Rudy Bottin sets supported Lantau Trail ‘fastest known time’ as Covid-19 trend for records in lieu of races continues
- The Hong Kong-based Frenchman runs the 66km Lantau Trail in eight hours, 18 minutes and 23 seconds and looks forward to seeing who will beat his record
- ‘FKT’ attempts are all the craze as races have been cancelled or postponed for nearly a year during the pandemic
Rudy Bottin has set the ‘fastest known time’ (FKT) for a supported runner on the 66km Lantau Trail, covering the route in eight hours, 18 minutes and 23 seconds.
The Lantau Trail starts and ends in Mui Wo, firstly going over Sunset and Lantau Peaks, down to Tai O, along the coast and catchwater, past Pui O and back to Mui Wo.
A supported FKT, as opposed to unsupported, means Bottin had friends give him food and drinks along the way, and paced him for parts of the run. It was all going smoothly until Lantau Peak, just an hour and a half into the record attempt on Saturday. It was where he first planned to eat.
“It just messed up my stomach. I could not eat after that,” the Hong Kong-based Frenchman said. “All I could have was water and coke. When you put super high levels of sugar in your body, you go super high but then you go super low.”
After hours of only Coca-Cola for fuel, he began to feel dizzy and his vision was blurry. He had to stop and rest.
“Rest, drink more coke and keep moving and that’s how I did it. Just reaching the next point, I knew there was more coke for me and that’s it. I think I drank 1.5L of coke. Usually, I never drink coke,” he said.
It was more than just coke that kept him moving. Bottin runs with the Uglow team. Their strength, he said, lies in the fact they are all close friends. They came out to support him throughout the attempt.
“They’d say, ‘don’t worry it will come back. You’ve experienced this before’. Even though mentally and physically I was down, I was smashed, on my watch I could see I was moving at a decent pace. So, they kept saying ‘keep moving, it will come back’. And for them to give up their time when they could have spent it with their families, I didn’t want to let them down,” Bottin said.
Bottin said the FKT was “weird” because there is no one to race against: “You’re running by yourself. Your low moments are just yourself. There is no one competing.”
“It felt pretty easy to drop out. It’s just me, myself and I. If I stop, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why my support was so good, they kept me moving.”
Bottin also set the reverse Hong Kong Trail FKT, running with Veronika Vadovicova who set the women’s FKT at the end of 2020.
Bottin has no plans for another FKT, but is keen to support his Uglow teammates as they eye other records.
“We are super close friends in the team. When you see them preparing and running, even if you are fresh, you feel their low moments. And when they finish, you live their experience together,” Bottin said.
“I think no one has ever really tried the Lantau Trail before, and I’m the first runner to put a real time on it with support,” he said. “I’m looking to seeing who will beat it and when. I’ll be very happy.”
