Mount Kinabalu Climbathon - Day 2 (1 Oct)

4 of us take part in mens open. Sim, timothy, Heeshen and myself did the race today.

Sim make us proud for being the first Singaporean ever to run within the cutoff time for an incredibe difficult time at 4:17hrs

The rest did the best, but came in short. Timothy reach 8.2k shy of 500meters before turning back, whereas heeshen and myself u-turn at laba rata that is 6km point mark.

It rains at 4am plus in the morning despite the better weather forecast compare to yesterday. Not a good sign! By the time the race start it have dried up but the weather was cold.

The race start at 7am and off we go, I run a conservative pace to reach 1km at 14:50mins, on schedule, which is the best I can do, already very chuan leow leh! For the 2nd km, I did an ok pace following the group pace of another 15mins. It start to rain after 2km and I have overtaken heeshen by then. I managed to get another km on 15min pace as schedule. After 3km, I find myself struggling with the pace! I was surprised. I start to feel pains in my ears! Is it AMS? I try to move and struggling by then, about 20 folks overtaken me during this km. I start asking myself what is happening? Is it pressure on the ears? I try to equalize without success! Damn it!

It is getting cold, pace is slow to a crawl, pain ears, rains coming, time running out! What could be worst?

By the time I reach 4km point, it took me 30min !!!! I have started to have headache and I am already lost the plot to run to the summit by then. I am thinking of walking down at 4km hut, heeshen has caught up with me and encourage me to move up to laba rata. WTF, is he trying to kill me knowing I have headache! I should stop and let myself adapting to the pressure first before moving up as I suspect I have AMS.

I try to rest at the 4km mark, but it was too cold, I can't stand/sit still, I need to move and I don't want to walk down, so I join Heeshen slowly moving towards laba Rata. A bit at a time I slow climb and reach laba rata at 2:13hr which is slower than my 2 days training runs in July! It was a demoralising climb- knowing its nothing significant about reaching laba rata with cold wet weather accompany you, how much you climb would determine how much is require to descend!

I decide I won't want to push on anymore. I take my sweet time walking down. I decide to do a bit of running around 2-3km to the gate as i feel i might not make it back in time. I reach timpohon gate at 3:56hr which is on time to finish the run before 4:30hr

I feel very good on the 4km run back. Reach the end in heavy rain at 4:15hr.

Official result, david-veteran postition 28, Yulan- ladies 25, sim-men opens 46.