HONG KONG

I have now got into a stage where I am much too far behind on my blog posts and am therefore forced to put more compact posts a while after already having left somewhere. The good thing about this is that I consequently post a lot less petty, silly stories and unnecessary details, which let's be honest, this blog is mostly comprised of. Upon arriving in Hong Kong, I was wearing about 6 layers because I couldn't fit all my clothes into my bag and this was the only way to take them with me. It was a sweltering day and I was waiting in the very slow immigration queue for over an hour in all this kit, gradually creating a sauna inside my clothes. The fact that there was no air conditioning in that room was also unfortunate. I worked in a law firm for 3 weeks, although I wasn't particularly useful to anyone and my more than ample spare time was spent on the BBC or trying to compose haikus in Korean. I managed to forget my reference at the office on the last day and came back a few days later, unshaven with jeans and a tshirt to collect it. Fortunately the lady at the front desk was amused and I didn't run into anyone I knew.
Hong Kong has a ridiculously good transport system and is very well organised, so getting around was easy enough. Every one also seems to know everyone. I also got a good taste of Hong Kong's night life with a few wild nights out. In one of these I lost my phone in the middle of Wanchai and walked halfway up the Peak hill because I had no money, and in another I had to climb from the roof of a 7 story building onto the roof of a 6 story building using a scaffolding (did I mention that I'm bad with heights?).  Another tedious task that I was unwillingly involved in far too often was going on useless shopping trips, which created experiences for me that will forever live on as some of the worst things I have ever done. My eating hit a peak in Hong Kong and I gained 9 kgs in the space of a month... It was not all muscle.
I did a mountain race while there, called the Tai Po King of the Hills. It was a 36 kilometre run with 2500 metres of elevation gain and another 2500 of elevation loss. Daunting as this challenge was for me, I succeeded in doing an unreasonably small amount of training, comprising of a few sprint sessions up hills that never exceeded 15 minutes. The beginning of the race was a little slow because we went straight up an endless hill and there were several hundred runners (about 500 for the half run at least). It was gruelling as it was literally just straight up with a few steep downhills for the first 11.5k, finishing with a devastating little trail that went straight down, through bushes and whatnot so that I couldn't see, for 2.5 kilometres. All of the trails on this race were rock too, so my legs took a battering. After the first hour, my hip was already in serious pain but, being stubborn and irresponsible, I reminded myself that if I started it I was finishing it. The half (14k) took me 2 AND A HALF HOURS, and I was probably just in the top half at this stage. The trails remained rocky for the rest of the race and by the 3 hour mark I was already starting to hurt, a lot, because it got flat for a long stretch and my legs didn't appreciate this much. My race was almost ended by a wrong turn that I took, straight up a hill. It had the same yellow ribbons as the race, so I figured it must be right, until after 40 minutes I ended up on a beach in the middle of nowhere. Extremely frustrated, I headed back up the same path, and over an hour after originally taking it I came back to the spot where I had taken the wrong turn. It was a mental blow, and the rest of the race was very grim. I caught up with a good amount of people who had passed me during my little escapade, but although at the checkpoints I was keeping hydrated and had my own drinks anyway, I hit a pretty long stage where I was in serious need of vomiting. After what seemed like an eternity of going up and down hills again and just putting one foot in front of the other, I reached the 5k left mark and although I had to keep stopping to wiggle my legs (they were trying very hard to cramp up on me and the "wiggle" is a good defence mechanism against this), I finally reached the finish line in 6 hours and 33 minutes. It took me another hour and half to get home, and I had only had some chicken nuggets and two Starbucks quiches. I didn't get anything like enough post-race food and didn't sleep enough the next week due to a little excess partying, so had and still have some tiresome hip problems. I figured that the hour I lost accounted for at least 6 k, so I have decided that I am an illegitimate marathoner now.