UTMF Trilogy (Training Days)

“Love the DNF, you will realise it’s the DNF that makes you tough as nails” – Candice Burt.

13 is unlucky number.

I’m not superstitious but 2013 was a bad year for me, an unlucky 13.

I had triple DNF last year – Leadville100, Powerman Dualthon and finally TNF100 Hong Kong.

On the cold and windy peak of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong (highest peak in HK, 957m), my year ended with me holding on to nothing but empty dreams. Palm faced and I found myself in a dark place.

I remembered reading on Candice’s blog about DNF – “Love the DNF. You were on such a good streak. You were so hardcore. Never a DNF in 8 years! You think that makes you an ultrarunning badass? Think again. Once you've been deflowered you will realize it's the DNF that makes you tough as nails”. Definitely right, DNF is there to teach you a lesson, to humble you before you become better person, stronger individual.

To get back up, took a lot of courage, took a lot of effort, and took a lot of everything from me. If you been through this in life, you can relate what I’m talking about here.

To get back to running and training after TNF Hong Kong was a huge mental challenge, I had to plead, beg and bargain with myself to start training for UTMF which I registered earlier last October.

I’m just a guy who doesn’t care less about what peeps said, focus on my dream and strategies on how to accomplish it. Once these peeps get tired, they will eventually shut up. I couldn’t be bothered enough to care about negatives talk and bad comments, a waste of my time really.

On top of my disappointed year, I found myself with knee injury. It’s been plaguing me since TNF SG 2011. The injury sort of comes and goes, after Leadville the injury became more obvious. I had to find out what’s going on with my knees – I needed professional medical opinion and I needed the best.

So I turned to Dr. Nahar, he is the Head of Sport Science Clinic at PPUM, I’ve been consulting with him on a monthly basis. After extensive testing, he concluded that I am suffering from OA (Osteoarthritis) - degenerative arthritis or degenerative joint disease. Now I know! Luckily my OA is at stage 1. Under his care, I was given prescription set of exercises and medicine. The progress has been slow, but it’s a forward progress nevertheless.

I set myself a 26 weeks training plan for UTMF, which included races such as TNF HK, WaterGate Ultra and TNF Thailand 2014. Most weekends I will be training at mount Nuang, which is the core to my UTMF training plan. I cannot missed those weekend Nuang training – I had to make sure of that.

As the days gone by and the April getting closer, I found myself at wit end trying to balance work and training. Especially, when I needed to travel outstation - my training would be screwed! Although some training weeks I did not managed to clock the minimum mileage, I make sure that the weekly Nuang training is always on track. I really banking on my Nuang training to take me to the UTMF finish line, I’m leaning towards quality of training rather than quantity nowadays. For mountain trail races, these three things are the most crucial in your training – mileage, elevation gain and time on feet.

Havoc – the only fitting description. I wish it could be better training mileage, but we are not elite athlete – we all have work and family to balance with.

I wish I could have more time to train as time flies by, somehow I found myself glancing the calendar and nearing to UTMF. I did more cycling hours to complement my UTMF training, especially when I finally gotten a proper bike trainer at home. I was stronger going uphill at Nuang after these cycling session, positive benefits reap from the trainer.

The final month or so, Khairul Anuar aka Tony joined me at the weekly training at Nuang, at first he was struggling to cope. He almost gave up halfway to the summit – wanted to go back at Camp Pacat at the first session. He encourage him and told him that you needed this Nuang sessions to survive UTMF – this is necessary pains my friend. He agreed and the coming weeks he was doing much better. Once we tried to simulate running UTMF at Night, we started at 3 am for our Pangsun-Nuang Summit-Pangsun training. We had everything, head lamp, rain jacket, food, water etc. I found my Achilles heel that day, I was sleepy during those dark session, I had to lie down at Camp Pacat and sleep for about 15 minutes before I could operate normally. Tony stayed with me and act as guardian when I took my power nap – thanks Tony.

In between the trainings, I had taken few VO2 max tests, I need the knowledge on my physical abilities, boundaries and where my lungs could take me further. Yes, I’ve gone to the dark side – to the Sport Science of running. Thanks to PPUM and ISN for these tests, now I know what pace that I should be doing during training, racing etc.

VO2 max test at PPUM and ISN (bottom)

 

Few days before I depart for Japan, Izham (Dietician) from ISN helped me in formulating Nutricient Strategy for UTMF. Thanks a million Izham, this is the first time I’m doing it – a lot of my races started strong in the past, but faded in the later part due to failure to pay attention to the importance of nutricient. This time I hope it would be a different outcome, UTMF is a very big event and a five stars event in my book. To even finish UTMF would be a dream come true for me, especially on the first attempt.

 

Now the first smart thing I did for this race was taper properly, two weeks before the race I was reducing my mileage; tapering period is the hardest thing for me – temptation for that long run, especially that final week without Nuang training.

Nuang Summit (1493 meters) on different days and runners.

 

Running for a cause “Save Our Rainforest”

I will run my first UTMF with a cause "Save Our Rainforest". I’m honoured to be the voice of PEKA (Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam Malaysia) and represent them in Japan and promote awareness on the PEKA’s initiative “Save Our Rainforest”.

PEKA MALAYSIA is an NGO which was formed to stop the destruction of natural resources, to defend the rights of environment and be the voice of nature. We aim to create awareness about nature, sound health, preservation and the sustenance of the environment. PEKA means sensitive in “Malay” language and is rightly suitable towards its course.

With collaboration between my NGO (Inspirasi Wawasan) and PEKA, I hope this will be a great start for many more green initiatives in the future.

Thank you Puan Sri Shariffa Sabrina Syed Akil and PEKA for your trust. I will run my best to complete this gruelling race in my first UTMF attempt.

TBC