The Shanghai Daily regularly has small articles that make me laugh. Today’s paper contained another nice piece: a Chinese man, Mr. Liu, was walking around Shanghai’s Wusong port yesterday morning when he encountered a couple of foreign sailors. His English was quite poor but he still wanted to greet them in English, and by mistake said: “Hi gays!”.

The sailors grabbed Mr. Liu and demanded an explanation. Because Mr. Liu had no idea what he had done wrong and did not speak enough English to explain what he was trying to say, he was almost beaten up. Just in time a police man walked by and figured out what had happened. He explained both parties that Mr. Liu had meant to say “Hi guys!”, and Mr. Liu and the sailors shook hands. The story would make for a nice cartoon!

The Shanghai Daily had an interesting story today in its paper version. It turns out that most good wedding venues in Shanghai are fully booked on weekends and holidays until 2010. The reason according to the local paper is a surge in weddings next year because many people postponed their wedding plans after the Sichuan earthquake in May. Honestly, that sounds a bit strangy to me. The earthquake certainly had a big impact for a few weeks and maybe some couples postponed their wedding, but not so many that all wedding venues are suddenly fully booked next year.

I think the real reason is that people have more money than before, and young couples naturally want to show off their “wealth” during their wedding. But likely the number of high-end wedding venues has not increased too much, leading to longer waiting times. My advice to couples that want to marry next year but cannot get their preferred location: be creative!

If you cannot get the Okura Garden Hotel until next November (the article gave this location as an example), look for a different venue that you can decorate nicely and get a good catering service. For the price of a 5-star hotel you can get a lot of nice other locations. An additional advantage is that people will actually remember your wedding instead of confusing it with many other weddings that were exactly the same.

It’s Sunday morning in Hong Kong and in a few hours I will fly back to my family in Shanghai. I am sitting in my hotel room after a night mainly thinking what went wrong during the Trailwalker. Right after the Trailwalker I slept very well because I was so tired and feeling sick. But on Saturday morning I woke up and felt pretty good again. I did not have much muscle ache, just some serious blisters on my feet. To me the fact that I felt fine was not a good sign. Did I give up too easily? I thought about it for a long time and my conclusion is that I did the right thing. Continuing in the state I was in would have been dangerous for myself and would have slowed down the team even further. But it still feels very bad to give up in an event that I trained hard for.

Two people out of my team eventually managed to finish, one other person had to get out at CP 8 (around 80 km) after getting hallucinations (seeing animals that were not there etc.). Marcel and Martin finished in a much slower time than originally planned, but they made it. Completely exhausted and with some injuries, but they managed to get over the finish line. Congrats guys, you’re tough!

Was the race more difficult than other years? Some people say yes because of the high temperatures and very high humidity, but on the other hand the Gurkha’s set a new record on Friday with a time of 11 hours and 52 minutes. To me it is impossible to understand how they can pull that off. They seem to fly over the mountains. On Saturday afternoon I was at Thomas Crampton‘s place where I met one of his neighbors who also participated in the race. He finished 3 times before, but this time he (literally) passed out right before CP3 after about 35 km because of the heat. So I guess it really depends on how well your body can handle the temperature.

Saturday night we had a dinner with our team mates and the support team, and afterward I could not sleep until about 5 AM thinking about why I failed. I finally came to the conclusion that I could not have done things differently. Living in Shanghai with a busy job and a family I could not have any more (or better) training. Being in top shape is still not enough apparently to be prepared for all the mountains in combination with high temperatures and humidity. Maybe things would have been better if it had been a few degrees cooler, but I will never know that. Anyway, it’s good to fail sometimes and to learn the limits of your physical shape.

So what’s next? I made the decision not to do the HK Trailwalker again if I do not live in Hong Kong myself. It seems training for this event in Shanghai to finish in a good time is not something I can do. Next challenges should probably be in lower temperature areas where I do not get dehydrated as fast. I don’t know what’s next, but I plan to stay in reasonably good shape for the next couple of months, but not to run any half marathons before breakfast anymore like I did sometimes over the past months.

Thanks everybody for the emails and SMS messages that I received yesterday and thanks to the team for pushing me to get through some difficult parts. Like Marcel said in his speech last night, our team had an excellent team spirit. We tried to stay together and helped each other. At least I had a great time in Hong Kong, both during the practice sessions over the past months and during the actual Trailwalker. And most important, we raised some good money for Oxfam. For potential sponsors, the fact that I did not finish does not mean you cannot sponsor our team anymore (see also my post about this from last Thursday)!

Today I participated in the Hong Kong Trailwalker. I trained very hard for it, changed my diet over the past 2 months (more veggies, hardl any meat), stopped drinking alcohol, and drastically reduced my coffee intake. I don’t think I have ever been in a better shape than I am at the moment. But it seems it all did not help, because I had to pull out of the race after 52 kilometers.

The day started off well, we were early at registration and were at the front of the starting grid when the Trailwalker started at 9 AM. The weather was nice, but soon it got very hot. Official temperatures were around 30 degrees and it was very humid. Not the kind of weather I like for a long-distance run. I drank huge amounts of water and sports drink in order to stay hydrated, and also took regular salt tablets.

The heat was not just killing for me, at the second mountain already lots of people had difficulties to continue. It was so hot there, there was no shadow and no wind. To me it felt like over 40 degrees during the climb. Later in the day there were some clouds, but not enough to cool off the heat. My body felt like it was boiling during the first two sections.

Section three was a bit cooler, but because it’s quite steep it was not an easy one. My dad ran with me and he even carried my backpack. The section was OK, but not as good as I’d hoped. Marcel was not feeling very well during this section, but he managed to recover in later sections.

For me the ‘man with the hammer’ hit me around 32 kilometers. Suddenly I felt very dizzy, I had a headache and felt sick. I had no idea what happened and also not why it happened. Marcel helped me a lot and he got me to the top of highest mountain in that section. But despite eating and drinking more the man with the hammer did not go away.

At CP 4 (around 45 km) I got a doctor to check me up. She could not find anything serious, but I got some painkillers and medicine against dizziness. But that did not help too much either. At around 52 km I realized it would be the most sensible thing to pull the plug. It was a very difficult decision, I normally would never give up. But after struggling for 20 km and slowing down the team considerably I realized chances that I would recover were getting smaller and smaller. I also realized that medical consequences could be considerable if I would go on for another 48 km.

It’s a pity and I feel bad for letting the team down. Even though the 2nd part is a bit easier than the first part, I don’t think I could have made it. Sorry Marcel, Dolphin and Martin! The three of them are still running while I type this, I hope they will enjoy the rest of the Trailwalker and will still be able to get a reasonable finish time. Marcel, Dolphin and Martin, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night for dinner and drinks and hear all your stories.

Tomorrow’s 100 km Oxfam Trailwalker is not only a physical challenge, it is also an event to help people get out of poverty. All proceeds from the Trailwalker will go to Oxfam, that since its start in 1976 has assisted millions of poor people with among others schooling, health care and water. Our team will raise at least HKD 27,000 this year for Oxfam and I hope you or your company is willing to sponsor me for the event as well. There is now also a special page on the Hong Kong Trailwalker site for this at http://admin.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk/en/donation.html?walkerNo=0140B where you can donate using a credit card – Note: the site only works with Internet Explorer, so if you have an Apple like me you’ll have trouble donating any money there.

You can also get in touch with me directly at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com for sponsorships (I can take cash and deposit that into Oxfam’s account). Oxfam also takes cheques, they should be made payable to “Oxfam Hong Kong”. On the back of the cheque please write down “Oxfam Trailwalker 2008”, the Oxfam account number (Bank of China account: 012-874-0-013039-1) and our team number (number 140).

If you want to transfer money directly into the Oxfam bank account, that’s possible as well:
HSBC Hong Kong (direct transfer) A/C number 001-537000-005 or Bank of China Hong Kong A/C number 012-874-0-013039-1.

For start-ups or any other company donating HKD 1500 or more I will write a blog post on this blog about your company, of course including a link. For every person donating HKD 500 or more I offer to write a short post with a link to your blog or website. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in this. If you have any other ideas related to publicity through this blog, that you would be willing to donate money for, let me know as well.

Thanks in advance to everybody for donating money for this year’s Oxfam Trailwalker!

Three days from now my team mates and I will be in the middle of the Trailwalker Race already. I am normally quite confident, but facing a 100 km mountain race for the first time in my life is making me a little worried. Over the past days I have not been feeling 100% well, a bit of sneezing, coughing, feeling tired etc. But by not doing any sports and taking regularly Chinese medicine I hope to be completely fit again at the start line. Maybe it’s all related to the race, I don’t know, but I won’t use it as an excuse not to go for it 100% on Friday morning at 9 AM!

If you want to follow our team (Team 140) during the race you can do that on http://www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk/en/home.html. I think you have to go to the interactive zone (the exact link is not up yet at the time of writing) and on race day you should be able to track our progress from control point to control point during the 100 km race. The link should be up latest by 10 AM Hong Kong time on Friday.

I recently came across an article from 1999 in the International Herald Tribune about the Trailwalker race. If you want to know more about the event it’s a good read. The first two paragraphs already show it’s not your usual Sunday afternoon stroll in the park:

Most of the 3,600 people who took part in the annual Trailwalker race in Hong Kong would mournfully agree that the grueling non-stop 100-kilometer slog up and down the 30 or so hills of the New Territory’s McLehose Trail is an act of unadulterated lunacy.

Tales of Trailwalker-related injuries are legion, with damaged knees and horribly blistered feet being the main complaints. If you add up all the uphill and downhill sections of the winding trail, hiking the McLehose is the equivalent of ascending then descending Mount Everest nonstop.

It will be very difficult, but I still look forward to doing it. If nothing else I will at least be able to eat a lot of extra Dunkin’ Donuts afterward 🙂

Dunkin’ Donuts was supposed to open today in Shanghai, so after lunch I decided to drop by at their store. But when I got there it turned out that the store was still not open, despite the fact that last Sunday their employees told me it would open today.

I went into the store and talked to two of their managers who were on site. They told me that it would take ‘maybe 3 weeks’ before they would open. They did not explain why. The store seemed ready to go to me, the only thing still missing were the donuts and coffee.

Dunkin’ Donuts should have opened in the spring already, but that was postponed until this week. And now the opening was postponed even further. Kind of strange. Maybe they use imported machines that are stuck in customs? Or maybe they did not get their license yet? Nobobody knows, but I am sure they will eventually open.

The good news is that the managers also told me that 3 more stores will open before the end of the year, and next year another 5 will open their doors. I hope for them that they will manage to open those stores on time.

It took about 6 months longer than originally planned, but Dunkin’ Donuts will open its first store in Shanghai this week! The location: on Fuzhou Lu close to Hubei Lu, a five minute walk from People’s Square.

Yesterday I went over to take a look at the store and they almost finished their decoration. The store had a sign saying that it was not open yet, but because I could see fresh donuts on their shelves already and there were a lot of staff walking around in Dunkin’ Donuts outfits, I decided to walk in anyway. It turned out that the new staff were having a training and the donuts were there for that purpose. I asked if I could buy a donut and they said that was fine. There were no prices yet so I asked about them, but they told me I would get my donut for free! Well, that’s a nice service.

I was not allowed to take pictures inside (do I look like a spy or so?), but the store is very similar to a regular Dunkin’ Donuts store. The main difference is that the donut names were all in Chinese, there was not even an English description (yet). So if you don’t know your Chinese characters you’ll have to guess what’s inside.

Dunkin’ Donuts used to have stores in Beijing when I just started living there around the turn of the century, but they closed down soon after that. Likely because China was not ready for this product yet, but things have changed a lot over the past years. Looking at the success of Mr. Donut in Shanghai I am quite sure Dunkin’ can be a big hit as well. The location is not the best one, but I assume they want to start with a lower cost place before moving in full scale (more shops will likely open soon).

If you’re close to People’s Square, give Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and donuts a try. The store will officially open on Friday, October 31.