“Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the spectre of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.”
― Hal Higdon

This was exactly how I felt on the 10^th of March while embarking on an ultra run around the Kiulu Valley, North of Kota Kinabalu. Borneo Ultra Trail Marathon (BUTM) is an extreme ultra trail marathon. It takes runners through rugged back roads, steep hills and treacherous jungles.

Ultra running gives me a feeling that I don’t get from running half marathons. (I am yet to do a full marathon), the feeling one gets while going up and down the trail, the feeling of getting close to nature, is unexplainable.

With the sound of the bong, I set out at 6.00am in the morning before the sunrise, to challenge myself and to complete BUTM 50K ultra trail with a cut off time of 17 hours.

During the 1^st 6.6km I moved up a muddy hill, looking around and enjoying the scenery, socialising with people around me and hearing their stories; the guy who told me that he attempted TMBT 100K five times but was never able to complete and there he was, yet again doing a 50k, the girl from Brunei who has been coming for the past 3 years and the man from Singapore who was not so happy with his training.

The good thing about ultras is that you can go as slow as a turtle and maintain a good conversation with your fellow runner. Going downhill has always been challenging and specially on a gravel trail. I was concentrating on the trail and was going down slowly but still tripped on a rock and there I lay flat on my face. The couple right in front of me came running and helped me up. The lady cleaned my palm, put a band aid on the cut and made sure that I was completely fine before walking away. It took me few minutes to get myself together and start moving again.

The most challenging part of the day started at W7.  Though it was still early morning, with the scorching hot sun, it felt like midday. I felt like giving up several times between W7 and W8. With my hydration bladder almost empty, I was trying hard to save water until I reached the next water point.

I will forever be grateful to the guy who gave me half of his water bottle though he had mixed red bull in it. It was a lifesaver.

Since I was ahead of my cut off time, I moved slowly saving my energy since I still had a long way to go. I wanted to wash my face, pour water on my head, and at that point I would have given anything for a bottle of cold water. I was looking around for villagers selling water. I met a girl on the trail and was with her throughout the next 10 km. We were both talking about the heat, and she was saying that there should be a stream not too far away. She had done BUTM before and was familiar with the trail. True to her words there was a stream or a river. Whatever it was, I  felt like taking a dip. I dipped my buff in water and put it over my head. I cannot explain the feeling of relief. I spent a few minutes near the stream with Melinda.

By the time I reached 25km, my body felt hot, my legs were weak and I could feel my heart beating very fast. I felt the textbook symptoms of heatstroke.  I poured water over my body and sat on a chair. There were about 10 people around with shoes removed and I could hear some people talking about wanting to DNF (Did Not Finish). After about 30 minutes Melinda told me to go ahead.

The next 9km was merciless. Going up the steep never-ending hill and coming down the sharp slope, there were many times that I felt I was going to fall face down and roll down the hill. Watching every step of the way, careful not to lose balance and not to fall off the cliff, I moved through the very narrow trail trying to go as fast as I could, making sure not hold the people coming behind. It was such a relief to finally come out into the clearing and get the tag scanned.

It was already 5.30 in the evening and I still had 18km to go. As we set out on the next phase of the trail we had a bit of comfort knowing that the elevation would be less than the previous hills. However,  by that time even the 200m elevation felt like 1000m on our fatigued legs.  As darkness set in, with our head lamps and blinking lights on we set into the jungle. And to make things worse it started pouring. As we entered the narrow trails of the jungle, we could feel the mud sucking on our shoes and the slippery trail slowed us down. We wanted to go fast but we were unable to.  And yet, we put in every effort to move as fast as we could in the complete darkness;  the only light we had at this point was from our fellow runners and from our own head lamps.

The last 18km felt like never-ending; a forever trail. We crossed a number of bridges, went past small villages onto a main road, and were back in the deep jungle. There were times we felt as if someone was calling out; the different sounds from the jungle, I would look behind to see if anyone was coming, only to see pitch black darkness. We went on and on and on…

When my friend called out and said, ‘Aunty come fast, we are almost at the finish line,’ I shouted back, ‘How do you know?  Can you see any light?’  And then I started hearing the music and the voice of the presenter; it seemed to be coming from near but it felt so far.

As I approached the last station, the girl scanned and cut off my tag, and said, ‘Congratulations, you made it.’  I felt so relieved. My legs were shaking and the girl told me take a seat and rest a bit. I shook my head and crossed over the bridge to the finish line.

My friend was there, and at that very moment I didn’t know what I was feeling, just glad that we did this together.

As I sat down on the bench next to my friend, I could feel the burn from the chafed skin, the pain on my palm and knees from the fall.  We were both hungry and tired but we were talking about signing up for the next ultra.