KOTH- Tai Po

Last weekend saw me racing at the final event in the King of the Hills mountain marathon series at Tai Po (36k/ 1940m+). After getting lost in the previous event a couple weeks ago at Sham Tseng ( awesome course if you manage to stay on it incidentally) I was keen to avoid any such fuck ups on this outing. Fortunately I've done the Tai Po course before so it is much more straight forward to navigate and helped by the fact that it was really well marked through out.

The day started with weather that would not have been out of place in the west of Scotland. The pissing rain was going to make for a slippery day out. The starts were staggered with the half marathon field starting at 09.00 and the full marathon at 09.15. This was to ease congestion with 500 people thundering towards the initial climb up Cloudy Hill. I think there were a few eyebrows raised among the front runners in the full marathon who were a little concerned about having to pass most of the half field. As it turned out it wasn't too bad.

Pat Sing Leng in the cloud

The race itself was pretty straight forward. I was trying not to kill myself going up Cloudy Hill and then over Pat Sing Leng. With Jeremy off the front as usual I just kept an eye on the effort while keeping just behind Will and Bob. My legs were still feeling the remnants of the previous weekends 50k and I was concentrating on not breaking my neck running down some of the sections of slippery steps. Will and I cruised along the ridge together admiring the spectacular views. On the right the clouds had acumulated on one side of the ridge completely covering Tolo Harbour yet there were unobstructed views off  towards the mainland on the left. It was worth hauling ourselves up there just for that.

After our allocated one cup of water (which Keith and his crew have to lug up there on their backs the day before so its much appreciated) we then slithered down the rough and slippery decent through the bush, swinging around the trees and laughing at the absurdity of it. I've long since accepted that I suck at this type of terrain and I'm pretty sure I lose several minutes every time a course takes us down one of these sections. Which in Hong Kong hill races is all too frequent. At the bottom of this section the course joins more runnable trails descending down to Brides Pool Road and the half way point. Here I put a small gap on Will before the check point, necked a few bottles of water and disappeared off into the woods again. 

On the way down to Brides Pool Photo: Wong Ho Fai

The remaining part of the course is disorienting and seems never ending. It makes for very fast running and has a deceptive amount of ups and downs over the various headland around the peninsula. There is some fine rough trail running but it really doesn't compare to the proper mountain running found on the first half. I was moving reasonably well and caught up with Bob Shorrock just as he was leaving CP4. He disappeared while I was still glugging water and refilling my bottle. I could see him in the distance but he was going like a train and I never quite manged to get on the back of him. I started to feel a few crampy twinges coming over the hills towards the last check point so took the foot off the gas a little here until it passed. The final section is again deceptively hilly with several stiff climbs back over towards Brides Pool. My legs were feeling happier again ( the human body is really capricious....I'm still learning to ignore its frequent complaints and remember that in most cases you can run through it). In any case I was able to run almost all of the last section which is quite a result in itself given the terrain. The final decent down to the finish was at a bit of a canter as by now I knew I wasn't going to be catching Bob today. I crossed the line strongly in 3rd, 3 minutes behind Bob and 5 minutes behind the winner, Salomon runner Jeremy Ritcey. Jeremy is one of the strongest hill runners in Hong Kong so to get within 5 minutes of him on this course is definitely and encouraging sign. 

In my own world  Photo: Wong Ho Fai

Slithering up to the final climb Photo: Wong Ho Fai

One final note. I'd never spoken to Bob before but chatting with him afterwards on the bus back to Tai Po it turns out that he is a bit of a legend. He is 53 years old, runs 90mile weeks and is getting faster each week. It transpires that he was a serious cross country runner when he was younger winning several England XC vests, has a 2.30.00 (note the zero zero) marathon and god knows how many 2.30 somethings and this year is getting back into proper training having recently lost 8kgs. He says he's about to 'start' training for the Mt Blanc marathon in June. Heaven help us next year.