I am back to Hong Kong to participate in my hometown's marathon. I arrived on 5-Feb and collect the HKU team t-shirt.
I collect my race pack on 6-Feb and it is very very quiet in the collection booth.
Items in the race pack are t-shirt, bib, champion chip, booklet, medal and the deposit bag itself.
On the Marathon day, I woke up at around 5am, had a energy bar as breakfast, tape both feet, then take off to TST. I arrive there just before the 2nd wave of the half marathon starts. The weather is nice, 17-22 degree C with some cloud covering the sky. It is a little bit hotter than last year. I don't need to wear glove or disposable raincoat.
I warm up, deposit my bag, meet up with some sgrunners, then get ready for the start. The route is exactly the same as last year. From TST to Tsing-Ma bridge, U-turn and back across western cross-harbour tunnel and ended in Causeway Bay.
I start my first 10km in good shape. Seems that the not yet recovered flu did not have much impact. Heartrate runs between 160+ to 170+. I am able to keep up the pace with average 6:30 in the first 15km.
At the half way point, I am just 1 minute off my scheduled time. Looks promising. But around the same time, my right leg's quad suddenly cramp up. This is not my usual location of having cramp. I first hope that I can delay the start of cramp to 25km+, but...
I have to switch to brisk walk and I have to keep my pace at 8:15 for the rest of the course in order to beat the cut-off time. This started the tough part of the race. A few km more, my left leg also have cramp, then the inner thigh, and the hamstring taking turns to cramp up. I have to stop a few times to get some oil from the medical team to rub on the cramped muscle. Whenever, there is a downhill slope, I took the chance to run down it to cut a few second off, risking trigger more serious cramp. In each the checkpoint, here is the spare time that I had before the cut-off time:
15.4km 10 minutes before cutoff
20.3km 14 minutes before cutoff
25.0km 15 minutes before cutoff
33.6km 12 minutes before cutoff
37.3km 9 minutes before cutoff
39.2km 4 minutes before cutoff
42.195km 1 minutes before cutoff
You can see that I has slowed down a lot in the last 5 km. Luckily, I build up enough in the 1st 25km that allow me to slow down and still meet the cutoff time. At the end, I finished with gun time at 5:29:03 and chip time at 5:27:32.
It is slower than my 2008 Hong Kong Marathon. But judging from my health condition and the higher temperature, it is a satisfactory result.
