The long run

Finally clicked over the 30 km mark. Prior to signing up for this event the furthest I'd ever run was 21 km. It's all relative where 20 km feels like a non-event. Roughly 2 hours (for me), but with this week's run of 34 kms, it took me just under 4 hours. That's a long time to be out running. Aside from actually running that long, the other challenge is finding long enough routes.

Have found some decent routes in excess of 30 kms in Sydney, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The challenge with Singapore and Hong Kong is that during this time of the year, it gets hot, quick. So even starting at 6 am, but the time you've wrapped up it's almost 10 am and it's warm. 

Hong Kong Q2 Dump

Not a whole lot to report here. In between the travel between Singapore and Sydney it's really just been sparse amounts of socialising and a huge amount of running. Four times a week, Saturday easy run, Sunday long run with intervals and threshold between. Some highlights include, MTG, Farewells, Dragon Boat Festival Zhongzi, Coldplay, long runs with visitors to Hong Kong, Hikes, Blood donation, Jimmy O Yang, and Udatsu Sushi, Lei Yue Mun fish markets with cousin.

Juizhaigau

Final destination in the 10 day Sichuan Easter adventure. Once again back on the high speed train, back to Chengdu before interchanging for another train to Huanglongjiuhai. A recently built station which allows visitors to access Jiuzhaigou Valley and the Huanglong Area. This time of the year (April) happens to be low season. So it was busy, but not busy busy. Apparently during peak season, they allow up to 40,000 visitors into the Jiuzhaogou Valley per day. Our days were capped at 20,000, but it still felt like a lot. The things about China parks is that there's no opportunity to explore, it's one path, one direction, look at this mountain, take a photo of this lake. With so many people it's easy to understand why they have adopted this philosophy for tourists.

We stayed at the amazing Ritz Carlton Reserve in Rissai Valley. Snow capped mountains in the background, clear star spangled skies at night, beautiful alpine scenery, turquoise lakes and blues of every shade all while surrounded by thousands of Chinese people.

Chongqing

Up until 6 months ago Chongqing had not existed on my radar of places to visit. That was until I recently found out that it was famous for Hot Pot. Well, famous for other things, including being a major Sichuan hub, and the previous wartime capital of China. but Hot Pot is what stood out in the description.

From Chengdu we caught the high speed train to Chongqing covering approximately 300 kms in just under 2 hours. My brief interaction with the Mainland train system left me quite impressed, everything was clean, on time and efficient. Interestingly the trains will allow patrons to purchase tickets for seats, or just tickets to be on the train. So through the train, there's punters sitting in unoccupied seats, moving around to the next available upon actually owner returning. At the few stops, passengers would stream out and smoke cigarettes before rushing back onto the train. They love the cigarettes out here. The train stations too were also impressive, carrying all sorts of snacks, shops and restaurants.

So what is there to see in Chongqing. Well, this city is HUGE! I don't use that description lightly. Of all the cities that I've visited, I would say Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai are probably the biggest I've visited. But something about Chongqing was seriously mind blowing. This city is really huge. Boasting one of the largest populations in the world and the largest metropolitan cities by land mass it really is an impressively looking city. The downside, is that it's so busy and that it was quite heavily polluted during our stay. 

Ok so back to the main attractions. Hongya Cave, the cityscape with lights:

Train that goes through a building:

Cablecar:

Eat spicy things:

Three Gorges National Park:

Eat more spicy things:

World's largest hot pot restaurant (seats 5,800 people):