how that is viable but anything that brings a high caliber of international runners to mix it up at HK events can only be a good thing.
 

50km Profile

The course (50k/2400m+) is an quite an enjoyable loop around the Sai Kung penninsula with some pretty technical ups and downs. While there are the usual stairs and paved concrete 'trails' and a few to many kms of road thrown in there, these are more than made up for by the rough hands on knees slog over Sharp Peak, some great technical trails and some spectacular views over the beaches. Fortunately the weather was also kind and race day saw perfect conditions with overcast skies and reasonable temperature/humidity by HK standards.

The first climb of the day

My race went pretty well. I started out pretty conservatively over the first hill then felt surprisingly good grunting over Sharp Peak and then racing down towards the beaches. I managed to get completely lost coming down off of the summit here last year but fortunately no such drama this year as everything was super clearly marked throughout. There are quite a few stiff climbs coming off the beaches and steep decents down onto the next which I wasn't enjoying too much but I managed to keep it going and pass a few people including some guy from Taiwan. At this point I was running close to SK who i have found myself along side a few times this year and we manged to get up and over the worst of the climbs and down onto the dam mostly together. 

Trying not to get sand in my shoes

Then the first to two longish road sections started.These the toughest parts of the day for me. I managed to keep pushing through them but they are just so dull, despite the views, that its easy to nod off and drop the ball. There was a brief trail section in between these two and I left SK behind on the climb back up to the road and CP3. Once back on the fast contour trail after another chunk of tarmac I was much happier and was able to push on a bit to CP4. Another brief section of road led to the final sting in the tail with a final big climb before the decent to the finish. I was feeling good by this point and was decending well so just kept up the pace as much as possible while trying not to over cook it. 

Running down steps this time

I was pretty religious about eating for once, taking on a clif gel every 45mins whether I felt like it or not, and it seemed to keep me going. I'd also been watching my electrolytes and trying to drink more than I usually bother to do. The only disadvantage of racing up to 50k with just a Simple Hydration bottle is that its tiny (385ml) so I need to be careful to drink enough and load up at checkpoints. 

Another hands on knees slog

By 40k I finally accepted that I wasn't going to blow up spectacularly and was able to keep pushing on. Slogging up the penultimate climb I caught sight of Will Davies (who had won the previous two races in the series) some way above me just as he disappeared over the top. I kept at it with hands on knees. I didnt see him down the other side but I charged down regardless and then hauled myself up the next climb. Nearing the top of this climb I realised that I now wasn't far behind him at all. I eventally caught him just before the final 5km decent much to each of our amusement. I ran 35k of the HK Island race alongside Will (before he dropped me on the bushwhack off Mt Parker) and then did the Trailwalker 100k with him in November as a late stand in on the 2XU team so we know each other a bit (Will is sponsored by Salomon so I never did find out how the Trailwalker team thing worked). Anyway after a bit of banter I brushed by and took the breaks off on the rough final decent leaving him behind. I kept the pace up to the finish to cross the line in 5th in 5.31 and change. 

The real finish ( I was asked to repeat it for the cameras...no really)

Ahead of me Rudy Gilman, an American with some crazy talent living in Kunming, China ran away with it in 4.51 followed by Stone Tsang 15 minutes behind then, Brendan Davies and Wong Ho Chung. Stone is probably HK's strongest mountain runnner and was top 20 in last years UTMB and both he and Chung run for the North Face/Champion System team while Brendan Davies is an Inov8 International athelete from Australia with a formidable running CV. I was quite pleased and more than a little surprised to win a few beer tokens and creep into the top 5 alongside this company. Chung mentioned that I was really close to him at the finish but I only found out later in the evening when I saw the published results that I was only 60 something seconds behind in the end. Not that I ever caught sight of him.

A somewhat reluctant raising of the chromed plastic