As darkness falls around me - Tuesday the 26th of April, 2011

I had long planned to head out on a long night-time run on a Tuesday or Thursday but only got around to it this week. So post-work, I packed up my work, changed into my run gear and set sail south for High Junk Peak, hoping to clear the treacherous parts before darkness descended.


As I head out the UST back gate the Sun is already hiding behind the fearsome Razor Hill... Never fear, as I gain a bit of altitude it'll make a reappearance


There it is, as I cruise the ~4km to the start of the trail


The great ball of fire sinks towards the horizon


Panorama shot of the dying sun. Already on the stage at this time, I figure I better stop shooting pictures and get a move along!


Golden light bathes everything making the mundane magical


As I push to near the highest point on the run, the sun finally slips in the hazy soup


Still enough light for running tho. And enough light for beautiful panoramas. High Junk Peak beckons me, just right of centre


Looking back down the ridgeline I've climbed


High Junk Peak stands alone looking south along the Clearwater Bay Peninsula


The view from the top of High Junk Peak is always special, but on this night as the world fades into inky blackness and I'm perched alone atop this sharp peak, the wind blowing hard against me, I feel entirely connected to the Earth. A small dot standing at (very locally) the highest point on the edge of the Earth.


Darkness Falls. I must have stood atop High Junk Peak for at least 5mins (which feels a lot longer than it sounds) revelling in the emotion, but I still had to descend and it was time to move on


A final shot from the top of High Junk Peak, from exactly the same spot and angle as this one.


Head torch on, my focus narrows to a circle roughly 1m in diameter. Incidentally, this was shot at around ISO1600, why they would have such a setting on a point-and-shoot is beyond me!


A self-portrait with Clearwater Bay rd twisting it's way along the coast in the background


A terrible photo I know, this guy was huge. About a foot long and much quicker than I thought he'd be, I snapped this and moved on, not wanting to provoke him!


I hit the trail end with tired legs, but fired up for the ~10km run back to UST



You all should be pretty familiar with the High Junk Peak route and elevation profile by now, I guess this is around the fourth or fifth time I've posted it!

What an awesome run, and an awesome feeling atop High Junk Peak. Better than the endorphins following a short run, the spirit following a hard fight or the exhaustion following a long run... The emotion connected to moments in time, like that one, is one of the primary pulls to keep doing what I do.

Keep running
~ Joe

Creeping Along - Saturday the 23rd of April, 2011

It feels like I haven't posted for ages, but I'm actually only a couple of posts behind! Last weekend was a 4-day super-long-weekend so I decided on one day running and one day climbing. The climbing was organised for Monday, so I locked in Saturday for a run.

I decided on a route from Tai Po rd in Hong Kong's west, through the mountain range that effectively divides Kowloon from the New Territories, and finishing down near the coast in far Eastern Kowloon. Although I'd either ran or hiked the individual sections of this route before, I'd never done it in one go. The title of this post is a reference to the fact that I wasn't really moving along at a whirlwind pace (I was quite happy to take it easy and enjoy the scenery) but also to the fact, that along the course there were numerous "creepy" sights.

First off:

Monkeys! Yes, not really that creepy, but these little thieves will chase you down, leap onto you and swipe anything that looks like a plastic bag from your pack! Better make doublely sure everything is packed inside!


The weather was pretty good for running. Not exactly ideal, since temps were a little high (~25oC), but with heavy cloud cover and a little bit of wind to cool you off.


A pine cone sits in a puddle


Electrical Hazard... You're telling me!


As I climb higher onto Kowloon Peak (Fei Ngo Shan) the clouds move in


This view would normally look down across Kowloon to the old airport site, and across the harbour to Hong Kong island. In these conditions, things were disappearing 10m in front of me!


My self portrait.... When I reached the highest point on the trail at Kowloon Peak, I spotted a short post and decided on a self portrait. So I set the 10sec timer and moved in front of the lens. Just as the timer was set to go off, a particularly stern gust of wind pushed the camera off it's post, capturing this wonderfully dark self-portrait. I tried to re-set the camera, but the wind kept intervening so I just gave up on it.


My trail follows around this corner, entirely obscured by mist... ooooooo, creepy....


Coming down off Kowloon Peak, you hurdle down a loooong flight of stairs (think nearly a km of descending!). So, as I was cruising down these stairs, one crumbled and gave-way beneath me! arrgh... luckily I didn't tumble down the entire mountain, and managed to snap this shot of the broken step


A tree I passed on my way down, splashed with red paint. No idea what it says

And when I got to the bottom, there's a little stream crossing there. As the water was still, but very clear, I thought I might have a chance to photograph another freshwater crayfish/yabbie like some time ago. So I rock-hopped down to a suitable looking spot and peered into the water.


And low and behold, I spotted two of these little guys! The first was munching on (what looked like) a leaf, and promptly disappeared when I overshadowed their little pool, but this one seemed quite content for me to snap a few photos of it!


Judging by the flattened tail, these guys are made to live under water. Maybe some kind of newt? Hmmmm.... I would guess a Hong Kong Newt and judging by the Wikipedia article, I'd say I was quite lucky to get a photo of one!


This is an accidental photo while I was trying to shake the excess water off the camera after dunking it in the stream. I think it's kinda cool!


A bright red bush as I head through Tseng Lan Shue village


And a red door as I make my way south


Another cheap water reflection shot!


And now we're seriously getting to the creepiness.

As I was climbing Black Hill (I think that's what it's called) through a dense section of jungle, the clouds moved in and these creepy sculptures appeared along the trails!


Slippery Road Be Careful! I eventually figured out that this statues were related to some small shrine nearby, but a little freaky nonetheless!


Misty hills as I approach the final section of trail from O King rd to Yau Tong


Awesome trails and awesome running conditions


Hong Kong disappears into the mist and low clouds


Devil's Peak, the final uphill section before descending into Yau Tong




It looks to me as if the route and elevation profiles aren't from the same run... the route looks very long while the elevation profile looks like it's from a <10km run! They are, in fact, both plotted from exactly the same GPS file! The steep steep descent from Kowloon Peak (the one big mountain) is clearly visible on the plot and looks a bit scary actually!

Despite in retrospect, talking about creepy, freaky and scary things on this run, none of that struck me at the time, and I had a wonderful cruise along some trails that I'm quite familiar with and some sections that were rather new!

Hope everyone else is having as much fun on the trails as me!
~ Joe

Pushed Hard - Tuesday the 19th of April, 2011

My knees were a little bit tender after a couple of running (despite the rather slack week last week), so when my regular running partner, Willie, asked if I wanted to run at lunchtime, I said:
Sure, but we'll have to take it easy.
He replied: No problem, I have a small hip niggle anyway.

Alarm bells should really have been going off at this stage. While I'm more of a long-day-on-the-trail type guy, Willie is a Speed Demon.

The pace at the outset was quite slow. Slower than I would have gone out, but I'm often happy just to cruise through a run and enjoy the simple movement and the being-in-the-environment. Gradually, however, the speed picked up like a stone rolling down a convex mountain.


Each time I stopped to grab a photo, Willie continued ahead, and I had to claw back the distance. Thus, not too many photos in today's post!


By the halfway point, we were already moving at a fair pace. No rest for me here! A small pagoda at Denon Terrace.


A quick snap of the little shop in Tseng Lan Shue

As we started the final few kms back towards UST, the pace was cranked up another notch. We ploughed down the hill (Willie, with his long stride, always easily makes ground on me on the downhill sections), and when we hit the bridge, we pushed to maintain the pace (albeit with far greater effort!).

On last weekend's 20km trail run, despite the high, hard climbs, my heart rate never broke 170, but on this run, in the final push my HR maxed out at 175. I was a little worried about my knees after the run so, post-shower, iced them but that night they came up really good. I quite enjoyed the hard ending and have decided that I should try to mix-in hard and fast runs more often. Although I love an easy cruise through beautiful terrain, there's also something something to busting your guts and pushing hard the whole way.

Running is like mouthwash, if you can feel the burn, it's working!
~ Joe

Calibration - Monday the 18th of April, 2011

While my body normally takes a couple of months to calibrate to the Hong Kong heat (by which time Summer is almost over!) it only takes two trips around a standard athletic track to calibrate my new footpod for distance and pace.


I ran an easy 1.5km through the campus down to the athletics track by the seaside


Beautiful vistas: the benefit of working far out of the city


Ready? Go!

So, I set the footpod to calibration mode and set off around the athletics track. Running on such a smooth surface with easy corners makes covering the distance a breeze. If I could stand the boredom I reckon it'd be quite easy to set a 10km PB running around an athletics track.

As an aside: I'm a purist snob who doesn't believe that running on a treadmill counts for snot. It's training. And in the same way, I'm not going to put much faith in a claim that you/he/she climbed Vwhatever or 5.something-great indoors at a gym. Not saying that people shouldn't run/climb indoors, as I reckon it's a fantastic tool. Just personally (the snob I am) don't think you can mention indoor and outdoor achievements in the same sentence. (Also 10km on a trail != 10km on a track !!)

Where was I, oh, here:

Can't imagine a better place. Both the athletics track and outdoor 50m pool are down by the seaside, and while they're quite a walk from the main campus area, their beautiful surroundings more than make up for it


Looking back up towards the campus

I followed the calibration laps (800m) with a couple of test laps (the footpod was quite accurate) and then a nice slow crawl back up the hill, through a nearby town and back to the main campus area. Quite relaxing and good for the legs after the mountainous 20km the day before.

Hope to see you out in the jungle!
~ Joe