My Run in Hong Kong

Friday the 30th Feb got into Hong Kong. In the evening I took the cable tram up the peak to do a bit of on the ground recon for the hill run. Some of the photos following are from the afternoon. The run itself on Saturday morning was quite foggy - magic on the flat Lugard-Harlech Road circuit round the top.

I only worked out a route up to the peak - I got lost on the way back and that was quite eventful. Headed the wrong way and somehow ended up an unintentional bandit runner in a section of a trail race! I have since found out this is part of the Hong Kong Trail.

Just got back in time to checkout of the hotel with 30 mins to spare. Unexpected to say the least :)

Overall the 'run' was 16.62km in 1:48:49 (6:31min/km). My legs couldn't handle the sustained up and down inclines and had to have a number of walking breaks. The mountain broke me but I made it to the top.

Here is the elevation chart:


The section from 2.5km through to about 5.5km is mainly a +10% gradient.

Google Earth:



What amazed me about Hong Kong was it was relatively quick to get out of the city into a forest.

Running back I was fairly confident of the direction until I hit 13km then I took a wrong turn headed down a trail and essentially towards the other end of the island ;) Around 500m down the trail it forked and I ended up running in what appeared to be an organised trail run/race. Tagged along and a couple of kms down the trail noticed a fork that headed to "Wan Chai Gap Road". As my hotel was in the suburb of Wan Chai that turned out to be quite lucky indeed. Wan Chai Gap Road turns out to be a very sharp decline down to near my start point which was quite hard to run down without falling over! Had to go quite slowly.

Photos:
Partway up a nasty staircase right at the beginning. Shades of Jacob's Ladder?

About 2km in on Kennedy Road looking back to city

About 3.5km in - the infamous Old Peak Road.

Cue a km or so of steep switchbacks like this. A few walkers tramping up but apart from that it was quiet section through forest. A few walking breaks along here!

The view at the peak was amazing with the city spread out below and Kowloon across the harbour.

Trying to find out where the hell I had ended up on the Hong Kong Trail :)

I really enjoyed the experience of running in a different country - quite an adventure.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the hill climb - it really was quite steep in places - but if you are ever in Hong Kong and want a challenge it's certainly that with a great view at the top.

The peak Lugard-Harlech Road circuit is good as is running on the roads around the "Mid Levels".

If I had more time or visited again I would probably check out more of the trail paths around Aberdeen Park it was quite nice running through the forest.