Runway Run

The original Kai Tak Airport had one runway as far as I can remember.  The Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok started in 1998 with 2.  Recently a third runway has been added.  To celebrate, a 10 km run was staged this morning (Sunday) on the runway.  Initially I thought we would run on the new runway.  That would make sense, wouldn’t it?  To run on the new runway to celebrate its opening.  

It turns out we ran on the middle runway.  Actually 2 loops of half the runway.  I would have preferred to run one loop of the full runway.  But I can imagine they may need the rest of the runway to keep the airport running.  So I am not complaining.  

There was a lot of lining up.  We reported at the Asia Expo outside the airport, to the east of the usual passenger entrance to the airport.  There we lined up to have our identity checked.  Then lined up again to board the bus, which took us all the way to the western end of the airport, where the run was taking place.  There we got a good view of the bridge which connects Hong Kong with Macau and Zhuhai.  There were similarly long lines taking the bus back.  But it was all very orderly.  Everyone was polite and civil.  Nobody cut the line, as far as I could tell.  

At the staging area one got a sense of the vastness of the airport.  There were thousands and thousands of us.  Yet we occupied only a small corner near the far end of the middle runway.  We did get to see dozens and dozens of parked airplanes, large and small.  And we could see some buildings that are parts of HAECO, Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company, the company that performs maintenance on airplanes.   

The rain has stopped, but puddles remained.  Initially I was a little worried that it would be slippery.  But there were no puddles on the actually route.  And towards the end it was completely dry.  It wasn’t too hot.  Yet it was humid and we sweated a lot.  

It is not everyday that one gets to run on the runway, alongside all the airplanes.  Every couple of minutes, an airplane would land, or take off.  Initially lots of people would stop to take photos.  But soon most concentrated on running.  It was quite obvious that many are fairly serious runners.  But it was also obvious that many are not.  Judging by their shape, and the way many were walking less than half way through he run. 

While we were running on the middle runway, planes were taking off, or landing roughly 1.5 km away from us.  Hence they looked small.  When they were taxiing towards the terminal, however, they were only about 100 meters away.  From a certain angle, one can plausibly convince ourselves that we are racing the plane.  It is rather exhilarating.  

While we were running, on foot, we bumped into some people racing in wheelchairs. I gave one of them a thumbs-up.  Many did something similar.  One passed a cup of water to a lady in a wheelchair.    

When I checked my time at the end, I found, to my surprise, that I had run quite a bit faster than I normally run.  I thought I would run a bit faster, this being an actual race.  But I did not expect to be so much faster.   Even then, today I was quite a bit slower than I was 20 years ago, for the same distance.  

All in all, quite an enjoyable experience.  On a day like this, one can believe that people can actually be kind and civil with each other.