Race Day Countdown

Getting runners excited about the upcoming race on Sunday

The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon is in its 23rd year and the race will be held this Sunday.

Having been sick for the past month, I'm not exactly in tip top shape for the 10K, but I have decided to do my best. These last few days I have managed to do some decent training and pleased that I've done OK.

There is one giant loop to get T-shirts...

This year there have been some changes in how participants pick up their T-shirts and running bib and after this event is over, there's going to be a barrage of complaints.

While participants are able to pick up the T-shirt and bib number on any of the four days starting yesterday until Saturday, there's been chaos in figuring out what is going on.

It turns out runners pick up the bib number along with their coloured bag depending on their race and time in one place, and then their T-shirt on the grass pitch in Victoria Park.

I was confused and got into a line and then soon realized it was for the T-shirts when I hadn't even gotten my bib number yet. Luckily the line wasn't too bad, but like everyone else, was wondering why couldn't we get the T-shirt in the same place too like we used to?

After I got my running bib, then I had to join the line I had mistakenly gone to in order to get onto the grass pitch to pick up my T-shirt. There was a massive backlog and at one point the entire walkway was covered in several lines weaving back and forth.

Eventually I finally made it to the grass pitch and then it was separated between men and women and from there I got the T-shirt in minutes. Why did it take so long? It just seemed so strange to have to line up twice.

... and there was a mass of people closer to the grass pitch

Also this year there was no paper notice mailed to us to pick up the running kit -- it was all done online in the hopes of wasting less paper, but I saw many people print out the email with a giant QR code... kind of defeating the purpose of trying to reduce paper usage.

Another feature for 2019 is that the bibs have our names on them. Whoohoo... organizers thought this would help people on the sidelines to cheer for us. But for the 10K run, hardly any spectators are allowed except towards the finish at Victoria Park... oh well.

Now that I've gone through the effort (and frustration) of getting my bib number and T-shirt, I guess I will be running on Sunday!