FKT: Jaden Mecham - Cross Frog (Hong Kong) - 2023-12-28

I started this route at about 8:30 AM. I chose to do this route from West to East to get the largest climb out of the way at the start. There was a little bit of wind and rain when I started but it cleared up after about an hour. Overall, the weather was pretty nice for this run but it got a little warm. I made sure to take it very slow on the uphill sections so I could pick it up on the flats and downhills. I carried 3 gels and 750 mL of water with me. I ate all 3 gels and drank about 500mL of the water. A lot of this route was new to me so I had some trouble navigating in a lot of spots. I probably wasted 10-15 minutes just trying to figure out where I was going at various points. However, I was still able to keep moving at a decent pace. About 2.5 km from the finish (on the Big Wave Bay Trail?) the trail was closed for construction due to a landslide. Luckily, the construction workers weren't doing anything when I got there so they let me pass through. I was very lucky I didn't have to end my attempt right there. When I got to Cape Collision Road, I could not find a way to get to the Cape Collision Battery as the original route intends. There is a fence on the side of the road with lots of signs saying not to climb. I'm not sure if this fence was there when this route was originally submitted. I ran around up and down the road for a few minutes and could not find anywhere to go around the fence to get to the battery. This means I cut about 50-100m off the original route, ending my run on the road. For future attempts, it might be good to just have the start/end point on the East be where the trail ends on Cape Collision Road. Another option would to start/end at Cape Collision Lighthouse or Leaping Dragon Pavilion instead. This would make the Eastern start/end point a lot more accessible by public transit. However, this might be too significant of a route change.