Cameron Ultra 55km: Race recap

Training leading to the race

Recovery from Ultra trail Australia went very smoothly and I was back to near daily training within about 10 days or so. As my coach got me building so much for UTA100, I was able to keep riding the fitness I gained from the training bloc and race and add some more. As much as I love 100km races, it was great to train for a shorter, faster more intense race.

Living in Singapore, it was back to MacRitchie, multiple repeats of our dear Bukhit Timah Hill and lot’s of run communes and Bishan park laps. I always try to get on trails once or twice a week and always love the convenience of roads.

I am very grateful to have stayed healthy and injury free, definitely a massive advantage when building towards a race.

We left for the Cameron Highlands the day after my birthday (July 25th). I was first supposed to go alone, but a last minute change in Luke’s schedule allowed him and Sienna to join me. It was great to have them with me despite Sienna’s terrible two’s in full blown.

We flew from Singapore to Ipoh and then hired a car to drive to the Cameron Highlands, a 80+ km ride on a fairly windy road. Sienna being super prone to motion sickness, I was sitting in the backseat with her, a few plastic bags ready to go. The poor girl managed to be sick three times despite having her last meal multiple hours earlier. She was crying most of the 1 hour 45 min ride but forgot everything when we finally arrived to our hotel and went for dinner. Bless her.

The morning of the race

We picked up my bib on Friday morning and took a cheesy pictures at the race village. We then chilled for the rest of the day, I organised my stuff for the race and had an early dinner, at our hotel once again. I had white rice with some veggies and a bit of tofu. Nothing complicated.

My plan was to go to bed at 8.30pm as I needed to wake up at 3am for a 5am start. But… #mumlife Sienna was not ready at all to sleep, wanted to constantly breastfeed… Plus I was nervous. I probably fell asleep around 10:30 and woke up before my alarm rang as I was scared to miss it.

I woke up with butterflies in my stomach. I was nervous about my choice of shoes: I hesitated for a long time between the New Balance QOM and the Hoka Challenger ATR 5. Decided to go for the grippiest shoe, the NB QOM. In theory they were the best choice, but I ordered a size too big and despite making it more comfortable, I was afraid it would make it harder on technical terrain. While I was having my breakfast (a bowl of Nature’s path instant oats and a cordycep mushroom coffee), I realised it was now raining outside and got even more nervous. Looking at Sienna sleeping so soundly I just wished I could go back to bed with her. I shared my feeling with Luke, hoping he would tell me to stay in bed but he told me that I would change my mind as soon as the race would start. I realised he was right.

I arrived at the race village at about 4.20am and lucky enough it stopped raining. I warmed up a little, went to the toilet for a last time and made it to the start line with about 15 minutes to go.

The first 20km

Having studied the map and elevation chart and talked to a few previous year’s participants, I knew that the first kilometre was on tarmac, to then enter the jungle unto very technical terrain. To avoid being stuck in a conga line, I made sure to start fast enough to make my way to the front group.

My goal for this first 20km was to survive and not waste too much time.
And I can say mission accomplished: the terrain was so brutally technical, slippery and only lit by our headlamps as it was still nighttime. I must have slipped on my butt about 20 times and got caught by a few charitable souls. At some point, as we were running on some kind of wooden planks, one broke under me and my leg got caught for a few seconds. I was helped out by two guys. I was however pretty happy with my choice of shoes, the Vibram sole was as grippy as can be and I don’t think I would have been better with the Hoka Challenger ATR.
I came out of the jungle in third place as two ladies, Jess from Borneo and Paulina, a Czech/french girl who lives in SG, were definitely better technical runners than me. But I had confidence in my strength and was ready to attack the more runable trails and tarmac.

22 to 55 km
I was absolutely stoked to feel that my climbing legs made it to Malaysia and I ran every single step out of the jungle (including fairly long steady climbs). I just had a really good rhythm going on.
I caught up to the two ladies in front of me one by one and at about 27 km I was in front. A bit before the turnaround point I saw that only 3-4 guys were in front of me but catching up to them wasn’t my priority. I just wanted to run hard and protect my lead. As the last km or so was in the jungle again, I didn’t want to be in a direct battle with another lady who was a better technical runner than me.
I kept my rhythm, ran as hard as I could sustain and slowly caught up to one guy after another. The last jungle bit was super vertical (like four points of contact vertical) but I just went hard. The final km was on roads, on our way to the finish.

When I crossed the finish, I was disappointed to not break any ribbon or have the announcer say my name. A volunteer even walked up to me and said “you did not finish!” Until another volunteer told her she had typed in the wrong bib number. The announcer however quickly rectified the mistake and made me run through the ribbon again 😂
I then learned that I had actually finished not only first woman but also first OVERALL! Hence the confusion (probably) of the announcer who was not expecting a girl to be the first 55km runner to cross the line. The more I think about it, the more it makes me smile.
We also beated last year’s winning time by more than and hour so that might be the reason too.

Apart from this small incident, it was such a perfectly organised race: amazing marking, lots of well stocked aid stations, great award ceremony. And the scenery was just stunning.

My next race will be on trail again, in Borneo this time: TMBT Borneo Ultra Trail 50km on 14 September!

Race Nutrition

On the nutrition side of things, I started the race with 4 scoops of Tailwind (Mandarine Flavour) mixed with 1.5 litres of water in my portable bladder in my Ultraspire pack. My reasoning was that the first 2-3 hours would be very technical, so fairly slow and I would not really mind the extra weight. I also wanted to make drinking as easy as possible and didn’t want to have to fuss with bottles when all my concentration would be taken. For the rest of the race, I carried a 500ml bottle in one of my chest pocket and just refilled it with 2 scoops of Tailwind at a time (pre packaged in small ziplock bags) and water from the aid stations. As there was a total of 11 aid stations, I wasn’t worried about running out of nutrition. I used a total of 14 scoops of Tailwind (for a 7h22m effort), mix in about 3 - 3.5 litres of water in total. I drank a full cup of Coke in each of the last three aid stations. I also carried a caffeinated gel in case I needed a boost of energy but did not end up using it.

Again, I never felt lows/dips in my energy and I owe it to the very steady energy supply that is Tailwind.

Gear

Shoes: New Balance Summit QOM

Socks: Injinji

Calf Sleeves: Compressport

Shorts: Lululemon

Underwear: T8 Commando (available at Red Dot Running Co)

T-shirt: Tailwind (available at Red Dot Running Co)

Sports Bra: SmashFest Queen

Watch: Garmin 735 XT

Trucker Hat: Tailwind (available at Red Dot Running Co)

Pack: Ultraspire pack (Zygos)