Hong Kong Marathon Registration Opened 30 mins Early!

So I checked the website about 30 minutes early at 6:30am local time in Hong Kong to see if registration opened. There was a link to the registration on the main page of the Hong Kong Marathon. I had just thought I could set up my online profile as that was the first step and had to wait until 7am (7PM EST) to officially pay and register for the marathon. As I went through all the parts of the registration, it looked as if this was the official registration. I went to the payment screen and once I clicked continue, it confirmed my registration. I got an email shortly after. That was when I started celebrating!

At 7:03am, there was a 2 minute wait to get into the website, and I have 60 minutes to finish the registration. You cannot exit the page and it automatically forwards you onto the registration page. I think this is a genius way of handling the rush to register as this controls the number of requests to the server and diffuse any server issues.

I tried a few minutes later and there was no wait. I tried a few times over the next two hours and have been able to get in multiple times without an errors. Users on Facebook noted that they had no issues with registering and welcomed the smooth registration process. As of 9am local time, the marathon challenge was sold out so many people are registering. Marathon 1 and 2 were still available at that time. However, by 10:30am, all entries were sold out!

Huge thumbs up for the people who are coordinating the HK marathon this year. It seems to be seamless and very easy to register. It was 300 HKD, which is really cheap, considering I paid $175 or over 1K HKD for Chicago.

Registration Options

So the registration was pretty easy and the address forms were pretty easy to fill out. The only option was to pick which race corral you were registering for:

• Marathon Challenge: runners under 4 hours
• Marathon 1: Between 4-5 hours
• Marathon 2: Over 5 hours.

I choose Marathon 1 as I was going to be slowly running this race. I have Antarctica three weeks after this and I need to get ready for the cold weather, which means I will be much slower for a warm weather marathon. I’m not exactly sure if you need verified credentials to get into Marathon Challenge. There is a space for you to list a recent marathon you have ran in the past three years.

As of 9am local time (9pm EST), the marathon challenge was sold out. I was glad I didn’t take a spot that someone else wanted. My main reason why I didn’t sign up for it was that I did not want to wake up 30 minutes earlier.

How I’ll Get There

I had booked a mileage run to SIN and I’ll be getting there the week before and then flying out the day after at 1am out of SIN. I should have plenty of time to catch a late flight out of HKG to SIN and then stay at the airport to leave on my flight. I will try to book Oneworld so I make sure I can get taken care of.