Nepal Impact Marathon 2019 - Part 2
"Toeing the starting line of a marathon, regardless of the language you speak, the God you worship or the colour of your skin, we all stand as equal. Perhaps the world would be a better place if more people ran.” -Dean Karnazes
STOP! have you read part 1 yet? if not, don't hang around here, get yourself over there instead.
The Nepal Impact runners had travelled from across the UK, North America and even Hong Kong and we were sharing the trails with the local runners. So many different stories and backgrounds brought together through running. This race was even more special because of the atmosphere that was created, with everyone bonding over dhal bhat, pickaxes and the occasional card game. We weren’t just fellow runners on the course, we were a team. The success and happiness of everyone else just as important as our own. This ethos spread, everyone we saw on the trail was brother or sister, nobody felt like a competitor, we were all sharing the same great experience.
Tam & I were getting encouragement from the villagers we passed when Humbling hill gave way to the corrugated steel houses of Kakani village but the loudest cheer came from a handful of half marathon runners waiting at the entrance to the scout camp. The start for the half was two hours after the marathon and these guys had given up some of their pre-race routine time to cheer us past before walking to the start themselves. What superstars!
The extra boost was well timed. Passing the scout camp meant we were entering the national park; Guns ‘n’ Roses time! Wide rough tracks gave way to mostly single file, even rougher paths, twisting and ducking through the trees (literally ducking in many cases, I’m not saying the locals had an unfair advantage or anything, but none of them looked to be over 6ft). The first 5 miles through the park was introduced in the race brief as “Nepali flat”. Apparently this means that at no point is it actually flat, but compared to everything else in the area you feel like you could play billiards on it.
Occasionally we would crest one of these “flat” sections or round a bend and the trees would open out to views that would have been breathtaking, had there been any breath left to take! Every morning in camp we had woken up to the sight of the famous Annapurna range and 40 miles to it’s right, Manaslu, the world's eighth highest at 8,163m, yet the sight of a snow capped peak seemed only to be growing in beauty not diminishing. I am not usually one for taking mid-race selfies...this was not a usual race.
As we ran, walked and hiked through the woodland, we had half an eye looking for the bits of fluorescent yellow tape which were tied to trees every 100m or so, another half of an eye looking for the stunning views, and half an eye scoping for foot placement. Those of you quick at maths will have noticed this leaves a spare half an eye. This eye fraction had an important job. This half an eye was teamed up with the bit of an ear not involved in the conversation and was on leopard alert! The race brief, much like a parkrun brief, told us that we didn't have the right of way on the paths. In the national park that honour went to the wildlife. Most likely monkeys, but potentially leopards. The spotted felines were likely, we were told, to be off in some other part of the park away from the commotion of the race. Imagine our joy when, for the first time all week, during the night before the race, we hear the distinctive bark of a leopard!
Thankfully uneaten by leopards, we crossed a waterfall using a rope handrail strung through steel eyes hammered into the rock for support, and pressed on to the first checkpoint in the park. At this point we were both feeling great and turned down the offers of food, water and medical assistance, but it was great to see some familiar faces and they gave us another dose of energy.
We had been joined at the scout camp by a crack team from Exile Medics. This team of highly skilled medical professionals were here as volunteers to keep the impact runners running. They were scattered across the course for race day but had also been on hand during project road and in the evenings at camp in case anyone needed them. I think me and my pickaxe clocked up the most treated blisters on one pair of hands. The medics were excellent all week, even getting stuck in with the project. By race day they were as much a part of the impact team as anyone else and were cheering as loudly as the best of them.
We left the aid station in good spirits, plunged into the thickening woodland and promptly decided we needed a doctor. Tam had been handed a plaster by one of the passing Nepalese runners who had spotted that her ankle was bleeding, apparently having rubbed on the back of her shoe. As for me, I had decided to admit there was an issue with my foot. During the first training run of the week, it felt like the base of my little toe on my right foot had rubbed on my shoe and become sore. I had checked and rechecked the lacing and inside of both shoes but it still got worse every time I wore my trail shoes. The pain had been there since leaving camp for the start line and I had been hoping it would subside, just a bit of maranoia... It was not maranoia. I love running downhill, but every step rammed my foot further into the shoe and the sore spot was making itself known.
Unfortunately for us, we had just entered the longest stretch between aid stations on the whole course. We didn’t even discuss turning back, anyway, we would be hitting savage summit soon and my foot could have a rest as we hiked up hill. To get there though we needed to pass the landslide, a perfect example of the great work the Impact team do. On Thursday a landslide swept away a section of the path. On Friday the army were out with hand tools carving a new one. On Saturday we had a narrow, safe passage through the fresh earth. This isn’t a standard problem for a race director, but these are not standard race directors. They are used to thinking fast and facing unusual problems, flexibility is their middle name. The fact that we knew nothing of the landslide until the race brief the night before the race, and that Megs was able to present that we were going ahead with “plan A” is testament to the great work these guys do, and the experience they have in organising races in tough locations.
Somewhere on our hike up to the Summit we got a surprise when we saw runners coming towards us! We were even more surprised to recognise them. A few of our fellow marathon runners, Scott, Ricky, Phily and Kit had taken a wrong turn through the scout camp and wound up doing the loop through the park in reverse (and eventually went on to complete an unexpected ultra by clocking up 50km!). When we saw them they had decided their best course of action was to complete the lap backwards then turn around and do one the right way. In any other race a mishap like this might have been disastrous, but when the only goal is to enjoy yourself, what’s a few extra kilometres between friends!
After finally discovering that Savage Summit actually did have an end we were treated to wonderful winding descent. Just the sort I would have loved if I wasn’t deliberately landing strangely to minimse the pain in my foot. We dropped more gradually than we climbed and after a few miles of sweeping trail in dappled light a familiar sight materialised between the trees. Our camp bar! This meant two important things, we were almost at the end of lap one of the park, and therefore closing fast on halfway, but we were also bearing down on the aid station.
We swept down past the scout hut, a short stretch of oddly familiar track amongst the adventure. No time to stop in the tent though, I had an appointment with the medic. We took 10 minutes while my foot was strapped up to reduce the rubbing and Tam had her heel taped. Watching the volunteer doctors work made me think back to the morning before we left Kathmandu. Aside from the project, the other main part of the impact on an Impact Marathon trip is seeing, first hand, the work done by the charities. We had been split into two groups, the first one visiting a residential care centre for women and children with HIV. Access to care is difficult with the government support being limited to drugs. Many of the people there were victims of trafficking and all were unable to return to their homes and communities because of the stigma surrounding HIV.
Our group had spent time with the team from Burns Violence Survivors. The morning started with a presentation about what the charity does and the issues they face. A lot of the questions and discussion revolved around the domestic violence related acid burns and the social and cultural problems surrounding it. The charity has run radio awareness campaigns but it seems they are a small team fighting against an shocking cultural tide. The root cause is too big an issue for them, where they can help though is with the treatment. After the presentation they took us across the city to see the children’s ward and the burns unit at the university teaching hospital.
In the children’s ward we met five burn patients; two of whom had suffered severe burns due to falling into cooling vats of livestock fodder; two had been burnt by warm baby oil and one by a hot drink. What these children all had in common was that they had travelled a long way to receive treatment; anywhere between 100km and 650km, mostly on buses, all on Nepali roads. The sort of roads that we would be on for almost 3 hours heading to our camp that afternoon and covering only 23km. These families had sat on buses for hours to reach their only option for the vital care they needed. We take for granted, especially living in a city, that in an hour of need the hospital is a short drive away, and thanks to the NHS free. The roles of BVS here were to provide support to the families who had to pay for accommodation in the city as well as the treatment and to raise awareness. The incidents were avoidable, covering the hot fluids or placing them out of reach could have prevented all these cases and BVS attempted to educate as well as help.
It was a similar story in the teaching hospital. We saw the only burns ICU bed in the country, which had cost $32,000. We saw a man who was being treated for severe burns and supported by BVS with food parcels during his treatment; they were also supporting his brother, who was helping care for him, after he had been eating the food anyway. BVS need help from some big NGOs and the Nepalese government if they stand a chance of addressing the issues with education and culture that lead to the burns, but for the treatment and care of individual patients they need financial support. That is where the donations make a difference. They are working on a project to train people in the regions away from Kathmandu to provide basic burn treatments. This would potentially mean no long and bumpy bus rides, no families split up or away from home. This, and the everyday support they provide is where our support can, and will, make a difference.
I knew on race day that if I started to struggle, the memory of what we had seen and heard would put everything into perspective. Thankfully, by the end of lap one I hadn’t needed that motivation. While at the aid station I had my reservoir refilled. Not because I was drinking a lot of water, but because it had come open twice and drenched my back. In fact, when I looked I was surprised, and a little concerned by just how much water I still had left given the conditions and the leaks.
My fuelling strategy was based on Tailwind. I had two 500ml soft flasks in the shoulder straps of my Salomon pack, each one filled with a concentrated tailwind mix. (orange left, berry right; variety is the spice of life after all).I used three stick packs in each bottle then filled them up with water. A sip of the fruity salty syrup and a glug from my hydration pack every few minutes should see me through the course. At the halfway point I was behind though. I still hadn't had a full bottle's worth of tailwind. Fuel and fluid needed stepping up on lap two. Tam had even asked me a couple of times if I was taking on enough, she was looking out for my energy level, I was looking out for the course markers. Proper teamwork.
Time to plunge back into the park and see if the views were any better and the hills any flatter the second time round (I wasn't going to hold my breath for the second pint!)
To be continued...(don't worry, only one more part)
If you haven't already donated, the JustGiving page is still open. Anything you can spare will help massively and all donations come with a free virtual hug!
Follow me on Instagram @runningthebreeze and Facebook
You can even subscribe so you don't miss a post on my blog!
STOP! have you read part 1 yet? if not, don't hang around here, get yourself over there instead.
The Nepal Impact runners had travelled from across the UK, North America and even Hong Kong and we were sharing the trails with the local runners. So many different stories and backgrounds brought together through running. This race was even more special because of the atmosphere that was created, with everyone bonding over dhal bhat, pickaxes and the occasional card game. We weren’t just fellow runners on the course, we were a team. The success and happiness of everyone else just as important as our own. This ethos spread, everyone we saw on the trail was brother or sister, nobody felt like a competitor, we were all sharing the same great experience.
Tam & I were getting encouragement from the villagers we passed when Humbling hill gave way to the corrugated steel houses of Kakani village but the loudest cheer came from a handful of half marathon runners waiting at the entrance to the scout camp. The start for the half was two hours after the marathon and these guys had given up some of their pre-race routine time to cheer us past before walking to the start themselves. What superstars!
The extra boost was well timed. Passing the scout camp meant we were entering the national park; Guns ‘n’ Roses time! Wide rough tracks gave way to mostly single file, even rougher paths, twisting and ducking through the trees (literally ducking in many cases, I’m not saying the locals had an unfair advantage or anything, but none of them looked to be over 6ft). The first 5 miles through the park was introduced in the race brief as “Nepali flat”. Apparently this means that at no point is it actually flat, but compared to everything else in the area you feel like you could play billiards on it.
Occasionally we would crest one of these “flat” sections or round a bend and the trees would open out to views that would have been breathtaking, had there been any breath left to take! Every morning in camp we had woken up to the sight of the famous Annapurna range and 40 miles to it’s right, Manaslu, the world's eighth highest at 8,163m, yet the sight of a snow capped peak seemed only to be growing in beauty not diminishing. I am not usually one for taking mid-race selfies...this was not a usual race.
 |
| It's not every day you get to look down on the top of the clouds from over 2000m! |
Thankfully uneaten by leopards, we crossed a waterfall using a rope handrail strung through steel eyes hammered into the rock for support, and pressed on to the first checkpoint in the park. At this point we were both feeling great and turned down the offers of food, water and medical assistance, but it was great to see some familiar faces and they gave us another dose of energy.
We had been joined at the scout camp by a crack team from Exile Medics. This team of highly skilled medical professionals were here as volunteers to keep the impact runners running. They were scattered across the course for race day but had also been on hand during project road and in the evenings at camp in case anyone needed them. I think me and my pickaxe clocked up the most treated blisters on one pair of hands. The medics were excellent all week, even getting stuck in with the project. By race day they were as much a part of the impact team as anyone else and were cheering as loudly as the best of them.
We left the aid station in good spirits, plunged into the thickening woodland and promptly decided we needed a doctor. Tam had been handed a plaster by one of the passing Nepalese runners who had spotted that her ankle was bleeding, apparently having rubbed on the back of her shoe. As for me, I had decided to admit there was an issue with my foot. During the first training run of the week, it felt like the base of my little toe on my right foot had rubbed on my shoe and become sore. I had checked and rechecked the lacing and inside of both shoes but it still got worse every time I wore my trail shoes. The pain had been there since leaving camp for the start line and I had been hoping it would subside, just a bit of maranoia... It was not maranoia. I love running downhill, but every step rammed my foot further into the shoe and the sore spot was making itself known.
Unfortunately for us, we had just entered the longest stretch between aid stations on the whole course. We didn’t even discuss turning back, anyway, we would be hitting savage summit soon and my foot could have a rest as we hiked up hill. To get there though we needed to pass the landslide, a perfect example of the great work the Impact team do. On Thursday a landslide swept away a section of the path. On Friday the army were out with hand tools carving a new one. On Saturday we had a narrow, safe passage through the fresh earth. This isn’t a standard problem for a race director, but these are not standard race directors. They are used to thinking fast and facing unusual problems, flexibility is their middle name. The fact that we knew nothing of the landslide until the race brief the night before the race, and that Megs was able to present that we were going ahead with “plan A” is testament to the great work these guys do, and the experience they have in organising races in tough locations.
Somewhere on our hike up to the Summit we got a surprise when we saw runners coming towards us! We were even more surprised to recognise them. A few of our fellow marathon runners, Scott, Ricky, Phily and Kit had taken a wrong turn through the scout camp and wound up doing the loop through the park in reverse (and eventually went on to complete an unexpected ultra by clocking up 50km!). When we saw them they had decided their best course of action was to complete the lap backwards then turn around and do one the right way. In any other race a mishap like this might have been disastrous, but when the only goal is to enjoy yourself, what’s a few extra kilometres between friends!
 |
| Tired and happy on the trail side! |
We swept down past the scout hut, a short stretch of oddly familiar track amongst the adventure. No time to stop in the tent though, I had an appointment with the medic. We took 10 minutes while my foot was strapped up to reduce the rubbing and Tam had her heel taped. Watching the volunteer doctors work made me think back to the morning before we left Kathmandu. Aside from the project, the other main part of the impact on an Impact Marathon trip is seeing, first hand, the work done by the charities. We had been split into two groups, the first one visiting a residential care centre for women and children with HIV. Access to care is difficult with the government support being limited to drugs. Many of the people there were victims of trafficking and all were unable to return to their homes and communities because of the stigma surrounding HIV.
Our group had spent time with the team from Burns Violence Survivors. The morning started with a presentation about what the charity does and the issues they face. A lot of the questions and discussion revolved around the domestic violence related acid burns and the social and cultural problems surrounding it. The charity has run radio awareness campaigns but it seems they are a small team fighting against an shocking cultural tide. The root cause is too big an issue for them, where they can help though is with the treatment. After the presentation they took us across the city to see the children’s ward and the burns unit at the university teaching hospital.
In the children’s ward we met five burn patients; two of whom had suffered severe burns due to falling into cooling vats of livestock fodder; two had been burnt by warm baby oil and one by a hot drink. What these children all had in common was that they had travelled a long way to receive treatment; anywhere between 100km and 650km, mostly on buses, all on Nepali roads. The sort of roads that we would be on for almost 3 hours heading to our camp that afternoon and covering only 23km. These families had sat on buses for hours to reach their only option for the vital care they needed. We take for granted, especially living in a city, that in an hour of need the hospital is a short drive away, and thanks to the NHS free. The roles of BVS here were to provide support to the families who had to pay for accommodation in the city as well as the treatment and to raise awareness. The incidents were avoidable, covering the hot fluids or placing them out of reach could have prevented all these cases and BVS attempted to educate as well as help.
 |
| Despite her condition, this little girl had a smile that lit up the room, only apparently not for the camera! Source: Impact Marathon Series |
I knew on race day that if I started to struggle, the memory of what we had seen and heard would put everything into perspective. Thankfully, by the end of lap one I hadn’t needed that motivation. While at the aid station I had my reservoir refilled. Not because I was drinking a lot of water, but because it had come open twice and drenched my back. In fact, when I looked I was surprised, and a little concerned by just how much water I still had left given the conditions and the leaks.
My fuelling strategy was based on Tailwind. I had two 500ml soft flasks in the shoulder straps of my Salomon pack, each one filled with a concentrated tailwind mix. (orange left, berry right; variety is the spice of life after all).I used three stick packs in each bottle then filled them up with water. A sip of the fruity salty syrup and a glug from my hydration pack every few minutes should see me through the course. At the halfway point I was behind though. I still hadn't had a full bottle's worth of tailwind. Fuel and fluid needed stepping up on lap two. Tam had even asked me a couple of times if I was taking on enough, she was looking out for my energy level, I was looking out for the course markers. Proper teamwork.
Time to plunge back into the park and see if the views were any better and the hills any flatter the second time round (I wasn't going to hold my breath for the second pint!)
To be continued...(don't worry, only one more part)
If you haven't already donated, the JustGiving page is still open. Anything you can spare will help massively and all donations come with a free virtual hug!
Follow me on Instagram @runningthebreeze and Facebook
You can even subscribe so you don't miss a post on my blog!
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