Over the past few months, I have been traveling on and off, mostly to Japan, running in some races... and above all, slacking.

Luckily I still got one item on my to-do list done - a long overdue promise to take pictures of my friend's lovely daughter, Liana. We picked Nan Lian Garden, a park on the Kowloon side with a nice wooden mill and bridges, to do the shooting.

Liana was quiet at the beginning when she met a total stranger who carried an equally strange equipment on his neck, but gradually opened up with some giggles later. Cute girl.

Photos uploaded in the Galleries session. Here is a slideshow of it.

Although Monami got huge blisters (same size of her heel) on both feet and My old ITB problem came back after 30km point, we finished the Hong Kong 100km race yesterday in 23 hours 35 minutes.

Bonus happiness from our new Singaporean friend Alan and Eason from China's Guangdong. We met at around the 66 km point, where they were struggling to finish the rest of the trail. We pushed each other and finished together hand-in-hand. Running gives us strength and friendship!

Getting excited before the race tomorrow. Mo and I will be limping along with more than 700 crazy trailrunners, including some of the best friends we met in the Mongolia race last summer.
And of course, we are running for Shoe4Africa, raising fund for this inspiring charity to build the first children hospital in Kenya. Support us if you have an extra nickel!

(Picture: Timo, Mo and I training for the 100km race in Tokyo last month. Timo is the person who introduced Shoe4Africa to us.)

Amina is the three-year-old daughter of our Mongolian friend Bujima, who generously allowed us to stay at her place in Ulaanbaatar before we headed for the ultramarathon race. During the week we spent with Amina, we observed several things of her:

1) She's super energetic - she woke up before us and slept after us. Whenever we opened our eyes, she was either screaming, jumping on sofa, or eating loads of snacks...

2) She eats a lot - by 3-year-old she can finish a full bowl of udon at Sakura restaurant, a famous Japanese restaurant in downtown Ulaanbaatar. When she's done, she would also pay respect to the owner by yelling, "Oishi!!" ("delicious" in Japanese)

3) She likes photography - when we arrived at her place, the first thing that caught her eyeball was my Pentax Optio WG-1 camera. Amina grabbed my camera and played for days, taking tons of self-portraits. Here is an example of her masterpiece:

Amina self-portrait

Please visit their website and see the meaningful projects Shoe4Africa have brought to the kids there so far. If you are moved by their initiatives as I do, please support me and Monami by donating any extra dollars you spare for the cause!

My donation page (click on the image to visit the original site)

Thanks so much for your every support so far!!!

View from Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong

 Getting more and more into trails rather than roads after coming back from Mongolia. Fresher air, tougher terrain... definitely more fun!

Hong Kong is an amazing place for hikers/trail runners given its abundant options of routes and high accessibility. You can reach a hiking trail by public transport easily, have a few hours of hideaway from the crowded highways, and soon you can hit back to the main road and take a nap at home.

Among all long routes, the 100-KM MacLehose Trail is propably the most classic one in town. Streching from the eastern to the western side of New Terriorities, the trail is frequently visited by local and overseas hikers, especially from late summer until the end of November as the annual Oxfam Trailwalker race nears.

Started to do a 3 to 5-hour trail-hike every weekend. And today we went to the Stage 6-8 of MacLehose, a 20-KM climb that passes through Tai Mo Shan, the highest peak in Hong Kong where you can oversee the cityscape.

Lovely weather, lovely view and a lovely day.

Sunrise by the Hovsgol Lake, 1 hour after the race started.

The race took off at 4:30 a.m. and we had a pleasant jog during the first 12 KM, witnessing a beautiful sunrise by the Hovsgol Lake, before we started crawling up the first mountain with an altitude of about 2300 meters. 

Clearly we didn't prepare enough for trail running, and especially something hilly like this - 3 major climbs with a total of 3365-meter elevation gain/loss over the 100 KM race. By the time we descended from the second hill at about the 30 KM to 35 KM, our thighs were already souring and our speed dropped sharply.

Well, but so what? We were enjoying ourselves along the course, taking pictures of the beautiful scenery, eating loads of baked potatos prepared by local nomads and chatting nonsense with each other. To us, that's the fun part of the race.

It took us 7 hours 40 minutes to finish the first marathon (42 KM). By that time, Mo and I were both embracing an awful blister on each of our legs. We put on tapes and changed socks, continued our long match.

From that point onwards, finishing the race was more of a mental rather than physical issue - tireness was a must, it's just a matter of how you convince your body to keep functioning.

Monami dashing downhill at about 33 KM point. You can see the lake behind the mountains.

I didn't know and still don't know how Mo resurrected. She gradually regained her stamina and sailed all the way to the 66 KM mark. I kept praising and cursing her at the same time while trying my best to catch up with her pace.

Yet we were still too slow.

By the time we hit the 75 KM point, we already spent 14 hours 30 minutes. That means we only had 1 hour 30 minutes left to hit the next check point at 88 KM, otherwise we will be eliminated by the cut-off time. In fact, we were already the last two runners of the race and several horsemen were escorting us from behind, in case we wanted to give up or collapse on the trail.

So sad that I couldn't think of bribing the horsemen to give us a lift at that moment. We tried our best to limp through the never-ending 13 KM in the woods, but were still 30 minutes behind schedule when we reached the 88 KM mark.

9 p.m. Sun was setting. We had run for 16 hours 30 minutes and according to the regulations, we were eliminated.

Sigh, still 12 KM unfinished.

But it didn't matter anymore. Throughout this trip, we won friendships with inspiring runners, spent starry nights together and completed the longest distance ever in our one-year running history. More than enough for us!

Thank you everyone for supporting us and donating money to preserve the nature of Mongolia. The proceeds will be used for collecting garbage dumped at this beautiful lake and to fund education of nomad children.

Our race certificates.We will keep running, for ourselves and for a better world. Please continues to support our charity works in the future.

P.S. Monami finished 2nd in the female 42 KM group, 21 minute behind the winner. Hurray to amazing Mo!

Lake Hovsgol. Photo by Damiano Luchetti.

We can't wait for this escape from the multiple black screens we face every day, and most importantly, a valuable chance to make our contribution to Mongolia's nature.

As described by EcoLeap Foundation, organizer of "Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset", is to "contribute as much as possible to the local economy and to raise awareness among locals that standards of living can best be raised by preserving the park and the local culture."

Proceeds and money raised from the race will be used on preservation projects in Hovsgol National Park and other national parks in Mongolia.

For an economy hugely supported by its abundant mining resources at the expense of its nature, environmental preservation is more important than ever - before it is too late.

From the bottom of our hearts, Mo and I would like to invite you to support us by donating 15 U.S. cents for every kilometer we run, i.e. $15 U.S. dollars in total (or 10 euros).

Your every contribution will be vital to keep Mongolia's nature alive.

Thanks Kitty Ho for being the first donor and summarized the few easy steps below:

1. Go to www.ultramongolia.com and click "make a donation" on the left

2. Click on the blue "make a donation" box and fill in your personal details (see sample here). In the field of name of sponsored runner, please enter "Lui Kwok Wing" or "Monami Yui". Marco will be grateful even though you are sponsoring Monami, and vice versa.

3. Enter your card details (see here). 

4. You will see a confirmation screen now. Wait for a few seconds and it will direct you to the final step.

5. Payment is done and you should be seeing this page now.

6. Send me a message and I will grab you a souvenir from Mongolia!

Lake Hovsgol in Mongolia. Photo by Zoharby, used under Creative Commons license.

After months of anticipation and preparation, the day finally comes.

On August 3, Monami and I will be running our first ultra-marathon, a 100-kilometer trail by the world's second largest lake in Mongolia, Lake Hovsgol.

The suicidal idea to join the "Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset" was a total knee-jerk decision made at the beginning of this year, when Monami and I were talking aimlessly around random topics - a common friend who did an ultramarathon in Japan, pictures of a new born of Monami's Mongolian friend and our travel plan in 2011.

Then Monami unconsciously typed these keywords on Google - "ultramarathon" and "mongolia".

The first entry popped up on the screen reads:

Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset - The World's Most Beautiful 100km Run

In one sentence, the race organizer has neatly summarized our personal and shared affections.

For Monami, Mongolia is a place where she spent on and off a few years since her childhood. Riding on horses across highland and listening to Mongolian underground band songs were once her daily routine. It's been five years since her last visit to Utlaanbaatar and she wanted to reunion with her old friends.

For me, a mediocre runner who just limped through his first ever "half" marathon, the prefix "ultra" is totally out of the chart and exotic. I was too excited to test my physical limits.

And for us, the Tibet trip back in May 2010 sounded decade-old and we were too thirsty to go back to the nature.

Whether we were overly optimistic to death or too pessimistic to life, we had no clue.

Yet we signed up.

(to be continued...)