Hong Kong Four Trails: Milk Li eyes 298km ultramarathon as red blood cell boost takes her from frustrated quitter to winning it all
- Milk Li Lai-ting DNF’d in all three of her 100-mile races in 2018, but in 2019 she won every one in Hong Kong – now she is on to even bigger things
Hong Kong runner Milk Li Lai-ting could not work out what was going wrong with her running. She entered the HK168, the 9 Dragons 50/50 and the Victoria 162km in 2018 but could not finish a single one. Given Li had only started running in 2017, perhaps dropping out of two 100-mile (161km) races and a brutal 120km stage race was an obvious outcome, but Li was not convinced.
“I didn’t know why I couldn’t finish,” Li, 33, said. “I was vomiting. I felt very upset. I tried to do my own training to figure out what was going wrong.”
Eventually, she visited a doctor and he said she had a low red blood cell count. She took iron supplements and her fortunes changed.
“In 2019, I went to three more 100-mile races – the Ultra-Trail Tai Mo Shan, HK168 and Victoria 162 – I finished them all. In fact, I won them all,” Li said. “I got a Facebook message from Andre [Blumberg, organiser of this weekend’s 289km Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge (HK4TUC)] inviting me to his event. I wanted to take up the challenge. There was no hesitation, but I was a little worried.”
The HK4TUC follows each of Hong Kong’s major trails in reverse. Starting with the MacLehose, then Wilson, Hong Kong and finally the Lantau Trail. There are no checkpoints or support allowed on the trails, although runners can have help travelling between each route. If a runner reaches the end, marked by the green postbox in Mui Wo, in under 60 hours they are deemed a “finisher”. If they reach in under 72 hours, they are deemed a “survivor”.
“When I received the message from Andre it felt amazing,” Li said. “I saw the runners that have finished before. I had been watching the race and every year I thought about what I would do if I did it, but I never thought I’d be invited.”