Trail runner Kimmy Leung reaches a green letterbox in the Hong Kong town of Mui Wo which marks the end point of the gruelling, 300 kilometre Four Trails Ultra Challenge.Supplied
Staggering across Lantau, Hong Kong’s largest island, trail runner Kimmy Leung drifted in and out of consciousness.
It was 8 p.m. on Jan. 31, and Ms. Leung had been awake for more than 46 hours, during which she had run almost 230 kilometres. She had another 70 to go.
“I stopped so many times to sleep for like five or 10 minutes, and then started walking again,” Ms. Leung, 33, told The Globe and Mail. “I just kept walking, because the faster I finished, the sooner I could go to sleep.”
Ms. Leung was one of 15 participants in this year’s Four Trails Ultra Challenge, a gruelling, non-stop, 298-kilometre ultramarathon covering Hong Kong’s four main hiking routes – the MacLehose, Wilson, Hong Kong and Lantau trails – and almost all of the territory’s major mountains, with a total elevation gain of 14,500 metres. By the time runners reach the final stretch on Lantau, most are so sleep deprived and exhausted they begin to hallucinate; many participants drop out long before that point.
That’s what happened to Ms. Leung the first two times she attempted the challenge, first on the MacLehose and then just after finishing the Wilson. Finally, in 2023, she became a Four Trails “survivor,” the moniker given to anyone who finishes in under 72 hours. This year, she was hoping to break 60 hours and win the title of “finisher,” which only two women have ever done before.
“For the first three trails, everything was going to plan, I arrived on Lantau in like 47 hours, so I had 13 hours left to be a finisher,” she said.
At 70 kilometres, the Lantau Trail is the second shortest, but one of the hardest routes, home to two of the tallest mountains in Hong Kong and coming at a point in the challenge at which few runners have any stamina left.
Hong Kong runner Kimmy Leung grabs some much needed sleep during the Four Trails Ultra Challenge.Viola Shum/Supplied
In the end, Ms. Leung, like so many competitors before her, was defeated by the need for sleep. It ended up taking her nearly 24 hours to complete the Lantau trail, dragging herself along step by step until she reached the town of Mui Wo, where a green letterbox has served as the official finish point of the Four Trails Challenge since 2014.
Over the years, that letterbox has taken on an iconic status among Hong Kong’s tight-knit trail-running community – and now with the wider public, after the recent release of a documentary about the Four Trails, which was a smash word-of-mouth hit in the territory, becoming one of the most successful Hong Kong documentaries of all time.
Brothers Robin and Ben Lee initially made a short film about the Four Trails in 2017, called Breaking 60, when that was seen as the major barrier in the challenge. Their recent documentary, Four Trails, covering the 2021 event, is centred around whether several racers – all of them former “finishers” or “survivors” – could push that even further, reaching the letter box in fewer than 50 hours.
“I was hesitant about making a sequel, because I didn’t want it to just be ‘Breaking 50,’” director Robin Lee told The Globe and Mail. “But in the time between I’d become friends with a few runners, and I wanted to come back and tell the full picture of Four Trails, tell stories about people who just want to be survivors. They might not have the ability to be a finisher but want to push themselves to the absolute limit to break 72 hours.”
The resulting film is far less about winners and losers – and anyone associated with Four Trails will admonish those who call it a “race” rather than a “challenge” – than it is about the ethos of the event itself, which is carefully curated by founder Andre Blumberg, who vets all potential participants (requiring from them both proof of trail-running experience and a personal essay) and tweaks the rules to keep the focus on runner versus trail, rather than each other.
“I’ve got a front seat observing participants every year. I see their change in perspective on life,” Mr. Blumberg said. “I think it leaves people who complete it, and even those who don’t, with an experience and impression that’s quite unique. Because it’s so long, it’s so hard and it’s so painful, it gives people time to think about things.”
A C-suite IT executive, Mr. Blumberg started trail running around 15 years ago, around when he turned 40 and realized burning the candle at both ends was catching up with him.
“I changed my lifestyle quite a bit, stopped drinking,” he said. “Very quickly the trail-running option grew on me, and I discovered the beauty of Hong Kong and the country parks and the trails.”
A still from the documentary Four Trails shows a runner taking part in a 300 kilometre ultramarathon challenge in Hong Kong.Supplied
Despite its stereotypical image as an ultra-dense metropolis, more than 40 per cent of Hong Kong’s territory is made up of country parks. The accessibility of nature makes hiking the closest thing the city has to a universal pastime.
“Hong Kong was one of the earliest places in Southeast Asia where trail running really exploded,” said Ben Lee, the documentary producer. “You can stay in town and have great food and in five minutes be on a trail. It’s hard to find that in other places.”
Ms. Leung said this was what got her hooked as well. In 2015, she signed up on a whim for the Oxfam Trailwalker, a charity event in which participants complete the 100-kilometre MacLehose Trail in 48 hours. Since then, she has become a competitive racer, sponsored by North Face, and continues to hit the trails regularly.
Indeed, when The Globe tried to schedule an interview with Ms. Leung to discuss the latest Four Trails challenge, just three days after she completed it, she wasn’t available. She was out hiking.