Nepal Impact Marathon 2019 - Part 1

Distance running legend Emil Zatopek is quoted as saying “If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon”

In 2013 I went from non-runner to completing a marathon, I have been running ever since. The marathon has already changed my life, it can’t do it again...can it?

The feeling will be familiar to anyone who has done a marathon, or any big race. Walking to the start line with fellow runners, clutching a rucksack stuffed with extra clothes and post race recovery fuel for the bag drop. A nervous excitement woven through every conversation. Some people visibly worried, others looking too relaxed and jovial for it to be anything but a facade. What's different about this one was that instead of walking through city streets dodging taxis, buses and scooters, we small band of less than 20 were walking along the dusty streets of a village, swerving dogs and chickens. Instead of high rise buildings to look at and smog to breathe we had high rise snow capped peaks and Nepal’s finest 2000m altitude air.

The walk from the Kakani International Scout Centre, our home for the previous four nights, to the parade ground of the APF (Army Police Force) training camp took around 20 minutes. As we walked I willed the sunrise to hurry up and take the edge off the crisp morning air, but only a little, The heat up here has two settings, on or off, and I don't have to tell you which would be better for running a marathon.

We all agreed that we didn't have enough lifetimes to get bored of the view from the camp

I want you to take a moment to think back to your last big race, whatever distance it may have been, the last time you trained for something, thought about it for weeks or months, every time you laced up your trainers it was with you, every time you felt your lungs and legs burning, it was the reason why. Or even your first ever parkrun after hearing about it for ages and finally plucking up the courage to print your barcode and see what it was all about. I want you to try and recall the feeling on the morning of the event. If you are like me, it will have been a unique mix of excitement, fear and nerves, you might even have felt a little ill with worry. Now, imagine that feeling but with most of the self imposed pressure removed, what you have left is freedom. The only targets for the day are to get around the course and, most importantly, to have fun doing it. Can you imagine standing on the start line knowing that what lies ahead will be hard, you have done all the training you can, and the only outcome that matters is that you are happy. This, as the event team had dubbed it, was our victory lap and I was more pumped for this run than I ever thought possible. Time and position were essentially meaningless, today success would be measured by the depth of emotion and the width of smile.

OK, it’s me, there was some competitive grumblings. Leading us to the start was Josh, the self proclaimed “criminally attractive, grey haired gentleman”, and as we chatted he mentioned that the team had been discussing the international podium for the race, suggesting my name had come up. The Impact team is made up of some fantastic runners. Josh himself about to perform the role of course sweeper to complete his 117th marathon! One of the race directors, Megs finished second in this very race a few years before. Impact Marathon founder and all round awesome guy, Nick, completed the impossibly tough Annapurna Trail Marathon just before coming to Kakani. To be told my name had being touted by these people was flattering but attempted to fly in the face of my relaxed approach to the run. This was a victory lap not a race; calm the thoughts and what will be will be.

Sat in the hotel in Kathmandu the previous Monday evening the Impact Crew had launched the week, introducing the idea that the run on the coming Saturday was the “victory lap”. Victory lap? I had been training hard for this run, it was going to be the hardest marathon I had ever, and was ever likely to do. It was the main reason I was there, to test myself in sight of the world's highest mountains. The route has features called “Humbling Hill”, “Savage Summit” and “Hell Hill” and the bulk of the course is made up of two laps through the thick woodland of the national park. This didn’t sound much like a victory lap! What the Impact crew were trying to tell us, and what I would come to understand, was that by race day we would see that the importance of the run diminished next to what we were about to see and do in the coming days. But more on that later...

Our small band of brothers and sisters started to round the fence into the APF training ground. Seeing the start/finish line in the dusty orange yard, the flags marking the perimeter that would be glory lap to finish each of the three race distances lifted my excitement as high as I thought possible. Never before have I been proven wrong so quickly! It couldn't have been timed better, at that moment the next song came on the powerful sound system. Nick assures me it was on shuffle, I almost don’t believe him. The iconic opening notes of Guns ‘n; Roses, Welcome to the Jungle lit the fire in me. “Pumped” doesn't even cover it. I knew immediately that the first few bars of that song will forever send a ripple of excitement through me.

The finish line and the perimeter loop marking complete with obligatory Nepalese dogs

The 7:30am start was creeping closer as selfies were taken, hydration packs prepared and final toilet trips made. The toilet trip itself was an adventure for those, like me, who are less well travelled. Two “asian style” (read “squat”) toilets were situated on a raised concrete plinth alongside an open air sink. I’m pretty sure the crooked tents erected above each trap were a temporary feature for the shy visiting westerners and the new recruits would normally be able to enjoy panoramic vistas while they squat and cheer on their colleagues. Luckily I didn’t need to squat and before I knew it, I was in the starting pen sharing good luck hugs with my fellow impact runners. We had now been joined by a good sized group of quality looking local runners.

Kit and Phily posing for a "before" picture and Dave is on his way to find out what lurks under those two tents!

After another quick safety brief and a countdown we were set off. Climbing up the slope out of the APF grounds the locals quickly showed us their pedigree, and plenty of clean pairs of heels. As we hit the road most were already disappearing out of sight around the corner as my lungs made their opinion of the thin air very clear. A feature of the recent days at the scout camp had been optional morning training runs doing laps around a hilly route up to the stupa. I had never been at this altitude before, let alone tried to run at it. The thinner air made an impression immediately though, the first few minutes of every run was uncomfortable. The closest feeling I know is the one of setting off too hard at the start of a run with lungs that aren’t warmed up, that sensation of suddenly lacking fitness, only here it has been turned up to 11 and lasts twice as long. I just crossed my fingers that the thin air didn’t become a factor on race day.

It wasn’t formally pre-arranged but just after the start I fell into step with Ful-on Tri Club’s Tamsin. I had hoped to run at least a good chunk of the race with another impact runner, partly because having someone to talk to helps me keep my pace in control, but also because I love sharing runs with others, especially when you get away from the roads. Luckily for me Tam must have felt the same and we were both working on the same strategy. Walk all of the ups and run all of the downs and as much of the flat as we felt like. This started well as most of the first two miles was downhill and a good chunk of it on the only tarmac of the whole route until the final stretch. We got into a nice early rhythm and even caught and passed a couple of the Nepalese runners. It wasn’t to last though, as soon as we hit the next incline and put the plan into action they powered past.

All too soon we hit the aptly named Humbling Hill. This was a hill we were all very familiar with. As the name suggests, the Impact Marathon Series is so much more than the marathon. Our first two days at the camp had been about project road. For the previous three editions of the Nepal event the Impact runners had dug trenches to supply running water first to the village, then some community buildings and finally a few houses. The local community had taken on the work and now every house had running water, this amazing, life changing work was part of the reason I had signed up and I was excited to see what we would be doing.

Photographs don't do Humbling Hill justice!

The roads in Nepal are like nothing I have ever experienced, even on the country roads of Buckinghamshire! The 23km bus ride from Kathmandu to Kakani took around 2.5 hours. The dirt roads don’t have potholes, the potholes have occasional flatter bits. Annual monsoon rains carve ravines and soften the ground ready to be churned by truck and bike tyres. In Kakani this was compounded with landslides. One of the roads into the village was impassable to anyone not on a good motorbike. The alternative route is 4km longer, and costs the village, a (very roughly) estimated £4,000 a year in extra fuel as well as income from tourists put off by the bad roads. Our project was to make a start on repairing the 2km stretch of road. Completing the whole road was impossible in two days, but that isn’t the Impact way. Impact tries to be the catalyst. Making a good start on the road, will hopefully kick start the local authorities into completing the work, just as with the pipeline project.

To this end we, a collection of mostly office workers, none of whom had any relevant experience, spent two days swinging pickaxes, welding shovels, and carrying boulders up and down Humbling Hill. The idea was to dig out and reinforce the drainage trench to keep the monsoon waters off the road and to flatten the road surface as much as possible. To do it justice project road would need a story all of its own, but I will keep it brief. At the end of our time we felt like we had made a real difference; actual blood sweat and tears went into the work from everyone. We were helped by the Army for a spell on day one and the school children for a couple of hours each afternoon.

I think I managed to rack up the highest number of treated blisters over the two days!

Even with the extra hands, and the amazing boundless energy the kids brought progress was slow. Limited by the hand tools breaking multiple times an hour. Limited by the only raw materials we had being the road itself; we could only re-shape or remove, not add. Limited by the heat and altitude meaning we had to take frequent breaks. We finished one of the days not because we were tired, and not just because we had got to the end of the planned working day, but because it was so hot we had drunk all the water we had and the walk back to camp was a 20 minute uphill trudge. The work was hard. Getting anything done on infrastructure in Nepal is literally an uphill battle. The geography creating impossibly steep roads clinging to the side of the mountains. The geology seemed to be mostly the loose powdery earth and rocks that crumble in your hands. The hot sun dries the earth, and then monsoon rains sculpt their own path through the powder. Overcoming these challenges in a country with orders of magnitude more money and resources would be difficult. Here it is a monumental effort.

On race day when Tam and I started to hike Humbling Hill, the familiar dust kicked up from our feet, I was proud of our efforts, but seeing the road again as we tried climb it, brought home the scale of the work needed. We pressed on and I once again hoped the project would be completed before the rains came and made a mockery of what we had achieved. If you take nothing else from this report consider this; next time you are cursing the roadworks adding a couple of minutes to your commute, join me in being thankful someone is able to do the work.

To be continued...

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