Paragliding Billing to Bir 🪂

#ALLinRunning Camp at Bir: Day 2 - Local Loop through Bir trails

#ALLinRunning Camp at Bir: Day 1 - Ridgeline to Marhola

#CapitalTrails Group Meet (November 2024): Nature Walk with Dr. Gaurav  Barhodiya

Morning Weight Training

Hot and hard! 2nd place overall.

Summary:
One from my bucket list. I've been wanting to run on these trails and this race since its inception. Grateful that I finally got to! Also, lovely to see a vibrant and supportive running community in Cochin / Kochi (Delhi community has much to learn!).

That was another race for the memory books, harder than I would've liked at the end. Was on point for a sub 7 hrs 30 mins time, which would've been a satisfactory result considering the weather and how the past year. I was on track if it wasn't for getting lost around the 50K mark. Satisfied but a lost opportunity.

Congratulations to Juby George for winning the 33K race. Another strong showing by the All In Running crew.

Strong showing by the CapitalTrails crew, Kaustav Saha and Micah Risher  , both finishing the 60K in solid times.

Happy to be part of another community race, powered by members of Soles of Cochin running group. Kudos for the minimal environmental impact -- water from dispensers, a bamboo structure for the finishing arch, a biodegradable "medal" of local craft and much more. Other organizers should take note.

Race route:
- Point to point route i.e. start and end point are different
- A short loop around the start area before we move away towards the finish
- Lovely scenery, running through tea estates
- One steep climb that required scrambling on rock, followed by a ridge without a clear trail that required some bush whacking
- Short pine forest section, which was nice
- Another climb with panoramic view of the range followed by a steep, knee busting decent
- High sun exposure for most of the race, and it gets hot during the day!
- All these are connected by road sections connecting the different trails heads
- Good aid stations -- standard Indian options -- water, bananas and basics
- Aid station around 40K had solid food and was well stocked (curd rice, sweet potato etc) -- this was better than Malnad

Race notes:
- Started up front (correction from Malnad) and took the lead before turning left instead of right at the bottleneck and taking a few people off with me 🤦🏻
- Slowly caught back up to the leader, who is a Indian record holder at the 24 hr event (beautiful running from)
- Trying to maintain a hard pace, lost my way several times (big thanks to others to shouted and got me back)
- hung around with a pack of 4-5 till about 8K -- stretched it at aid stations (always an advance to run with a pack!)
- Maintained 2nd place pretty much from 10K onwards
- Built a nice gap for the trailing group and managed the route well (some back and forth when unsure about the route)
- Maintained a 3-5 min gap with the leader till 40K, though the win looked hard as I couldn't close it (the gap)
- Before the climb at 38K (or so), had to take a nature break, which had been troubling me since early in the race
- 40K aid station volunteers were super helpful is speeding up my pit stop (gap was probably 7-10 mins then)
- Lost my way and climbed the wrong hill around 50K and lost 10-15 mins, what felt like an eternity and quite demotivating 
- Rejoining the trail, Jaimon had caught up and that got me worried -- picked up pace and attack to build a gap that took every thing out of me
- After building a gap, took it easy before Jaimon caught me again with 5K to go 
- Pushed 4:25 pace on the road to rebuilt the gap, but the hard pace resulted in cramps and muscle spasms on the climb (and the race ends with a decent climb)
- Certain that podium would not be possible now, just managed to move forward with stops during cramps
- To my luck, Jaimon was also cramping and didnt catchup and 2nd place it was!

Other thoughts:
- Marking on the route was great! Couple of key junctions didn't have a ribbon or the ribbons may have been taken down by kids / locals (happens!)
- I think a GPX file should be shared with all participants doing trail races, even if it's 95% accurate -- this was a miss at Vagamon and at Malnad as well
- Too many fences, including one 200m from the start and others where we had to crawl under (overweight people would be stuck sadly) -- this was a major miss. The fences nees to he cut and removed. They can be reinstalled after the race. The start needs to be better planned -- can't have a bottleneck like this. Can cause a stampede and major harm.

Top Sports

Nakul Butta | All In Running

2024 Vagamon ULtrail 60K

25 Photos

33 Comments

Splits

Sign up to view more activities from Nakul Butta | All In Running

Paragliding Billing to Bir 🪂

#ALLinRunning Camp at Bir: Day 2 - Local Loop through Bir trails

#ALLinRunning Camp at Bir: Day 1 - Ridgeline to Marhola

#CapitalTrails Group Meet (November 2024): Nature Walk with Dr. Gaurav Barhodiya

Morning Weight Training

Want to see more?

The #1 app for runners and cyclists

Sign Up for Free. Track your progress and reach goals. Join 100 million active people on Strava.

See More from Nakul