Sorry, We Only Made it to 88 KM.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:40AM 
Sunrise by the Hovsgol Lake, 1 hour after the race started.Exhausted but had great fun - that summarized our trip to Mongolia.
The race took off at 4:30 a.m. and we had a pleasant jog during the first 12 KM, witnessing a beautiful sunrise by the Hovsgol Lake, before we started crawling up the first mountain with an altitude of about 2300 meters.
Clearly we didn't prepare enough for trail running, and especially something hilly like this - 3 major climbs with a total of 3365-meter elevation gain/loss over the 100 KM race. By the time we descended from the second hill at about the 30 KM to 35 KM, our thighs were already souring and our speed dropped sharply.
Well, but so what? We were enjoying ourselves along the course, taking pictures of the beautiful scenery, eating loads of baked potatos prepared by local nomads and chatting nonsense with each other. To us, that's the fun part of the race.
It took us 7 hours 40 minutes to finish the first marathon (42 KM). By that time, Mo and I were both embracing an awful blister on each of our legs. We put on tapes and changed socks, continued our long match.
From that point onwards, finishing the race was more of a mental rather than physical issue - tireness was a must, it's just a matter of how you convince your body to keep functioning.
Monami dashing downhill at about 33 KM point. You can see the lake behind the mountains.
I didn't know and still don't know how Mo resurrected. She gradually regained her stamina and sailed all the way to the 66 KM mark. I kept praising and cursing her at the same time while trying my best to catch up with her pace.
Yet we were still too slow.
By the time we hit the 75 KM point, we already spent 14 hours 30 minutes. That means we only had 1 hour 30 minutes left to hit the next check point at 88 KM, otherwise we will be eliminated by the cut-off time. In fact, we were already the last two runners of the race and several horsemen were escorting us from behind, in case we wanted to give up or collapse on the trail.
So sad that I couldn't think of bribing the horsemen to give us a lift at that moment. We tried our best to limp through the never-ending 13 KM in the woods, but were still 30 minutes behind schedule when we reached the 88 KM mark.
9 p.m. Sun was setting. We had run for 16 hours 30 minutes and according to the regulations, we were eliminated.
Sigh, still 12 KM unfinished.
But it didn't matter anymore. Throughout this trip, we won friendships with inspiring runners, spent starry nights together and completed the longest distance ever in our one-year running history. More than enough for us!
Thank you everyone for supporting us and donating money to preserve the nature of Mongolia. The proceeds will be used for collecting garbage dumped at this beautiful lake and to fund education of nomad children.
Our race certificates.We will keep running, for ourselves and for a better world. Please continues to support our charity works in the future.
P.S. Monami finished 2nd in the female 42 KM group, 21 minute behind the winner. Hurray to amazing Mo!
Reader Comments (2)
Marco, nice to read your account of your MS2S run with Mo, it brought back vivid memories of my struggle as well. One lesson i learned from this race is to try to run in a group or at least in pairs. All the final 100km finishers were banding themselves together at least for the last 20-30km, encouraging each others, "praising and cursing" at each other at the same time :). I didn't have the privilege of a running partner and on hindsight, led to my DNF at 55km. Thanks for your friendship and encouragement!
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