Somehow we formed a small mountain goat group with Richard and Ethan. Both of whom I met from the Siloso swimming group. Ethan first came up with the idea of running the HK 100 in 2027, he invited Richard. They both thought that there is a pre requisite like UTMB to be able to join the race but actually there was none. Our original plan was to do the Mountain goat 88 challenge but given the timeline, I was not confident to finish it within 15 hours.
We did not really do much planning, just picked a date and downloaded the map. We did not even meet up to talk about its but just made up a whatsapp chat group to chit chat. Somehow all our dates were tough to meet, we decided to run on the Vesak Day weekend on 30 May. As both Richard and Ethan had never ran continuosly in that distance. In order to avoid the hikers rush at the peak hour ( mainly 7 am -10am) we decided to go at 4 am in the wee hours and testing our headlamps too.
Start Line
Prior to this we shared on the things that we would be bringing for this ” race” . I thought to keep things simple and not carry too many things along, basically I realise that most of the time the food I bring I never ate much or maybe its not tasty enough because I like to bring gummy bears and stuff. I realise for trails I like natural food like dried fruits and nuts. Or even real bread and fruits like banana, watermelon. However, this one since we are self sufficient, we don’t get the luxury of all these.
We met at the Macritchie Amneties Centre 4 am of 30 May. Started off around 4:15am after small warm up and filling up of hydration containers. This time I went for the 2 X 500 ml soft flask again. Maybe I felt carrying the hydration pack a bit too noisy after to up with water. It started to rain and was quite heavy for a while, but it helps being inside the forest. It had been a while since I went to MR, running in MR does help a lot in the training but I somehow lost the motivation to go there and prefer to go to Bukit Timah Hill instead. We reached the summit about 5:40am and decided to go back via main road from Dunearn road because time was tight and Ethan needed to leave around 06:30 am.
Part Deux
The second part was after a quick breakfast at Shunfu market, I could feel my glutes getting really quite painful. But somehow just pushed on, since last year MR25 last challenge I could feel I am declining already and facing many old injuries. Maybe its time to be serious to face them. We went up to Pierce reservoir area and went back to Ranger station, then headed to BTH in a different route from Sime path.
That path was actually linked to the tree top walk, it was less rocky but also sandy. Along the pipeline trail, I happened to see my RSM from Provost, it was a pleasant surprise as it has been a while. Same old route in the Bukit Timah but instead of coming back via road, we decided to take Rifle range back and go by Southern trail back to the start line.
Finishing it up
Actually when we reached the sime trail I was feeling a bit strained but I thought just push it on for that few KM, Richard was still pretty fresh and went back and forth to clock the distance as we kinda presume that we will be short of distance if we just go back straight. I looped at bit at the ending portion just to make up at 50km. I took a total of about 7:37 hrs in total, felt it was kinda slow, but I think I had been really worn out lately. Overall, it was a pleasant run and it felt good to rekindle back running trail in Singapore just like the Ben swee races and MR 25. But it is also a sign telling me that I need to recover properly and train back my past self.
