The edition of extreme trail runners is on the rise, particularly in Asia.
CNBC attended HK100, an annual race in Hong Kong, where partake ins from around the world gather to run 100 kilometers, slightly more than 62 miles.
If that shapes like a lot, it is. Even the fastest runners took around 12 hours to complete the course, with the cut-off without surcease being 30 hours.
John Ellis, an investment manager based in Hong Kong, has formed an obsession with ultramarathons, meet in 17 races in the past year alone. He said that’s amounted to running more than 870 miles good in competitions – which is greater than the distance between New York and Chicago.
“You get this sense of euphoria. I love the impugn. You’re one with nature,” he said. “It just grounds me and centers me. It’s my meditation.”
He’s so obsessed with the sport, he even co-founded, T8, a Hong Kong start-up which composes running gear for long races like ultramarathons. One of its products, for instance, is a pair of shorts with an integrated continuous band for storing necessities like a phone and keys.
Participants prepare to run HK100, a trail race spanning numerous than 60 miles.
HK100
Ellis is one of about 1,800 runners who competed in HK100, which has grown massively since it started. In its initially year, organizers said they struggled to get 200 runners to compete. This year, however, they profited more than 8,000 applications for the less than 2,000 spots available.
The demand for extreme races has poured over the past decade. The number of trail races in China, has gone from just two in 2009, according to Sina Amusements, to 457 by 2018.
“It’s a relatively new sport in Asia and people are discovering all this different landscape,” Janet Ng, the founder and organizer of HK100 said. “It is prospering exponentially.”
Ellis, meanwhile, attributes much of the ultramarathon growth to rising interest in fitness.
“The world’s trying to get fitting. You have all these people looking for the next sport and trail running, for me, is just the next logical place,” he chance.