Update on the Mt. Kinabalu Climbathon II

The race started at 7:00am Sunday. I woke up early at around 4:15am to get changed and to eat some breakfast as I was expecting the pickup van to come at about 5am. Fortunately, I got ready early because a car came at 4:40am to pick us up. Morning at around the base is chilly especially since I was only wearing a t-shirt and shorts. There were about 6 runners from the lodge that I was staying but the car could only pick 4. Actually the 2 that took the second round would have been more fortunate because we ended up having to wait at the starting line from 5:15 till the time that the race starts. For those that were inexperienced, we only had our racing gear. The smart ones had thermal wear and they were comfortably warming up till the start time. There was a baggage drop off counter at the start so they would transport your jackets back down to the finishing point.

The race started promptly at 7am after the roll call and was more a walk than a run for me. Even before the 1km mark, I couldn't keep running and had to revert to brisk walking. Simply too steep for my heart to take it if I was running. The route was uneven steps almost all the way until around 6.5 km I think. Then it turns to a steep rock face for the rest of the journey. By the time it turn to the rocky section, my quads were already getting cramps and my thighs were like jelly. I was just literally pushing myself up although I knew judging from the timing that I could not make the summit in time. Just did not train enough on steps.

Therefore on my certificate it wrote DNF (did not finish). I did not finish the race. I was a little too slow going up. At the cut off time at 2hrs 30 I was probably at 7.5km. The summit is 8.75km. The run marshals let me continue till about 8km then turn me back.

I decided to run down as much as the legs could take. However, the uphill part already took most of my strength so I wasn't fast coming down. I tried to go as fast as I could till I took a tumble. I tripped on a rock and fell. I scraped my knees and elbows. After the fall, I just took my time coming down as my left knee was a little swollen. Moreover, I knew that I would have a DNF anyway even if I sprinted down in the allotted time. Fortunately with all the skating falls, I had good experience with treating road rash.

Great experience, I guess (though still a little traumatised. Ask me a few more weeks and I would tell you what a wonderful time I had). My consolation is that many share the same DNF with me. Out of around 170 men runners, only 40+ qualified. So there were around 130 of us, who just went for the experience. It seems from the race director usually only about 30% from the men's open category qualifies. With this DNF race, guess I'll have my next year's fitness goal fixed as well - need to finish some unfinished business.