Macau Marathon - 12/7/2008

So here I am again, about a week too late but the race report from the Macau Marathon finally is here.

Needless to mention that due to my laziness I missed the early-bird registration at the end of October and ended up paying twice as much for the race as I could have, had I registered a few days before. In either case, the HKD 600 entry fee (about CAD 90) was still about 100 times as much as this race was worth… More on that later…

We boarded a ferry from Hong Kong Central to take over to Macau which is also a Special Administrative Region of China and is a former Portuguese colony (‘till 1999). The ferry takes about an hour and is quite comfortable. Upon arrival we walked around the downtown area where the Portuguese influence is clearly visible. Some buildings and storefronts are very reminiscent of Mediterranean Europe. Once again, preparing for Santa’s arrival in 25C weather is not quite what I am used to… After walking around for the entire afternoon, sightseeing around old town and visiting some casinos we retired early to get ready for the 4am wakeup call…

Next morning came rather soon; I took a cab to Macau Stadium where the race started promptly at 6am. I hooked up with fellow AVOHK member Tom Booth who was aiming to run his very first marathon under the magical 3-hour mark. Our projected pace was similar so we stuck together. The mass start included the marathoners, half-marathoners and the mini-marathoners (5km). There was no seeding, no corral system so 30 minute 5km runners ended up in the first row… Argh… After going through the first 5km a bit slow we settled into a decent pace that would allow us to recover the minute and a half we lost due to slower runners in front of us. Running on smaller access roads in the dark was a bit unusual. Once the mini-marathoners turned back to the stadium, the field thinned out a little which was even better after the half-marathoners departed the course at 21km. The course was made up of one loop of 21 kms that the full-marathoners had to run twice.

During the second loop the field thinned out. The sun was fully up and shining brightly and we were still hitting our 4:13min/km pace. After crossing the Ponte de Sai Van for the third time at 30 km I could have used a sport drink but there was NONE around since organizers only offered water and wet sponges to the runners. I never thought a marathon existed these days that did not provide the runners replenishment such as Gatorade, Powerade or such drinks. At 33km Tom and I separated and I pushed the last 9 km or so a bit harder and after going off-course for about 60 meters total, out of anger I was able to run a handful of kilometers in 3m 30sec, a sub 2:30 marathon pace.

Runners had to run an unexpected circle around the block before entering the stadium for the final 300 meters. The lap around the stadium was reminiscent of the marathon finish in Amsterdam. I crossed the finish line in 2:55:37, a great time for a challenging training run.

4 bananas, 2.5 liters of water and 3 Kit Kat bars later I found a way to the baggage check area and managed to change out of my sweaty running gear. Since it was still only 9:30 am, we headed back to the hotel, cleaned up a bit and enjoyed a delicious Portuguese meal on a sunny patio. We grab a few more Portuguese egg tarts, pork chop buns and an extra large bubble tea before heading back to Hong Kong late in the afternoon.

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