Who Is Niro?
We’ve been good friends with Niro since meeting him in South-East Asia through the beauty of the OCR community. We’re always impressed with Niro’s dedication to his training (although this one really takes it to the next level) and when we heard he was taking on this challenge, we wanted to give it the credit it deserved.
This blog tells an epic journey of self-motivation, hard work and grit and this is the first in our #setyourownchallenge blog series. So, sit down and enjoy the journey Niro went on as he took on a full day of running.
A Day’s Vert
“103km with 5300m of elevation within 24hrs.”
This would be the longest I would have ever run and climbed in terms of distance, elevation and time. Having only done a 70km run prior with a pretty flat elevation profile I knew this would be both a physical and mental challenge to overcome.
Why?!
The idea came when my running-mate Scott and I made plans to attend the Hong Kong 100 race that was scheduled to happen in January 2021. However, with no improvement with the pandemic situation, the race was cancelled and made a virtual event. I never felt attracted to doing virtual races and I knew I needed a bigger “why” for me to commit to train and attempt this feat. So after much thought and speaking to a few close friends I decided to dedicate this run towards raising funds to support a cause that matters a lot to me; mental health. These pandemic times, especially, have been quite testing and it felt good to be able to give back. During times when I really wanted to quit during the 100km attempt, thinking back at my “why” and all the contributions and support I had gotten from everyone just helped me pull myself out of the rut and keep moving, one small step at a time.
Many thanks to all the contributions towards the Day’s Vert campaign. If you’d like to make a contribution follow this link. https://www.giving.sg/campaigns/a_days_vert
All proceeds will go to the Singapore Association for Mental Health to fund their attempts at raising mental health awareness.
The Planning and Prep
As you might be aware, Singapore is a small country with not much in terms of elevation to its name. So we set to work on shortlisting possible routes which we could take, but with only a few options to choose from, Bukit Timah Hill was our obvious choice. Bukit Timah Hill is Singapore’s highest hill and stands at an altitude of 163.63m above sea level. The main route to the summit from the base of the park covers 1.7km out and back with an elevation gain of around 120m. However, the nature park where the hill is located is only open to the public for 12 hours, so we had to move to a second hill that would allow us to continue for the remainder. Luckily for us, the Bukit Batok Hill (aka Lorong Sesuai) was just a kilometre away. This hill was half the size of Bukit Timah covering a 1km loop out and back with only 60m in elevation gain. The goal for the day was to cover as much elevation and distance in Bukit Timah before having to move on to Bukit Batok.
I had been doing my weekly long runs of 20 - 30kms and decided to mix in 2 hours of weekly hill repeats 4 weeks out from the day. Doing the hill-repeats at Bukit Timah and Bukit Batok hills gave us the chance to recce and familiarise ourselves with the route in order to strategize our efforts on the uphills and the downhills. The sessions felt good, but how the legs and body would respond 12 hours into the day was still a big unknown. Even the amount of food to bring was a huge question mark. My main fuel was Tailwind and we had arranged to take food breaks such as cup noodles and fruits every 4 hours or so which Scott’s lovely wife, Jeane, agreed to help us with!
The Day
Nerves were high waking up on the day, with too much adrenaline running in my body to even fall asleep for a good 8 hours the night before. I had to constantly remind myself that this was a game of patience, and we had to slowly chip into the kilometres and elevation gain, without burning out at the start. The morning weather was still cool as we started doing laps up Bukit Timah Hill to the summit. The legs felt good, breathing felt easy and spirits were high as we had quite a number of Spartan friends dropping by to do laps with us! Much thanks for Dominique, Greg, Joelle, Choon Man, Chezven, Kardy and Yannik for keeping us company! Lost in conversations, the first 20k went by at a decent pace as we power hiked the steeper inclines/stair and ran up the flatter sections.
As we hit the 30km mark, most of our friends had left and Scott and I were on our own. The mid-day sun was warming up the ground and humidity was getting to us. I was sweating profusely and my body was overheating. I had to continuously splash my face with water every chance I got. Losing salts through sweat, I could feel my calves and quads cramping up as we ran the downhills. With a huge chunk of distance still ahead of us, I was starting to get inside my own head. At this point, I was seriously contemplating calling it quits. Luckily our next food break was a lap or two away so I forced myself to focus on getting through to that. Sitting down to eat, I recollected my thoughts and came up with a new action plan. I switched to using hiking poles for the next laps and came up with an hourly routine (3 laps) of taking a salt tablet, putting on some muscle spray, topping up my Tailwind & water, and most importantly re-applying anti-chafing cream! The next 30km was not any easier, but this routine helped get my mind into autopilot-mode, breaking down the task into digestible chunks with a mental goal of making it into the next hour.
Evening Approaches…
As the late evening approached, the downhills were starting to feel more painful than the uphills, especially running down on the steeper section which took a pounding on the quads the spirits were up again. However, the spirits were up again as the air was cooler and we had a couple of friends joining us for a few laps (thanks to Jonathan and Roland!). We also knew at the back of our minds that we were almost done running this route with the park closing soon. At 7 pm we had clocked in 28 laps, 56km with 3000m in elevation and we bid farewell to Bukit Timah and made our way to Bukit Batok hill.
After a quick stop for dinner, (cup noodles again) we started our climb once more. We had our friend, Lay Hoon, joining us as she kindly committed to keep us company for the remainder. Bukit Batok hill felt much easier compared to Bukit Timah especially because the gradient was flatter and the distance was shorter. However, this meant that we had to do more laps to clock in the necessary elevation.
Coincidentally, it was a happy surprise seeing some fellow ultrarunners doing laps on the same hill for their Everesting Basecamp challenge. They had been at it since the night before and seeing them still going strong motivated us to push through. It was nice to see the camaraderie as we all cheered for each other and I was sad to see them finish and leave as it approached midnight.
By midnight we had another 30km to complete with close to a 1000m in elevation left. We had about another 15 laps on the hill to go before we moved on to flatter ground. The hill seemed steeper and the numbers on our Garmins increased ever so slowly. The night was getting to us and we were slowing down. Every break we took caused our legs to stiffen up and the downhills were getting more painful.
After a quick stop at a nearby petrol kiosk to get a cold drink, I felt a second wind and I decided to push our pace up the hill in the hopes that the rest would follow. And it worked! We ticked off lap after lap, and slowly but painfully it was time for 15km of flat ground! By this time, however, my legs had given up and I let Scott take lead and tried to keep up as closely as I could. We were doing laps of 2km, going from the base of Bukit Batok hill to the entrance of Bukit Timah, and that was the most painful and mind-numbing 15km that I had ever done! Dawn was approaching and I could see people out doing their morning runs. How I envied their fresh pairs of legs!
Each painful step moved us closer to the finish and boy was I glad when my Garmin hit 103km! With the last bit of 60m of elevation to go, we made our way back to Bukit Batok Hill where we had set up our “aid station”. That last climb was painful and we just gave it all, and after 23hrs and 35mins we were just glad to sit for a moment, press save on our Garmins and just take a moment to realise that we just completed what seemed impossible at the start. 103km and 5300m of elevation. Done!
