Malnad Ultra 50 km, Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka

I ran Sydney Marathon end of Aug, you can read more about it here. I have been meaning to run Malnad Ultra since 2022, I have blogged about wanting to participate back in 2022, 2023 and 2024. I finally got around to running it, my second Ultra. My debut was in Jaisalmer last Dec, you can read about that here.

I always give myself complete rest of 3-weeks after every marathon, which meant I slip into easy running only by Sep 21 having run Sydney Marathon on Aug 31. However, after my return from Sydney, I ended up registering for a half marathon, my favorite half in my favorite city, you can read about my last appearance at this race and the fun I had during the trip back in 2019 here. At Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon I chose to pace my friend (Gautham CB) for a sub 2-hours finish, both Gautham and I had a lot of fun during the race, the race went per plan, we managed a comfortable sub 2-hours finish, splits are here. From Delhi, I headed straight to Pune for about 10 days to spend time with my parents. I also planned a trip to visit my close friend in Mhow mid Nov, whilst I was there, I also registered to run 'Runveer 7.0' race to salute Op Sindoor warriors organized by Infantry School, Mhow. The plan was to run another easy sub 2-hours finish, but the race atmosphere, the fauji vibe, nice and chilly weather made me go a lot faster than what I would have really wanted to, splits are here. 2 weeks of travel, 2 unplanned half marathons, on hindsight perhaps unnecessary, it did come in the way of the 6-weeks training block I charted out for Malnad Ultra. My 6-weeks training plan expected me to clock ~260 miles, I managed to do about ~230 miles which is about 85% of plan. On hindsight with Malnad as my only race in Q4, I might have been better off doing more hills, couple of more times of Nandi Hills climbs than running those half marathons. But hey ho! 

Bharath, Vinay and I, the trio that trained and ran Sydney had registered for Malnad Ultra. Bharath and I drove to Chikkamagaluru on Friday morning, it was a comfortable drive into Chikkamagaluru barring some traffic in Bengaluru city until we hit the outskirts. We drove straight to the Expo to collect our running number and then headed for Lunch. Vinay and couple of his friends arrived around lunchtime. The plan was to check-in to our hotel after Lunch and collecting our running number from the Expo. Due to some Booking.com confusion, the place we had booked our rooms no longer had any rooms for us. We got lucky and managed to find an Airbnb nearby which was run by an Army ex-serviceman. He was an excellent host and really took care of us during our two nights stay. After a light and comfortable meal we retired for the evening to get up early for our race. Vinay, Sundar and I were running 50 km, Bharath and Jagan 30 km. The Airbnb was a good 30-minutes drive to the start-line, also not that we had great stay options close by to the start line.

Tough Terrain and an exhausted runner :)

At the Expo to collect our running number, unaware of what the race day holds :)

We arrived at the holding area at about 0630, 30 minutes before the flag off. We were flagged off dot at 0700. The course is 90+% trails within coffee estates, with a total elevation gain of 5500-6000ft or 17-1800m. The hills are unending and complex. It is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. There were points during the course where I was frustrated with the terrain, for not running with trail specific shoes, rookie mistake I made for not running with the right shoe meant for the terrain, also another rookie mistake to run with borrowed hydration pack on the race day which I had not trained with during training runs. How could I! I felt like kicking myself for being stupid. To add to it, the course was unforgiving and unrelenting. It's hard to describe how hard and challenging the race was in a blog, one has to experience it to understand. Vinay was very kind who chose to run with me start-to-finish and put up with my tantrums during the course. Thanks buddy! Running with normal shoes on that terrain was a blunder, every step downhill I wasn't getting good grip of the ground and felt like I would slip and fall. It was very satisfying to finish the race without falling or getting injured, Trail races like these are not about finish times, but to test the participant's grit, endurance and pushing the limits, nonetheless how I fared that day is here.

All ready to go

Off we go!

Initial miles into the race, happy faces ;)

Why Malnad Ultra organizers don't give out a finisher medal but a Buckle, quite interesting. Do read about it here. I do want to run Malnad Ultra in 2026 to correct my rookie mistakes and bring home another buckle :)

At the end, it was all worth it!

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