This morning I woke up feeling really happy with lots of gratitude, even though I also felt the pain and swelling everywhere…

The Raleigh Challenge 2012 is my first ultra. When I first received the flyer of this race, I thought it would be an ideal distance for a first ultra, 78K. It turns out that distance is not an indication of the level of difficulty. As one of the runners put it quite well yesterday, “I can’t even begin to describe what this race is about…”

The mountain ranges of the Wilson Trail are paced in such a way that one has to deal with the toughest challenge at the most exhausted and weakest moment.

I got a lot out of joining this race. I started training from almost zero in July to finishing a race after 8 weeks and saw improvement of my physical ability and mental strength. The race also compressed a lot of interesting experience in some 20 odd hours. 

 

There were two weakest moments when I almost cracked. We were done with about two-third of the distance but by then it was already past 2 am and I was completely exhausted. The remaining distance to be covered was the Pat Sin Leng. At that point, sitting in the park, I really felt that I had no energy left, and to have to handle one of the toughest mountain trails in Hong Kong was almost unthinkable. But looking at my teammates, thinking about their encouragement and support over the past months, I couldn't get myself round to say withdraw.

 

As I was making my way up Cloudy Hill, I started to remember how Sam took me to do a first hike there two months ago. Up till the time of the race, I still was not able to piece all the different sections of the competition trail together. I went up the stairs and started to realize how everything finally came together at that point of time and it was a perfect moment of completion. 

There were also iconic moments. It was 6 am when we arrived at the entrance of the Pat Sin Leng country park, along with a few dozens of runners. By then everyone had been running for almost 20 hours and were almost dead. Everyone just laid flat on the ground, motionless and it was almost complete silence. It felt like the scene of a disaster movie where everyone had died. By 6:45 am, the runners were up one by one like zombies, dragging their heavy bodies up Pat Sin Leng.  

It still amazes me as to how I managed to have this wonderful mix of team members. I am so grateful to my teammates. Each one offered me something unique, and helped me improve my physical ability and the mental preparation for handling the race.

Thanks Sam for friendship, care, support and expertise and for taking me through this journey in the past few months, helping me with training, preparation and crisis management. I still think that it was an act of God that you decided to join our team, purely to test your patience in waiting and sleep deprivation. But I really appreciate and enjoyed every moment of it!

Thanks Bo for being a great and caring training buddy, helping me improve physically and my mental strength. Also thx for your patience in waiting and for helping me with details (coz I am very weak on details). Again, your fitness levels belong to a different league, but then I guess you didn’t know how slow I was when you first signed up.

Thanks Yellow for exploring the Wilson and other trails with me earlier on, and for going through the toughest stage of this race with me when I almost cracked. I will always remember the two of us limping through the Pat Sin Leng and the last 8K together, supporting each other.  

The encouragement and support of all three of you was what got me going and the experience wouldn’t have been awesome without you. I have also really enjoyed the interesting conversations during the past few months of training. I owe you all a lifetime of good cooking!

As much as it is a monster, there is something fascinating about the Raleigh. Someday, I might want to be back to do a night race or to attempt under 22 hrs.

I feel as if my new life as an ultra junkie has just begun.