Month: May 2020

Running Through Europe Part 4

May 31, 2020Uncategorizedmathewhong One comment

This is the final part of a four part series covering my running adventures while we lived in London. Part one is here, part two is here and part three is here.

July 2018 – The English Lake District

Brompton at the Lake in front of the hostel

The English Lake District is a wonderful part of the country to visit. Especially if you are a mountain lover. After hearing all the hype I decided I needed to find a way to spend a couple of days there. I took off from work early one Friday and grabbed a train to Oxenholme in the Lake District. This trip was also my first experience with a Brompton. I rented one on my way out of London and took it on the train with me. It worked really well for getting around. I was able to ride from the train station to the hostel I stayed at, the YHA Ambleside to the various trailheads relatively easily.

I got to the Hostel in time to stash my stuff and jump on the bike to the trailhead of Helvellyn – which I never really worked out how to pronounce correctly. This was a spectacular Bike + Run. It’s easy to see why this is Britain’s Favorite walk. The weather was relatively clear – some wind but not too bad and good visibility. Most of the peaks I made it up in the UK were completely overcast so this was exceptional. I rode by the cottage that Wordsworth lived in on my way back to the Hostel. 24.83 miles, 5,068 ft of gain – bike + run.

The next morning I planned to run up Scafell Pike, England’s tallest mountain. This is the second of the British Three Peaks I attempted to climb. I again rode my bike from the hotel over to the trailhead. The weather was overcast and rainy – and quite windy. This run will always be remembered as the one when I had a nasty fall coming down from the top and cracked my head open. I used my headlamp to hold the bandage in place because it was too bloody to stick without it. I was descending through a rock field in the rain and was passing a few folks and must have stopped paying attention for a split second and the next thing I knew I was seeing stars from ramming my head against a sharp rock. After I got back to London the doctors glued me back together but I had quite the scar for a month. The hike was a bit of a sufferfest. It was great to be out but the weather limited the visibility and made it pretty miserable. 23.22 miles, 6,181 ft of gain (bike + run).

August 2018 – The Swiss Alps

These mountains are simply spectacular. I hope to make it back to spend more time running around them. We stayed in a town named Wengen and one morning I did a terrific loop up to the ridge with spectacular views of the Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger. Just a wonderful day in the mountains withe beautiful weather. We tried to pack too much in this trip – I wish we would have spent the whole time in Switzerland but instead we went to Germany to see Neuschwanstein Castle and to Salzburg for a Sound of Music fest. It was great to see a few more places but I didn’t get near enough of Switzerland. 16.5 miles and 4,491 ft of climbing.

September 2018 – Norway

Near the end of September it started to feel like our time in Europe was coming to an end. One evening on a Thursday we decided we needed to make it to Norway so we bought tickets for the whole family to go less than a week later. It was a fun trip although since I didn’t have a lot of vacation time left I spent a lot of it working from the air bnb. I also didn’t make it to the top of Pulpit Rock – although Carrie, Danny, and Kaylee did. I did get in this nice morning run around Stavanger. 7 miles, 531 ft of gain.

October 2018 – Scotland and Madeira

Ben Nevis in Scotland is the last of the British Three Peaks that I needed to summit to complete the set. One day at work I called Carrie with a crazy plan to jump on a redeye bus that night to Scotland and run it in the morning and come back the next day on another redeye bus. She kindly agreed to it despite it being a crazy plan. It was a lot of type 2 fun but I accomplished my mission and I stood atop Ben Nevis – the highest of the three peaks. It’s another area that really needs additional exploration. 13 miles and 4,383 ft of gain. Ascent and Descent.

Our final big trip as a family while we lived in London was to an amazing island that is part of Portugal named Madeira. It’s the birthplace of Cristiano Ronaldo and just a spectacular place. Amazing beaches and mountains. Birds of Paradise flowers all over the place. And it happened to be holding an ultra race on one of the days we were there. I entered at the spur of the moment. Ecotrail Funchal Madeira was an epic experience. Torrential downpours and lightning in the mountains. Intense heat running through sand on the beach. So much amazing landscape. The lavadas – the extensive network of irrigation canals make for a unique running event. I ended up in 22nd place in 6:51. Not too shabby for a unplanned race. 28.25 miles and 8,455 ft of climb.

November 2018 – London and Washington

This is just a typical Saturday run in London. Seven miles around the local parks and then picking up the Ally Pally park run. 11.15 miles and 843 ft of gain.

During November I started splitting time between London and Seattle as I transitioned to the new job – 2 weeks in London then 2 weeks in Seattle. The weekend I was in Seattle I headed up to the North Cascades for some fun in the snow trying to get to the Hidden Lake Lookout. However, it was just too snowy to see the eponymous lake. I’ve tried this hike twice now without ever seeing the well named lake. 9.15 miles and 3,159 ft of gain.

December 2018 – Copenhagen, Deception Pass, Paris, London

I had four runs in our final month in Europe that were highlights, as we really worked to pack in as much as we could before we headed home. First, Carrie and I were able to take another quick trip with Aunt Becky taking care of the kids and we decided to go to Copenhagen. While there we also took a train over to Sweden to check another country off our list. Copenhagen was a lot of fun and I did a nice 10 mile run around the city and past of of the historic sights and canals.

Next up I headed back to Seattle for two weeks and lucked into a last minute entry into the Deception Pass 50k. It was a nice welcome back to the Pacific Northwest and the trails I love.

After two weeks in Seattle I headed back to London for Christmas and final preparations to bring the family back to Bellevue. Carrie’s parents came out for Christmas and took care of the kids so we could do one more trip to say farewell to Paris. Carrie and I had a fun night run looking at all the Christmas lights but the one that stands out to me on this trip was a super early morning run when if felt like I had the entire city of lights to myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back to Paris in the new world we live in, but it will always be in my heart.

This is a bit out of chronological order but I wanted to end this post with a farewell to London run I did at the end of November when I took pictures of all of the amazing sites from my house all the way down to the River Thames. Clicking through all of these photos it is astonishing how much was just out my front door. London will always be a part of me and I think of our time there everyday. Part of why I love running is that I can experience so much more of the world by just putting on a pair of shoes and hitting the streets – both with amazing destinations in mind and never knowing what will be around the next corner. Now that I’m back in Washington I’ve turned my attention back to running in the mountains that I love and I have plenty more adventures to come – but I do miss a world where I could jump on a bus or plane and find so much rich culture just a few hours away.

If you’ve made it all the way through this series – thanks for sticking with me and indulging in all my annoying run bragging. I hope you found it interesting.

Running Through Europe Part 3

May 25, 2020Uncategorizedmathewhong Leave a comment

This is the third part of a four part series covering my running adventures while we lived in London. Part one is here and part two is here.

January 2018 – Marathon Training in London

I had my eye on two races when I moved to Europe that I wanted to participate in. One is the Ultra Tour Mont Blanc (UTMB) which turned out to be both too hard to get into and at a very inconvenient weekend for me since it collides with the Eastern Idaho State Fair. A man has to have priorities. The other race I wanted to run is the London Marathon. There are some benefits to being a resident for running the marathon. If you get a “good for age” time and you are a UK resident you can earn automatic entry. So I decided to run the Thames Meander Marathon along the river Thames on 10-Mar-2020. The qualifying time for me was 3:15, which also happened to be my Boston Qualifying time so I targeted 3:10 to have a cushion. With that in mind I build this training plan.

My typical marathon training cycle has four components that I try to get in each week – hill repeats, tempo runs, intervals (track), and long runs.

Fortunately, I lived in Muswell Hill which provided me one of the better spots in the Capital to do hill repeats. The base of the hill was right around the corner for me and I would either run up Muswell Hill Ave. to the High Street or run up a hill on the grounds of Alexandra Palace (Ally Pally) which was very close to the house. This run is on the Ally Pally hill which is a bit more scenic and has less traffic than Muswell Hill.

For temp runs my typical loop went down into Crouch End up and through Ally Pally around to Highgate Wood and back home along Cranley Gardens – which has some amazing Cherry Blossoms in the Spring. I could typically hold a seven minute pace through most of the loop which was my target for this type of run.

I also ran my intervals at Ally Pally. They didn’t have a track but they did have some fairly level areas I could run at a track interval pace. One was along the front of the main building which was a flat concrete section and the other was around the duck pond. I would run either half mile or mile repeats. I tried to hit 2:50 half miles and 6:15 miles. On this run I did 6 half mile repeats around the duck pond.

My goal pace for long runs was 7:45 and I would try to hit as many of the great parks in the city as I could. This one starts with Ally Pally and hits Queen’s Wood, the Kenwood Estate, Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill, Regents Park, a bit of Kensington Gardens (with a quick view of the Peter Pan statue), along the Serpentine through Hyde park and back. I didn’t quite hit my goal pace due to some car traffic I had to work around and some decent hills.

February 2018 – Washington, Utah, and More London Marathon Training

Padre Canyon

I traveled back to Seattle to do some work with teams there and to get back to the states to attend my nieces wedding in Utah. We were there from February 5th to 18th. While there in one week I was able to do 10 miles on Tiger Mountain, 8 miles in the red rocks of Padre Canyon in St. George – Southern Utah, and 8 miles running up some hills in Lehi, UT on the Wasatch front. It was a diverse week of running. Especially since the next week I was back on the streets of London with another long run along the Thames. This one was close to the actual course so I could get a feel for what things would be like on race day in March.

Lehi, UT

Tiger Mountain, WA

March 2018 – Thames Meander Marathon

I ran the Thames Meander Marathon on March 10, 2018. Carrie ran the half and it was fun to have a race date. I started a bit too fast and the wheels starting to come off the last few miles. I made a wrong turn that I caught before it was disastrous. It’s a relatively straightforward course – an out and back along the River Thames. It was a bit wet and I did slide on fall down on the first turn of the race. I got super muddy but it was the perfect temperature. I ended up right at my goal time of 3:09:27. It was good enough for 8th place and I had a “good for age” time to get me into the London Marathon. Or so I thought. It turns out they changed the rules a few weeks after I ran this race and lowered the required time to 3:05. So I never ran the London Marathon either. I did end up using this as a qualifying time to run Boston in 2019 though. Plus, we moved back to Seattle before the 2019 London Marathon anyway so perhaps it’s all for the best.

April 2018 – Path of the Gods, Amalfi Coast, Italy

This was one of my favorite trail runs of all time. I completely fell in love with this area. Spectacular views, challenging vert, an amazing ridge line to an exposed peak. I could see Mount Vesuvius from the top and all the way down the coast to Capri. Also, an impromptu Aid station with Tiramisu and Gelato :-). I think I took more pictures by mile on this run than any other run in my life. The only drawback was about a million stairs. We had a simply perfect time on the Amalfi Coast. Trail running in the morning and then long days of lounging in the sun in one of the most beautiful places on Earth eating pasta and Gelato. 13.62 miles and 5,518 ft of vert.

May 2018 – Disneyland Paris and Amsterdam

Not much of a running trip but we did hit up Disneyland Paris and I got in a 3 mile run. I’m glad we made it to Disneyland Paris since I’m a bit of a Disneyophile. But It wasn’t that much different than going to Disneyland in the states. Which is great since we love going to Disneyland in the states. One cool thing is that we went on Star Wars day.

Amsterdam was a really fun city to run in. Although it is epically flat. This was a really fun loop around the city and through the Vondelpark. Amsterdam has some cool architecture. 13.16 miles and 135 ft of vert.

June 2018 – Welsh 1000m Peaks Race

London was not good for my mountain legs. This race had amazing terrain but I really struggled with the amount of vert. Plus the downhill miles were very difficult. There were not well defined trails and Fell Running in the UK is much more navigation centric and I don’t have the best map skills. My pure grits didn’t have enough traction on the downhills over grass and scrub so I fell at least 20 times – luckily on soggy and soft terrain. My feet were soaked most of the race. I’m not sure I’m a convert to Fell Running. I am partial to US style trail running because that’s what I’ve grown up with. Those Welsh runners are a tough bunch.

It was also strange to end the race on the Summit of Mount Snowden – the highest peak in England and Wales. To get back to race HQ and pick up my gear I had to run another 4.5 miles down the mountain.

Hit some rough patches with bad head space. However it was wonderful to spend a day in the mountains.

This was the first of the National Three Peaks – the highest peak in each of England, Wales, and Scotland – that I summited. 21 Miles and 9,029 feet of vert.

To Be Concluded…

Only one more post left – but we sure tried to pack as much as we could into our last six months in Europe! The back half of 2018 included the English Lake District, the Alps, Norway, Scotland, Madeira, Copenhagen, Paris (again), a return to the Northwest, and a farewell to London

Running Through Europe (and Africa) Part 2

May 21, 2020Uncategorizedmathewhong Leave a comment

This is the second part of a four part series covering my running adventures while we lived in London. Part one is here.

July 2017 – Brighton

We did a lot of exploring England during the Summer of 2017. One weekend Carrie and I were able to get away to Brighton where we had a nice morning run along the South Coast of England. It was great to explore a new part of the world with my favorite running partner. 4.28 miles, 43 ft of gain.

August 2017 – Stonehenge and Cornwall

The typical pattern for a Hong family trip. We arrived at the hotel in the evening and got unpacked. I woke up before everyone else for a run. It was fun to see the famous standing stone of Stonehenge before everyone else arrived. Both since it was not yet open and I’m too frugal to pay for the entry fee I didn’t go inside but you can see the stones just fine from outside the fence. 11 miles, 495 ft of gain.

Camping in Cornwall was a bit different than in the US National Parks. Our site was basically a parking spot in a field packed together with a bunch of other campers. There was Pizza Delivery, a Panto, and a Casino. But the cliffs of Cornwall were amazing. 9 miles, 1,056 feet of gain.

September 2017 – The South Downs Way to Berling Gap

Yet another Rob Dougall adventure. Rob arranged my myself and two of his other friends to run from Lewes on the South Downs Way to Berling Gap. Along the way was some of the most beautiful countryside in England and the famous white cliffs of the Seven Sisters. Oh, and lots and lots of sheep. And some strange formation known as the Long Man of Wilmington (not worth the detour). 25.82 miles, 3,510 ft of gain.

October 2017 – Athens, Greece – Hymettus Summit

Amazing trail easily accessible from downtown Athens. Didn’t start the watch until I hit the mountain about 3.5 miles in. Took a super steep cable trail up and some more leisurely switchbacks down. Highly recommended if you are in Athens. Started and ended at the AirBnB we were renting.

It was a bonus to pass the original Olympic stadium built in 144 AD on the way out of town. 16 Miles, 2,450 ft of gain.

Crete, near Agios Nikolaos

I also had a fun bushwack through the corner of Crete we stayed at. It was more type 2 fun and I wish I had planned a better route and had some more time to explore the island. I’m pretty sure I missed some epic running on Create. 6.54 miles, 2,072 feet of gain.

November 2017 – Morocco, High Atlas Mountains

This was an epic adventure! Due once again to the kindness of Aunt Becky Carrie and I went for a weekend trip to Marrakesh. I was able to arrange for a driver to drop me off and pick me up from the mountains. I purchased a GPX route with some tips from the trailrunmorocco.com website. It was unforgettable to run in this beautiful and complete different place. Ran up an extra peak and just loved exploring mountains in a new country. Would have loved to climb to the top of Toubkal but decided to save if for another day when I had a guide. There were these amazing green valleys in the middle of these desert mountains. It was great. 27.63 miles, 4,236 ft of gain.

December 2017 – London, Hong Family Challenge and Parkruns

Starting line of the highly competitive Hong Family Challenge: London Edition

Our family has an annual tradition of a short family run on Christmas morning before we open our presents. One of my concerns with moving to London is that we wouldn’t find a suitable route for the Hong Family Challenge. Thankfully we had a loop almost as perfect as the one we have here in Bellevue. It’s a little longer than the Bellevue version but also has less climbing 1.43 mi and 154 ft of gain vs 1.34 miles and 282 ft of gain. The course record forLondon is 8:42 set on Christmas Day 2017. The course record for Bellevue was set on 20-Jul-2015 when I was tapering for the White River 50 mile ultra. We keep historical records for all participants on this spreadsheet.

Ally Pally Parkrun

In December I also participated in a few Parkruns. This is an awesome movement built around free timed 5ks on Saturdays that started in the UK but has spread throughout the world. There are even a few events in the greater Seattle area. I was lucky enough to have three different parkrun events within 2.5 miles of my house – the Ally Pally event was less than a mile away and Hamstead Heath and Finsbury Park were each 2.5 miles away. On a typical Saturday I would run five to ten miles and then catch the start of the parkrun. I miss those parkruns.

To Be Continued…

The first half of 2018 included a block of Marathon Training in London, a visit to Italy, and an epic race that summits the five highest mountains in Wales.

A Post from Another Lifetime or Running Through Europe Part 1

May 15, 2020Uncategorizedmathewhong Leave a comment

It was actually not so long ago – 2017 and 2018 – but in the current conditions it seems like a lifetime ago in an alternate dimension. For those two years we had the opportunity to live in Europe and we spent the two years intensely exploring that part of the world as much as we could – albeit as tourists tipping our toes into as many countries as we could rather than deeply connecting with the locals. We came to love our little corner of London and I miss it on a daily basis. Enough time has passed for me to forget all the difficulties of this adventure and recall with fondness all the treasured friends and memories of living in that special city. It was amazing to ride my bike past St. Pauls and run along the Thames. I spent many lunch hours running from London Bridge to the Tower of London across the Thames on Tower Bridge to the Tate Modern, crossing over the Millennium bridge to St. Pauls and back to the office along the river.

Now that we are living under restrictions due to COVID-19 the idea of traveling as much as we did with as little care and concern is dumbfounding. As I was running yesterday I remembered all the many running adventures I completed during our time abroad and I’ve put together a list of my favorites. I picked at least one for every month – although some months were so packed I couldn’t include less than four.

January 2017

Two runs stood out in January of 2017 – I’ve titled them “Goodbye Bellevue” and “Hello London”.

Goodbye Bellevue was my favorite neighborhood loop here in Bellevue. It starts at my front door and loops over Somerset Hill on neighborhood trails down to the Coal Creek trail via the Primrose Trail to Redtown Trailhead on Cougar Mountain. Then it loops through Cougar mountain via Coal Creek Falls exiting the North side of the park. From there it traverses over to Lewis Creek park and then back over Somerset Hill to home. 12.75 miles and about 2000 feet of gain. One of the reasons I’ve become a more serious runner since moving to Washington is the amazing spaces I have to run right outside my door. This route has some great views of Rainier, Baker, and Olympic mountains and passes no less than 3 waterfalls. Of the 12.75 miles less than 1 is on road.

Downtown London From Parliament Hill

Hello London was an early morning run from the temporary hotel I was staying in London during our transition to England to East Finchley – one of the neighborhoods we were considering moving to. It went past the British Museum, through Regent’s Park and along Regent’s canal. Through Hampstead Heath to catch the sunrise on Parliament Hill. I’d only been in town a few days and I was falling in love.

February 2017

The home we settled on happened to be very close to a regional trail known as the Capital Ring Walk. The first few times I was running around the neighborhood I noticed signs for it, but didn’t have any context for what it was. Later I found a great friend Rob Dougall who explained to me that is a 78 mile trail that circumnavigates the city of London. My favorite run from February was the first time we ran on this trail together – 17.25 miles starting right outside my home in Muswell Hill and ending near his home in Camden. Along the way we followed canal paths and old tail trails through London to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Victoria Park in East London and along the Regent’s Canal. Little did I know how much more of the Capital Ring I would share with Rob in the future.

March 2017

Shot from Chinscraper when I ran the Chuckanut 50k in 2015. Glenn Tachiyama – http://www.tachifoto.net

I went to London to work for Amazon. Part of the draw was that I would still have plenty of opportunities to come back to Seattle. In March I was back in town for a series of meetings and was able to spend a Saturday at the Chuckanut 50k running around and catching up with old friends. In 2015 I cramped up in the middle of this race and spent a few minutes writhing on the ground in agony. A good reminder of the amazing outdoors here in Washington and a contrast to what I was experiencing in London.

April 2017

After settling in to London it was time to start exploring. Our first destination was Barcelona Spain. I spend a wonderful morning exploring the Collserola Mountains above the city. I took a train from our Air BnB to the trail head and looped over the mountains and back to the apartment – 19.19 miles and 3,136 feet of gain. A highlight was getting ice cream mid run on Tibidabo – a hill overlooking the city that houses not only an epic Cathedral but an amusement park.

Near the end of April we also made a quick trip to Paris via the eurotunnel shuttle for the open house of our church’s Paris Temple that is next to the Palace of Versailles. I was able to meet up with a friend to run a few miles along the Seine before rejoining my family in the afternoon to tour the fountains at Versailles.

May 2017

The third country we visited was Belgium – we visited the City of Bruges on our way back from Paris and stayed at a small resort town on the coast. I got in a few miles along the beach.

This month Rob Dougall and I also spent a lot of miles on the Capital Ring. As I was turning 40 years old we were looking for an appropriate way to celebrate this milestone and decided we would run the entire capital ring trail on my birthday. We spent most of the weekend in May on long training runs getting ready for it. In hindsight I have no idea why we thought it was a good idea to do a 32 mile training run just over a week before we planned to run 85 miles around London.

June 2017

This run is titled: 40th Birthday Midlife Crisis Run. We started at 5:30 AM and finished at 11:03 PM – 17h 40m elapsed time. My Garmin put the distance at 86 miles and 4,245 ft of climb. For a while it was the fastest known time for the Capital Ring. Since then some guy named Jonathan Burnhams has run it in 13h 9m. Rob Actually ran it more than an hour faster two years later. We did it self supported – eating at grocery stores along the way. I celebrated my 40th trip around the sun with a trip around London.

Oh, and we also went to Paris in early June and Ghent, Belgium in late June. I was able to spontaneously enter the mizomer nacht run in Ghent which started at 10:00 PM on the longest day of the year.

To Be Continued…

There’s just too much for one post. I’ve decided to split it up into four six month periods. Next post will be the back half of 2017 including the South Downs, Stonehenge, Morocco and Athens among others.