Mt. Kinabalu Race - October 2010

I wrote this post directly after completing the Mt. Kinabalu race in Borneo, Malaysia and then forgot to post it!! Please enjoy the recap!


Kinabalu Climbathon – October 23rd, 2010
It all started as a mere suggestion in August and came to fruition today. I am in Borneo, Malaysia and just attempted the 21km Mt. Kinabalu Climbathon. I say attempted because I did not complete the summit. In fact, I missed reaching the summit by 700m; I know- heartbreaking. Instead of feeeling disappointed, though, I am proud of myself for what I accomplished today because I did not think that I would make it as far as I did, not by a long shot. We flew into Kota Kinabalu at 8:55pm and did not make it to Kinabalu Park until 11pm. We then discovered that our reservations were in fact for the next 2 nights, and not Friday night. The staff at the park was great and found us another hostel to stay at because all accommodations at the park were fully booked. It was midnight when we finally reached our hostel room. Things were not looking good; I had early symptoms of a nasty headcold, and was due to complete a race the next day with what would be 5 hours of sleep. I was not optimistic and was struggling with the choice of going for it, or copping out.
The alarm went off at 5am and I wasn’t feeling too tired, surprisingly. I still wasn’t too psyched at the idea of attemtpting the race, so I initially decided to not race. I went into the common area to cancel the transportation and found 3 men that looked like they were participating in the race (today’s race was for all women and senior men). They were so excited when I said I was doing the race, so I gave into the peer pressure and decided to compete. I am so glad that I went for it because it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I am feeling great physically, and am looking forward to watching Steve complete his daunting task tomorrow; the men’s category only gets 2.5 hours to summit and 3 hours to get down.
I started the race feeling good and entirely unsure as to what the mountain held for me. Though I had completed the hike two years ago with Cassie, I had never completed the hike as a race. The terrain is tough as the steps are uneven and quite high at times and all the hike does is go up, up, and up more. I initially thought that I would only make it to Laban Rata, a guesthouse at 6.5km (altitiude), but I felt good enough to continue persevering. The last 2.5km of the hike is quite treacherous as it is up the face of the mountain and the only tools are limbs and a rope to climb. It also started raining at this point which made the already wretched rocky terrain quite slippery. Luckily I bought Panadol Nasal Cold and Flu at the HK airport and took some in the morning, hoping it would keep the cold at bay; it did. I also made myself stop every 30 minutes to quickly hydrate, eat a little (half a date or a bite or an energy granola bar), and blow my nose- a seemingly good system. The result? I made it to 8km (3929m) in 3.5 hours and was politely told that my time was up at that point, even though the summit is 8.7km (4095m). I promptly turned around, and made it down Mt. Kinabalu + 3.2km to finish (about 20km in total) in 6.25 hours (the cutoff was 6.5hours). So why didn’t I make the summit? The one thing that held me back (I think) was the altitude and subsequent lack of air. The air was extremely cold, and many people said on the way down that this definitely affected the climb. Everyone was moving really slowly close to the summit as it was difficult to push any further. Plus, the summit was so foggy I couldn’t actually see where the top was! This was more mental than anything, but it would have been good to see the dangling carrot as I had no idea how close I really was.Overall, I am really proud of myself for attempting this race given the fact that I had many reasons not to. Don’t we all have reasons not to do the things that scare us or seem hard? I will leave you with the tagline of a TV show theme song and ask: what have you done today to make you feel proud?
This race recap was brough to you by (not officially, but the following helped me along the way today): Panadol Sinus Cold & Flu, ForeverGreen Electrifire, Vega Sport Optimizer, lululemon athletica, North Face, Hydrapak, Asics, Kleenex, and viewers like you. Thanks for reading :)
I am now off to relax and scuba dive in one of the top ten dive sites in the world: Sipidan.