Changhua marathon
I feel the earth move
27.4.2024



Korea or Taiwan?

After Manila marathon I considered going to Korea or Taiwan as the next one. Both would be a new country to visit, and both have several marathons to offer. The actual choice was more troublesome as most web pages of the many Korean marathons did not work in China, their registration deadline had been expired, or the Korean language was just too much for me to handle.

Taiwanese marathons were not much better in this, but I managed to register into one. Only problem was that it required some local payment system. The event itself was relatively small, only 194 participants (141 in marathon). It was organized somewhere in the countryside without any idea how to get there. I was ready to give-up because of this uncertainty but after sending two emails the organizers replied with a detailed instructions and agreed cash payment on-site would be ok. I immediately decided to go for it.



Travel

My original slogan in this web page was “It is all about logistics” but it changed later. Anyway, the following section will be lengthy and extensive discussion about how to travel in China. If you are not interested, just jump over directly to the “Taiwan” or the “The race day” sections.

The logistics was mainly the same as for Manila marathon: fast train from Shenzhen North to Hong Kong Kowloon (18 mins), then Airport express to Hong Kong airport. I reserved enough time, and everything seemed routine. However, there was more to learn about traveling in China. Having ticket and being early at the railway station is not always enough.

I left home 14:00 to metro station by walking (10 min). One station to Shenzhen North (5 min). The station itself includes two metro lines, bus stations, mall, the railways station itself, and whatever else. I knew my way and arrived at the gate 30 mins before departure (14:55). Time to get some Lucking coffee (12 CNY) and wait for the train.

There was huge line in front of the gate I was supposed to enter, and the boarding seemed not to start. Some delay with the train I thought. Once the line had crawled through the gates and it was my turn, surprisingly, I was denied entry. I had patiently waited my turn in line only to realize that I was 1 minute too late, and my train had just departed downstairs just few steps away. What…?

There are 20 tracks lined up linearly in one huge hall – easy to find. My gate was 10. The gates are organized in pairs sharing the same six or more automatic control points with automatic face recognition and ID reader. Passport holders (foreigners), however, need to use the manual controls as the other ones lack passport reader and can handle only Chinese ID card.

The gates 10 and 11 seemed to be boarding at the same time. I eventually concluded that all these people were boarding gate 11. The passengers to Hong Kong via 10 had already boarded. Do not know when and how, as I never saw anyone enter there. Probably the number of passengers to Hong Kong was just so small compared to the other destination that I never noticed. Reminds my Kazakhstan marathon trip where I made similar mistake by boarding to wrong bus and almost entered to Istanbul flight.

The two pictures below reveal the story. First picture shows that boarding to Hong Kong had green color already while everybody seems still is waiting. The second picture with more crowd, both trains are now boarding (green). The information was in front of me, I just did not read it correctly. Hong Kong did not suddenly become such a hot spot for Chinese in Thursday afternoon; the big crowd waited to enter the other train departing 10 minutes later to Yichang East in Hubei province. I still have few things to learn about travelling in China.


Figure: Gate status at 14:46 and 14:51. The small detail (green color) shows that Hong Kong was boarding already at 14:46, and both gates were boarding at 14:41.


Should I blame the poor organization in the railway station or my own stupidity? I have learned a Chinese proverb:
When you blame others, you are in the beginning of a journey.
When you blame yourself, you are halfway.
When you blame nobody, you have arrived your destination.
Not sure which stage of the journey I am, but it was time to put some panic mode on and run. I soon learned the location of the service counter. I also learned that my stuff in the laptop bag is rather loose, and that people in the railway station can be helpful and do not steal. Both my dropped mobile phone and metro card were collected and returned to me by fellow passengers who had followed me to the service counter, one by one.

I also learned that I could change the ticket for free. The customer service guy was very supportive and helpful, which is not so common in Shenzhen, and solved my case superfast even allowing to jump in the line. However, the new ticket was issued to a train 55 mins later than my original train making it really tight.

I had Train ticket App in my phone and quickly found two earlier trains. Who cares about the extra 10€ cost if it can save you from missing the flight? But the system did not allow. Probably it stops selling tickets to trains departing within the next 30 mins or so. The App gave a non-informative English message failed to purchase. Well, if the system does not allow it then it is just not going to happen.

I remember when I had installed the App in my phone. It required a lot of information including a passport picture and a selfie of myself holding the passport showing the photo page. This was the easy part. More annoying was to go to train station to active the App. In my case it meant North station. Searching the correct counter without any (Chinese) language skills by trial-and-error, waiting in an awfully long (and slow) queue, and restarting it from scratch when the ticket counter suddenly closed when you are halfway there. I think this took almost one hour. North station ticket counters are the places to avoid. Having the App is must.


Figure: My original ticket (left). Some of the info required to register the train ticket App (right).


So, all the extra time to avoid stress in Hong Kong was wasted already in Shenzhen railway station and the Amazing Race was on. I had left home 14:00 and my flight was supposed to depart 18:15 from Hong Kong airport. Plenty of time, right? See also my schedule in the Manila trip in February.

After having the new ticket and, I peacefully entered my new train 15:50 and arrived Hong Kong Kowloon high-speed station 16:08. This connection is new, only about 1 year old. Alternatives to the airport include shuttle bus (coach) or normal bus from the border (35-40 minutes), and a ferry from Shekou port to airport. They do not go to Hong Kong downtown, but you need to get to travel to the border which you can avoid by taking the fast train. This takes 30-40 minutes by metro, Shekou ferry port probably even longer. The shortest route is not always the fastest. I have tried most alternatives, and the fast train route has been my favorite recently.

The high-speed train is smooth, and an excellent choice especially when you go to Hong Kong downtown. To reach the airport you need to take Airport Express, which takes 25 min. But to get there, you first need to pass the Chinese immigration (exit mainland China) and Hong Kong immigration (enter Hong Kong). This usually takes 30 min but this time a bit longer as there were lots of foreign tourists especially from Germany. Both immigrations work fast especially the Hong Kong side. This part is unavoidable no matter which route you take.


Figure: Walking from fast train station to Kowloon West is mostly indoor but includes a quick glance over the Hong Kong Island to south.


After passing the immigration to Hong Kong, one needs to walk 1 km via various corridors and elevators to the Kowloon MRT station and find the Airport express train (15 min). Buying the ticket (105 HKD) is easy (cash) and the train itself is fast and relaxed (25 min), with WiFi to entertain yourself. I started to look for hotels near the airport in case I would miss the flight. At least, I would not get to the check-in by the required 1-hour deadline. HK Express allows on-line check-in but still requires to collect the boarding pass from the counter.

At the airport, I arrived the HK Express check-in late but was given the boarding pass anyway. She just told me to run. Most time took lining up to the security, immigration (exit from Hong Kong), and the actual running (mostly just fast walking) to the airport shuttle and then finding the gate 208 in the mid-field terminal. I arrived there 5 mins before the scheduled gate closing. The flight was 20 min late so time to get some coffee from the neighboring Starbucks.


Figure: Last minute coffee before the departure. I had to smugly the reminder to the airplane as HK Express did not allow outside drinks. The personnel suggested to hid it in my bag.


Logistics: Shenzhen or Hong Kong?

One might wonder why not fly from Shenzhen. It is indeed a good option as it would avoid the China / Hong Kong custom control but otherwise it is not any faster. My logistics to Hong Kong by the two trains takes 5 + 18 + 15 + 25 = 63 minutes + immigration + potential hustle. I can reach Shenzhen airport in about 1 hour by metro with 2 changes. It would save the time in custom, but the downside is that there are less good flight options from Shenzhen. So, I again chose Hong Kong.

Shenzhen airport is already quite big. Can it grow more? I guess it depends how many travelers come from mainland China and how many from Hong Kong and elsewhere. Traveling via Shenzhen is meaningful only if you are already in mainland China. Foreigners need visa. China has recently increased its visa-free policy for selected European countries with limited stay (and transit) but I doubt it would make Shenzhen better transit place than Hong Kong already is. Hong Kong is therefore likely to remain the hub for international travelers whereas Shenzhen will serve the Chinse travelers. So it just depends on the volume on these groups, according to my simplistic analysis.

Taiwan

I arrive to Taichung, city in the middle Taiwan west coast at 20:00 in the evening. Not sure about the size of the city but the airport was relatively small and extremely smooth. I had paid few euros extra to sit in front (row 6), and it took just few minutes to get out of the airplane and walk through the immigration and customs. I was first from our plane. The guy coming second confirms he also likes this airport because of the easy arrival. There was even a friendly dog greeting the visitor.

I found an ATM and after some calculations, I took 10,000 Taiwanese dollars to cover my expenses, It should be enough to cover the hotel, taxis, food, and marathon participations. Amazingly, I had 200 remaining when departing Taiwan. At this stage, I just wanted to get to the hotel to get some rest, so I took a taxi instead of learning the Taiwanese railway system (if any). There were plenty available, and the driver seemed to understand where to go; Changhua city, 35 km south. The highway was fast - 25 minutes.


Figure: Taxi trip from airport to my hotel located just next to Changhua station where plenty of taxis, which became my main mode of transportation in this trip.


It was dark and rainy weather. My short city sight-seeing tour would be next day (Friday) in this small town. No idea whatever small means in Taiwan scale; in China it would mean something about city of only 1 million. Here it is probably more like in Finland. The Saturday sight-seeing tour was going to be a bit longer, 43.2 km, but repeating the same 3.6 km country-side road back and forth. Well, maybe it is a good road worth run who knows. The organizers and participants were told to be local running enthusiasts.


Figures: Some pictures from the Changhua city (population 226,500).


The Race Day

The race was scheduled early morning at 5:00. I set up alarm clock 3:30 but did not need it. The nature arranged a wake-up call of its own at 2:21. First I heard two abnormal beeps from my phone and immediately after that the house started to shake: earthquake. It did not last long but woke me up alright and did not manage to get more sleep after that. The magnitude was 6.1 and the center was at east coast, but it felt all the way to west coast and Changhua.

 
Figure: My wake-up call was this message Presidential message followed by shaking the house after few seconds. The epicenter was about 100km to the east.


I wonder if this happened to Finland how our president Alexander Stubb would react to it. Maybe like this:
Heippa kaikki! Alex tässä, moi. Mannerlaatat vähän liikahtelevat vain. Olkaa rauhallisia ja hakeutukaa suojaan. Älä käytä hissiä vaan portaita. Se kohottaa kuntoa ja mikä sen hyödyllisempää kuin yhdistää liikunta ja hätäpoistuminen. Voit tehdä sen vaikka intervalliharjoitteena edestakaisin. Nähdään taas lenkkipolulla!

Ciao everyone! Alex here hi. Earth plates just move a bit. Keep calm and seek cover. Use stairs, not elevator. It increases your fitness and what is better than combining exercise with immediate rescue. You can make it also as an interval training repeating several times. See you soon in the jogging trails!
The sneezer came half an hour later (5.8) to make sure the marathoner would not sleep anymore. There were seven earthquakes within the hour, but I only felt the two biggest ones in Changhua. There has been many after shakes after a big earthquake in early April, which was the biggest in Taiwan in 25 years.

Anyway, the shaking did not cause any visible harm and no actions were required, like moving out of the house. My only worry was a possible race cancellation, but I suppose it was such a small that business would continue as normal. I left to the venue at 4:00 by taxi.

The event was called something like a countryside marathon, too remote to reach by public transportation. Based on the advice of the organizer I took a taxi (25 mins, 440 TWD) and reached there early enough, more than 30 minutes before the start. The great advantage of a small marathon is that you do not need to worry about road closures and cancellations of tram lines or be there super early because of being so crowded.

The start place was at Changhua Phra Phrom Temple along a mountain road. The course consists of 1.7 km downhill, then turning left and climbing 1.9 km uphill along another mountain totaling 3.6 km. And then returning to the start place. This 7.2 km back-to-back was repeated 6 times making the total length was a bit more (43.2 km) than a full marathon (42.195km).



The runners were required to use a headlight for the first lap (but only a few did) and have their own (eco-friendly) cup for drinks. I had my previous night take-away coffee cup which I carried in my hand.


Figure: Start of the race in dark. Most of runners joined the 43k (141) and 50k (4) starting 4:00. The other distances were 7k (13), 21k (4), and 28k (32) started one hour later with 49 finishers.


The race started on time, but I missed it by 10 seconds or so and had to pass other runners to catch the leader. From the pictures of the previous event, I had concluded the field was mostly older runners and not likely any young hotshots. The leader looked strong enough to be a serious contestant and maybe the two others following near-by.

Soon I passed the leader and became the new leader. The only one in front of me was a guy with a scooter. I hoped I did not need to follow the scooter for the entire race. Luckily, he stopped at the end of the first round.

There was a food and drink service at the start place, a drinking station halfway (at the crossroad in the valley), and some kind of table at the turning point. I started to use the halfway station every time I passed: sport drink on the way, water on the way back. There was only a small table with self-service bottles from which the runners poured the drinks into their own carry-on cup.

If there were other runners drinking, I just squeezed in rush, poured some drink superfast, drank it, and continued. I did not even try to be polite. I was fighting for the lead anyway. I had no idea what kind of drink there was, but it served the purpose. However, I still lost the lead every time I stopped to drink. I would not mind if the other guy won as I had planned to run my own race as usual. But since I was contestant for the win, the other guy would not get it for free if I just had any energy remaining in the last round.


Figure: The runners with orange number were for the 43k and blue number for 21k.


The race continued and the same pattern happened in the first three laps. I always lost the lead when stopped to drink, and my rival built a lead of 50 meters or more, and sometimes extending it during the uphill part. I first wondered did he ever needed to drink but later realized he spent more time in the uphill stations where I usually got closer, and then passed-by somewhere at the downhill section to regain the lead.

Halfway, at the end of the third lap, he disappeared to the service area, and I simply passed by already there and never lost the lead again. After the fourth lap he had fallen back already by several minutes and seemed to have gone to cruising mode, eventually dropped to fourth position. The other two runners never turned into serious threat and were comfortable behind. I won my first ever marathon!


Figure: Winner’s award plague. Visits to the turning points were controlled in two different ways. Runners wore some kind of RFID tag on their wrist which was read at the start point. At the other turning organizer added a sticker on the top of the running number (six in total). First time needed also stop for taking picture that was used in the computer for additional verification.


I felt strong throughout the entire race. I had two energy gels in my pocket but consumed only one at 37 km. I never felt tired except maybe a bit during the last uphill which was a bit slower. Part of the slowness was due to a dog in the last kilometer persistently following me, barking, jumping up and down, and not sure if wanted to bite my leg or what. I even stopped twice but the dog just did not leave me alone. Besides this incident, the race was rather smooth. I had only mild symptoms in the right foot in the first lap possibly because of the uphill/downhill running, but it disappeared soon. At the end, one nasty blister on one toe but it did not affect the running either.

The uphill and downhill have their pros and cons. First, a different set of muscles is used in the uphill than in downhill (at least this is my theory), and some of the other muscles can rest meanwhile. Theoretically some muscles need to run only a half-marathon. I have no idea if there is any truth in this simplistic view, but I felt this rhythm of alternating uphill and downhill sections helped. Of course, the uphill part was slower, but the downhill part I then felt like resting and cruising down. Another point of view is that I had trained different set of muscles that was actually used today. I stick with my first theory for now. At least it worked for me in this race.

The last lap in the downhill parts I started to sing the Leevi and the Leavings song Elämänmeno (Eng. course of life):
Ylämäki alamäki ylämäki alamäki yhdessä kulkien…
Uphill downhill uphill downhill we go together…
I did not remember more words, but this tune was in my head. Scott Jurek wrote in his great book Eat and Run that whatever song is in your head during an ultramarathon, it is better to be a good one. Even if this was just (almost) a normal marathon, my songs were all good. I even tried to make gestures and explain to some fellow runners my feelings about the hills. Probably nobody understood. But my mood was good and still was when writing this part during the flight back to Hong Kong.



Summary of the race

During this trip, I had three unique experiences:
  • Visit Taiwan
  • Experienced earthquake
  • Won a marathon.
    • My time was 3:27. If I could move the extra kilometer to my previous marathon in Manila (41km long), all my three last races would have time roughly about 3:22. Shenzhen was exactly 3:22. Manila 3:15 time plus the calculated extra 7 mins for the missing 1.2 km. Changhua was one kilometer longer so reducing it by 5 minutes would make it also 3:22. However, Changhua was hillier without any flat part at all; nothing but 1.7 km down, then 1.9 km up and the same reversed. The Changhua result is therefore clearly my best of these three.

    Total elevation based on my Strava recording is only 544 meters whereas Google Earth provides 6x122 = 732 meters. The elevation was constant but still rather small overall, and perfectly runnable. For example, the hills in China coast marathon in Hong Kong cumulated 650 meters. I had a good result there as well (3:32).

    The were no T-shirts of finisher medals but, in contrast, I got the winner’s plague plus some Taiwanese lichi fruits and a large box of some drinks, which I regrettably had to leave behind as I had a flight to catch with carry-on luggage only.

    I had never won a marathon before. In marathon, I usually fight against myself and not against others. The final rank is therefore not so important, but a win is a win. According to my stats, my previous best was #5 in Joensuu 2009 out of 109 runners. I do have a win in half-marathon in veterans’ Finland national championships in 40-years series (Huhmari, 2011), although the number of participants was only 3. In half-marathon, I also have #2 (2008) and #3 (2014) finishes in Joensuu when more than 100 participants in the men’s open. Anyway, win is a win, and this winner’s plague will surely find its special place among my trophies and medals.

    Race statistics

    Ranking: 1/160
    Time: 3:27:38
    Pace: 4:48 min/km
    Weather: +27 C (hum. 83%)



    Top-10

     1. Franti Pasi    3:27:38
 2. Chen Shiwei    3:35:55
 3. Dong Qiaozhu   3:38:39
 4. Li Zhengde     3:40:58
 5. Qiu Zongqing   3:44:39
 6. Junlian Gan    3:53:01
 7. Huang Weiren   3:53:58
 8. Shi Fa Ji      3:55:37
 9. Li Zhizhong    3:56:03
10. Dong Ruizheng  3:58:07



    The distances in the event were 7.2km (1 lap), 21.6km (3 laps), 28.8km (4 laps), 43.2km (6 laps), and 50.9km (7 laps). The number of finishers were accordingly 13, 4, 32, 141, 4.

    Back home

    The return home was smooth and all in good mood. I added the songs Elämänmeno and Martika’s I feel the earth move into my play list. Thanks a lot to Joy and other organizers for their advices before the race and helping me to get back to the Changhua station after the race. This was definitely a very good and enjoyable experience, a relaxed well-organized event. I would have loved it even if ended in the last position.

    Links:

    My result
    Results page
    Pics from the race