Today my Trailwalker team went for a run on Hong Kong Island to train for the big event on November 7. Just over 1 month to go, so the training becomes a bit more intensive now. Over the past weeks I did not really train in the mountains, because there are no real ones in either Shanghai or Holland, and that did not make it easier for me today. Likely the trainings this weekend will also be the last mountain runs that I will do before the actual trailwalker, so they are quite important to me.

I was a bit afraid that typhoon Higo would ruin the weekend, but luckily the hurricane hit land on Hainan and now reduced to a tropical depression. Because of it we had a bit of (heavy) rain, but most of the run the weather was sunny, hot and humid. I did not bring a hat nor sun creme (you don’t need that in a hurricane, do you?) so as usual I managed to get nicely sun burned 🙁

The run itself was great. Even Hong Kong Island, although home to one of the biggest metropoles on this planet, has a beautiful nature. We started off in Central, the middle of Hong Kong’s CBD and ran through Hong Kong Park to Bowen Road. From there it was up-up-up to the top of the mountain, from where we had a great view over the city and Happy Valley. Shortly afterward we could see the other side of the island and from there we ran on to Violet Hill. This all went quite easy, despite the heat.

After Violet Hill we hit the Twins, two mountains connected by a small saddle, high above Repulse Bay. That’s where I suddenly hit a wall (figuratively speaking): from one moment to the other I could not put my feet up the steps anymore. I did not know what happened to me, but I felt intensely tired and could only think about sitting down. Dolphin was right behind me and stopped as well. She quickly analyzed the situation with me and we concluded that I had not eaten enough. For breakfast I only had a cup of tea and a piece of cake from 7-11, not enough for a mountain run. So after two hours my energy level had gone down to zero and my body did not want to go anymore. The solution: a power bar and some raisins. Within minutes I felt fine again and we continued the 1200 steps to the first top of the Twins. There I ate and drank a bit more and I had no further problems during the remaining 3 hours.

After the Twins we went partly down the mountain to Repulse Bay to buy some more water and sports drink (locally produced Pocari Sweat, not sure who came up with that ‘tasty’ name). Because of the heat I drank over 3 liters during the first 3 hours, and wanted to bring another 3-4 liters to be on the safe side. And I drank most of it during the remaining 2 hours through the peaceful Tai Tam Country Park (beautiful reservoirs) and over Mount Butler. We ended at Quarry Bay from where I took the MTR back to Central and did a final run up to the Mid-Levels. A nice run with an approximate 1800 meter vertical ascent.

Tomorrow Marcel Ekkel and I will do another run, 33.5 kilometer on the MacLehose Trail (Sections 3,4 and 5). These include the two most difficult sections of the trail, so hopefully I won’t feel my muscles too much from today’s run. But even if I do I still have to run, it’s the only way to get in shape on time. But now I am first going to eat lots and lots of pasta to fill up on carbohydrates!

I arrived in Hong Kong today for two days of intensive training with my team for our 100 km Trailwalker race next month. But yesterday I got an email from one of my team members, saying that a typhoon with strenght 8 would hit Hong Kong over the weekend. I checked online and indeed it looked like a direct hit (picture below is from Thursday):

I was a bit concerned because that would mean running in the mountains would be out of the question (too dangerous with falling trees and potential landslides). But I decided to go anyway, no risk no fun, right? That seems to have been a good decision, because just now I saw the latest update and it seems Hainan will be hit instead of Hong Kong:

That means we can still go running this weekend, although there will be lots of wind and even more rain. I look forward to that, intensive sports in nature is the best way for me to relax and forget all work-related stress.

Yesterday the NRC newspaper for the iLiad contained not one but three files: the normal Thursday newspaper, Wednesday’s newspaper and a letter of apology. What had happened? The Wednesday paper that was sent out to all ePaper readers was a bit strange, to say it in a nice way. Lots of articles were about a journalist that was retiring, and from the articles it seemed like he was a combination of a god and an alcoholic at the same time. The way he did his work as a bike racing sports journalist? By drinking until the sun came up, watching the bike race on TV close to the finish line and then quickly interviewing a couple of riders. It certainly lowered my esteem for the professional traditional media journalists (bloggers sometimes report in a more professional way!).

I assumed the journalist would be very famous in Holland, but that because I did not live there since 1995 I had probably missed that. But it turns out the reason for all these articles was a different one: it was a mistake by the NRC. The paper makes a special edition of its newspaper for every journalist that leaves, with personal stories about his or her professional life. These stories were not meant for publication, but NRC by mistake sent them out to all iLiad readers. Their second big mistake in 3 days.

So the paper sent out an apology to its readers for its blunders over the past days and for this one in particular and tells its readers that they will get compensation for these mistakes. That’s fine, but what’s not so good is that they replaced the ‘wrong’ paper of Wednesday with a new updated one. They literally deleted the Wednesday paper and put a new one in its place. I think this is very wrong, they don’t get to decide what is on my iLiad! Suppose I had written some comments next to articles (which I do sometimes, just like in a normal paper), they would be gone now as well. The papers seems to try to hide their mistake in this way, but is only making it worse in my opinion. People own their content in the digital age, not the media.

NRC is doing its best to deliver new media content, but forgets new media is different from traditional media. And new media means two-way communication, so I hope they don’t mind this blog post. At least NRC is experimenting with ePaper (and the only paper in Holland to do so) and that’s something to applaud. They are not afraid to be entrepreneurial, even though that inevitably leads to some errors. I wish them good luck solving all the problems!