Janda Baik, Malaysia
In 2019 I joined the Vang Vieng Trail as a social event with some friends we leisurely did the 8km course. It was an awesome experience and I finished wanting more. I thought for sure let’s do the 18km version next year. This was also the first time I saw these crazy people doing ultra distance. Just after we finished our 8k the first place guy in the 84k crossed the line, in about 24 hours, having run all day and all night.
I started looking for other trail races in Thailand and then COVID hit, there was nothing for 2 years. I worked on dam sites in remote parts of Laos and did plenty of trail running in the meantime.
The end of 2021 I was on track to hit my target of 1000km for the year when I stepped on a stick that stabbed through the arch of my foot and put me out of action for several months.
August 2022 I did the 36k X race and had a blast, it was the hardest race I’d done by a long way but I didn’t really know where to find more trail races, it seems that I’d just missed the trail season in Thailand but it was also that I didn’t really know where to look
I went for a 10k time trial PR and focused on half marathons, knocking time off my PB in Luang Prabang and Khon Kaen
Vang Vieng trail was back in 2023 but I’d aleady signed up for the Khon Kaen Half Marathon the weekend before. So again, I went for the shortest format, this time 11k. This time I raced hard and came in 6th place.
Immediately I knew I wanted to do an ultra race. Searching for a race I had some criteria.
- June (at least 3 months before our baby was due)
- Direct flight from Vientiane
- Not too far from the airport
- Trail race, naturally beautiful terrain, in the jungle
- Ultra distance (50k)
- Daytime race
- Hard but not extreme ( not more than 12 hours, or 2500m elevation gain)
Janda Baik 50k in Malaysia fitted all these criteria so I signed up
Between signing up and going to book flights the direct flights from VTE to KL were no longer an option. I was already committed so flights via Bangkok is was what we did. The connections with Thai Airways were good so it didn’t end up being a big deal
Vientiane is pretty flat so it’s not easy to train for a mountain ultra. My training was basically a Garmin half marathon program, extending the long runs each weekend and/or substituting with hikes and trail runs to get elevation. I did a 16-week block, Averaging around 50k per week with a peak of 67 km. My Plan was a light on elevation gain and I felt that in the race.
Highlights of the training were
47.8km, 1200m loop around Nam Mang 3 in Phu Khao Khouay. With a friend in support on his bike
33.6km Run from Vientiane to Wealth Coffee
24.2km, 709m Phu Phanang Trails
17.7km, 689m Nam Xay and Pha Ngern in Vang Vieng
Race goals
I had planned and estimated my race time based on the previous route of around 1900m elevation gain. I made a spreadsheet, broke down the race into sections, and ranked them by difficult and expected pace, I looked at last year’s splits for mid-pack runners to validate my plan. Just a couple of weeks before the race and then a gain a few days before the race the route was changed (and made more difficult going by the results times) so I had to throw my plans out the windows
The main goal was to finish, keep moving forward to the finish line, run if I could, walk if I couldn’t run, but don’t stop
Second goal, would be nice to make it back for the presentation ceremony at 2pm (9 hours)
Race day was Saturday, 5am. Since I wasn’t around for race pack collection the previous weekend I had to go earlier to pick up my race bib, My accommodation was about 1 km from the start line. I had a slice of bread with peanut butter and banana and headed for the start line at 3:20 am not much was happening and race pack collection took only a couple of minutes, I got my bib pinned on and waited around, the 100k runners were briefed, very briefly at 3:52 and set off promptly at 4 am. The crowd for the 50k grew and we moved to the start line with few minutes to go. The briefing was basically, “Everyone’s got the GPX file of the latest route?” and we were off. I started mid-corral and had to work my way past quite a few people before I could hit my cruising speed. After about 2k we hit the first of the real ascent. I was encouraged to see that most of the runners around me started to hike. The first up hill was a lot of single track and overgrown tractor trails. After checkpoint 1 we went straight into a mud hole, on the way back I was able to navigate it by rock hopping without getting muddy but on the way out I blindly followed the runners in front of me straight into the mud. I was generally a bit slower hiking and wanting to go a bit faster going down, I did some leap frogging with some guys that wanted to pass going up but were slower going down. There was a cross-slope section where my feet were sliding off my shoes so I stopped to re-tie them tighter and about a dozen people went past and I found myself behind a group going slower than I would’ve by myself this was probably good for me not to get too excited early in the race. On the first big decent I ran past most of that group and cruised down to checkpoint 2.
After Checkpoint 2 the route went though some unused tracks overgrown with vines, which made it very trippy, followed by a few more ks on the road and then uncomfortably close to a buffalo whose chaperone insisted it was fine and back into the forest for more hiking. On the top of this hill was lots of hoof prints not sure if it’s goats or deer, cool to see anyway. Just over the top of the hill I saw the leaders coming back the other way, putting them about 9k ahead of me. The route continued through a creek and out of the forest, along the road to the halfway and turn-around point. I hit checkpoint 3 at about the 4 hour mark and took some time to organize more of my food from my backpack into the accessible pockets. Before heading out to make the return journey. Spotted a monkey on the power lines and enjoyed some encouragement from the people still heading in the other direction. I was still feeling strong at this point. Coming the mountain and past the buffalo again who had thankfully moved a bit further off the trail. I met my cheer squad at about 30km which was an awesome energy boost. The next section on the road I could feel my legs start to cramp when running so eased up a bit knowing there was a long way to go.
The field had thinned out and I went over the hills and through the vines sections without hardly seeing anybody else until the next check point. There were a few people check point. By this point of the race nothing I had with me was satiating me, I downed a few cups of icy red cordial which seemed to help a bit and set off on the 7km of uphill back toward the highest point on the course, hiking uphill was the weakest part of my race which I knew going in but just kept putting one foot in front of the other and slogged my way to the top. Somewhere near the peak I hit the marathon distance. A few people went past me on the uphill, it seems like more hiking training and maybe some trekking poles would be helpful. At the final checkpoint I had coke and watermelon and Boom electrolyte drink but still wasn’t satisfied. Trail, mix, gels, electrolytes, dry bananas, lollies, cliff bar none of it hit the spot. Looking back I think I needed something salty.
I was with some other guys heading through the last jungle section and the through some open mountainside. We had some confusion about which way to go but I stuck to the GPS bearing in the watch and spied more trail markers further down the track. This surprised me on the way out as well, twice in the first half I was following along not really navigating, letting the person ahead lead the way, both times when it came to a fork in the trail the runner ahead chose wrong.
Coming down out of the last trail section and back onto the roads I still had a bit of running in my legs and pushed for the finish. My watch beeped for 50k with more than 1 k to go. I passed 2 runners that had stopped at an intersection only a few hundred metres from the finish line chatting to a guy on a motorbike. Not sure if they were asking for directions or just having a chat but I didn’t stop to find out. In the last 300m, I saw monkey number 2 for the race. And then my cheer squad through the fence as I skirted around the corner to the finish line.
Crossing the line the overwhelming feeling was relief that it was over, it was also a bit of anticlimax, I had to line up from a timer ticket and present it at another desk to get my medal and finisher shirt. There wasn’t the carnival atmosphere that I’ve experienced at race finish lines in Laos and Thailand.
The race itself was everything I’d hoped for and more. Amazing trail in the jungle, with some great views and even harder than what I was expecting.
I finished in 9:06 so just after the scheduled presentation time but I noticed that no trophies were presented while I was there. Some of the runners who’d placed for a trophy were just grabbing theirs from the table so they could leave.
While I was immensely proud to have finished my first ultra. I also felt somewhat unsatisfied. I kept going, I didn’t give up, I didn’t stop, I got it done but I didn’t feel like it was my best effort or that I really gave it my all. The other disappointment was the race photos. there weren’t many photographers on the course and they didn’t position themselves to frame the runners well.
I was sore for a few days, but not like I was after my marathon. I went for a run 4 days later. A week later I’d started a new training plan for the next trail race.