Sorry, We Only Made it to 88 KM.

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!

Countdown to Our Ultramarathon in Mongolia

Lake Hovsgol in Mongolia. Photo by Zoharby, used under Creative Commons license.

After months of anticipation and preparation, the day finally comes.

On August 3, Monami and I will be running our first ultra-marathon, a 100-kilometer trail by the world's second largest lake in Mongolia, Lake Hovsgol.

The suicidal idea to join the "Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset" was a total knee-jerk decision made at the beginning of this year, when Monami and I were talking aimlessly around random topics - a common friend who did an ultramarathon in Japan, pictures of a new born of Monami's Mongolian friend and our travel plan in 2011.

Then Monami unconsciously typed these keywords on Google - "ultramarathon" and "mongolia".

The first entry popped up on the screen reads:

Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset - The World's Most Beautiful 100km Run

In one sentence, the race organizer has neatly summarized our personal and shared affections.

For Monami, Mongolia is a place where she spent on and off a few years since her childhood. Riding on horses across highland and listening to Mongolian underground band songs were once her daily routine. It's been five years since her last visit to Utlaanbaatar and she wanted to reunion with her old friends.

For me, a mediocre runner who just limped through his first ever "half" marathon, the prefix "ultra" is totally out of the chart and exotic. I was too excited to test my physical limits.

And for us, the Tibet trip back in May 2010 sounded decade-old and we were too thirsty to go back to the nature.

Whether we were overly optimistic to death or too pessimistic to life, we had no clue.

Yet we signed up.

(to be continued...)

Start From Here - Borneo Marathon 2011

Our shoes after the 5-hour race. Taken on May 1, 2011.

On May 1, 2011, Monami and I finished the first full-marathon in our lives at Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

The Borneo Marathon started at 4 a.m. So we woke up at 2 a.m., had some bread and a energy bar, and cabbed to the venue in darkness. Temperature was desperately high - 32 degree celsius.

Mo and I set a good pace in the first half, finishing 21 kilometers in 2 hours 5 minutes. But then Mo flatted out with an aching diaphragm. Nevertheless, we held up till the bitter end and reached the goal at the 42th kilometer in 5 hours 20 minutes.Mo and I cooling under the burning sun.

Despite of the fact that you would occasionally run with traffic (yes, I mean random cars would be chasing your ass) and air pollution from car combustion was quite bad in downtown Kota Kinabalu, we passed a great time and had great fun!