As I mentioned the next part of the plan was to
get some serious “shuteye” and I last left you with an image of me sleeping on
the floor at Moonriver
Lodge (MRL). Looks, as we all know though, can
be and often are deceptive.
Here’s actually what happened after arriving at
MRL, our 7 Star Checkpoint 3.
After spending an inordinate amount of time
having one of the best and most deserved hot showers of my life. I was really
ready for a good rest and we are not talking feet up chill out rest here. We
needed some serious shuteye!
Unfortunately, with the euphoria of getting so
much done to plan I struggled to turn the machine off and slip into sleep mode.
Additionally, as I wanted to switch off, the other guests (I naively hadn’t been
expecting any), particularly their children, were switching on!! Sadly, this
combination meant that I was like a dog pacing around struggling to find the
right place to settle for a snooze.
Despite several hours of tossing and turning in
both the allotted rooms for racers and their support crew and a variety of
other locations around the Lodge, including the concrete floor that I was
snapped on and was attracted to because of its coolness and quiet location. I
finally gave up trying to sleep and opted for a impromptu massage that I was
offered by the medical team.
This was a most unexpected and surprisingly
welcome discovery. As Amirul, the medical team’s Physio, and his colleague gave
a really great sports massage and their attentions started to breathe new life
into my legs. By late morning a handful of other runners started arriving, the
first of these was Chun How, closely followed by Rose, Allan and latterly Seow
Kong.
Whilst sitting outside on a bench one of Chun How’s
support team came up and casually enquired when I was thinking of leaving. Not
thinking, I gladly shared Jim’s and my plan to kick off around 4pm that
afternoon to miss most of the sun, with the goal of making CP5 for breakfast the
next morning. They asked if I’d be willing for Chun How to join Jim and I which
I certainly had no objection to, given that it was his plan to join me for the
cycle back, there was a good logic to us “Buddying” up so to speak.
I then wandered off in search of more fuel as
despite having only just eaten breakfast it now seemed like brunch/lunchtime
where I tucked into a super feast of scrambled eggs, baked beans, and toast
that Elsa had prepared as per my nutrition plan which was washed down with some
white rice, delicious dhal and lashings of excellent mint tea courtesy of the
gracious generosity of MRL and their wonderfully welcoming Nepalese kitchen
staff.
Sated with this super meal I finally discovered
the ability to sleep and managed to get my head down for what was possibly 2
hours. I’m not sure what woke me eventually but it definitely wasn’t an alarm
as I’d forgotten to set one. This could have been a serious mistake but
thankfully either something internally or externally had done that job for me.
This was most fortuitous though as the first
person I saw was Rudhra and he informed me that Chun How, Allan & Rose had
left about 30 minutes ago at around 2pm. This I confess took me by surprise as
I’d seriously been expecting Chun How to tag along with us at 4pm. Rightly or
wrongly, I interpreted this as a cheeky bit of gamesmanship and stuck my head
into Jim’s room where he was reading and said “get yourself ready Mate, there’s
been a change of plan and we’re leaving now”. Within 10 minutes we were heading
out of MRL simultaneously with Seow Kong.
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| Jim getting ready to leave CP4 Moonriver Lodge (photo credit: Moonriver Lodge) |
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| Jim & I leaving CP3 Moonriver Lodge |
As Jim and I were finding our rhythm, I
explained to him what had happened to bring our departure forward by an hour or
so. He looked at me with one of his wry smiles and in response to my
suggestions that they (Chun How and Allan) seemed to have tried to get a head
start on us he said “well we’ll have to do something about that won’t we” ;-)
“Indeed we would” was my reply “but there’s no rush, we’ve got all night” ;-)
At our first Aid Station, it became obvious to
me that any attempt of gamesmanship and duplicity by Chun How and his team in
an effort to steal a head start on us was rather unfair of me. The reason for
this was that Elsa and Rudhra estimated that they were only a few kilometres
ahead of us and were walking casually 3 abreast which did not seem like a
serious plan to make our lives difficult. As such we slowed our pace from mid 6
minute per kilometre pace to mid seven minute pace. In spite of this a few
kilometres down the road we caught and passed the three of them who sportingly
stepped to one side and gave us a very rousing burst of applause as we jogged
passed them.
Other than at CP5 this would turn out to be the
last time we’d see any of the other runners on the road until the finish line. As whilst we
didn’t kill ourselves, Jim and I made sure that we made steady and sustained
progress at or around the mid 7 minute pace that we were both comfortable at
whilst still conserving ourselves by choosing to power walk the hills of which
there were plenty.
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| Towards CP4 Kampung Blau |
In fact, talking of hills, whilst the profile
showed that Sectors 4 & 5 were downhill into Gua Musang there was still a
lot of sustained climbing to do and by the time we’d reached Gua Musang we’d
have done a further 1,360 metres of elevation to add to the 2,152 metres we’d covered
the previous day.
We arrived at CP4 at Kampung Blau, 48 kilometres
away from MRL, at 21:46 with a cumulative time on our race clock of 38:16:05.
This meant we’d done the stage in around 7 hours and kept us close to 10 hours
ahead of the cut off time for this stage of the race. After Elsa and Rudhra had
dealt with the check in formalities for the Checkpoint we continued on for a
couple of kilometres to an abandoned roadside cafe that Elsa had identified a
few weeks ago whilst I was doing a familiarisation run as we travelled to the
TMMT event in Merapoh.
By the time Jim and I reached here not only was
supper served but the temporary camp was set up and we quickly got our heads
down for what I intended was going to be a serious power nap. Thankfully, Elsa
had rigged up our one man tent for me and I slipped into here and almost
immediately went out like the proverbial light bulb.
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| Check in @ CP4 Kampung Blau, Sunday 09:46:05PM |
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| My temporary camp |
MONDAY, 28 AUGUST 2017
I slept for a good couple of hours but I was
woken suddenly by the sound of dogs barking incessantly and when it was evident
to me that they were not going to stop anytime soon and I started having
visions of the reason for this being that the rest of the field were now in
full flow and all running past our camp as we slept comfortably like the Hare
in the famous fable.
With this thought in my head I eventually
shouted out if anyone else was awake and immediately heard back a chorus of
confirmations that everyone was. It turns out that the dogs had been barking
for ages and poor Jim & Rudhra, in particular, had not got a wink of sleep.
Rudhra, who was doing a great job of keeping an eye on what was happening
behind us whenever he could get a connection to the Live Tracking website,
dispelled my paranoia that anyone had run past our position and set the dogs
off. Despite his reassurances though and the fact that it was circa 2:30am 1 hour
ahead of when we had planned to be on our way again, within 5 minutes Jim and I
were heading down the road again while Elsa and Rudhra were packing up our
temporary camp.
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| Getting ready to rock & roll again |
The road into Gua Musang continued to undulate
and we continued our previous strategy on pacing in terms of walking the climbs
and sustaining a comfortable mid 7 minute per kilometre pace. We also continued
chatting to each other, as I knew we would, and Jim proved to be not only great
company but a great companion too.
As a consequence, with dawn breaking in a rather
sadly unspectacular fashion we found ourselves heading
along the narrowing road that wound through a lot of palm plantation into the
outskirts of Gua Musang. With 8 kilometres to go there was one final hill which
meant that we slipped to almost a 12 minute kilometre pace. However, other than
this minor blip we quickly were back on the mid 7 minute pace and averaged 8:09
minute pace for the entire 88 kilometres bringing us into what I was referring
to as the half way stage in a running time of 11:56:51 for Sectors 4 & 5 and a
cumulative race time of 48:39:26 e.g. just 2 days of the 5 days allotted us.
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| Check in @ CP5 Gua Musang KM238.3, Monday 08:09:26AM |
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| Gua Musang Town |
As well as being an absolutely brilliant bloke and amazing companion, Jim aka
Running on Old Legs is at 69 also a running phenomena in my humble opinion. This was his
longest ever run though which he described as great prep for a 100km run that
he was attempting do in a 12 hour event that he was running in a couple of
weeks time. And, whilst the veterans category starts with
men that will be almost 30 years his junior, I know that he’ll excel in this
and, if I were a betting man, would have a large wager on him being on the podium.
In addition as well as an exemplary
member of Team Live More Jim stands alongside a handful of other amazing men that I regard as my Mentors and Luminaries in terms of the inspiration they give me for how I choose to live these days. These men include Woody Woodville, my Step Father (who’s 90 and still playing tennis and
bowls), Mr Sze Mun Yee (who’s in his 80’s and still doing IM distance
Triathlons - you can read more about him in his book here https://www.amazon.com/Bumble-Bee-Me-Living-Ironman/dp/9671443508)
and Sam Pritchard (who’s 67 and still stronger and faster at
Swimming, Biking and Running than most men I know that are half his age).
Jim has another special quality as well though and that
is that he is a wonderful entertainer and raconteur of the highest order. Right from
the off he told me the hilarious story about his Mate back in the UK and continued to entertain me
throughout the entire 88 kilometres that we ran together that night. I've pulled a few memorable "All Nighters" in my years but none could match the magic of this night with Jim ;-)
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| Thank you Buddy. |
We were not quick but we were consistent and if
there is ever a way to run “ultra” distances making “Relentless Forward
Progress”, as Byron Powell explains in his book by the same name, and
as we did that night, is the secret to running Ultramarathons.
Although, I strongly believe that a critical
prerequisite of being able to do this, is feeding yourself enough fuel too. So,
shortly after 8:09am when CP4 was just closing almost 50 kilometres behind us, we arrived at the Seven Eleven
that was CP5 in Gua Musang as per our plan and, after the usual CP race admin
had been done by Elsa and Rudhra, we all headed for the Mother of All breakfasts at
the penultimate part of of our plan which was a superb little Coffee Shop set
beside a wonderfully ancient Chinese Temple and old Gold Mine in Kampung Pulai.
As we were driving there the heavens opened and
we collectively breathed a sigh of relief just as we had yesterday morning that
we were still on point in terms of our plan and that compared to the poor other
runners that were still out there, this plan seemed aligned with the stars and
the weather system. As it meant that we were going to stay dry, warm and well fed by
comparison the rest of the field that, according to Rudhra, were now spread
20-40 kilometres behind us.
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