TNF - Malaysia Mountain Trail Festival 2019 (84km)

TNF - Malaysia Mountain Trail Festival 2019 ("TNF-MMTF") is an ultra trail marathon event held in Taiping, Malaysia. It consisted of 10km, 25km, 55km and 84km races. The elevation gained for 84km race was advertised as 5,300m, which made it a little bit scary to me.

Race Information:

Organizer's Distance & elevation gain: 86.5m, with 5,290m elevation gain
My recorded Distance & elevation gain:  80.42km+, with 4,720m elevation gain
Cut off Time: 28 hours (I took 20hours 17minutes to complete)
Weather: Chill, 10-20 deg.C
Finisher rate: 72%

Unlike all my previous ultra events which I normally started off by fast walking, I flagged off in TNF-MMTF 2019 with light jog. I have heard many stories where runners DNF in CP1 in year 2018 due to human traffic jam in single trails, so I definitely don't want that to happen on me. However, seemed like the organizer was aware of the year 2018 problem and rectified it on 2019 by prolonging the runnable section in the beginning. This helped to sort out the fast runners and slow runners.

Everyone was sprinting like no tomorrow in the first 3km and overtaking each other, which made the route a little bit jam. Some runners were queuing up to slowly walk through the palm oil estate, so that they wont step into the water puddle. I did not like the feeling and sped up to overtook some runners. We are in the "Malaysia Muddy Trail Festival", so why afraid of some water? After overtaking these runners, I finally fit into a group of runners with similar pace.

Knowing that we have water station in CP0 (km8), I've carried very minimal water since flag off. That helped me to cut down few hundreds grams, not much, but every gram counts. I have also tried a few new things in this ultra:

1. No more energy gel, I used "Tailwinds" instead.
2. No more hydration pack, only bottles (I found hydration pack nuisance in my previous few ultra races)
3. No more running backpack, I used Naked Running Vest and Naked Running Band instead. 
4. I tried Katsuo Stamina pills.

These changes shove away at least 1 hours from my total running times. Below are some after-thoughts:

1. Tailwinds provided me more energy than normal energy gel, and they were more lenient to my mouth and stomach. However the process of refilling Tailwinds powders into my bottles was a hassle, I often spilled some powders away due to the small diameter of my bottles' inlet.
2. Naked Running Band is very versatile, you do not feel anything when you are running. As if it is one with you. Don't over pack though, as some of my items almost dropped out.
3. Naked Running Vest solved my sore shoulders issue. It will not jump around when I am running fast, unlike my Aonijie Backpack.
4. Katsuo Stamina pills worked well, no muscle soreness until 70km+. Maybe it really helped my body to breakdown the lactic acids?

The game started in CP3/km31, where we begin to climb Bukit Larut. During the pre-race briefing, race director, Ewegene Tan stressed that this is a VJM ("Virgin Jungle Malaysia") trail. In my imagination, the trail should be similar to Amazon jungle. However to my surprise, it looked exactly like Apek hill and Gasing Hill. Thanks to the superb weather, the hike went smoothly.

I was caught by surprise that there was no cup noodle in CP4, the half way check point. I do appreciate the fact that they served fried chicken though, it was delicious and filling. I met up with Lisia and she helped me to cook my own cup noodle. It served as a good solid food and prevent me from feeling hungry for the next good 3 hours. I also treasure the ice coffee that Lisia brought for me. It boosted my energy during my second hike up to Bukit Larut peak in CP5.

After spending 25 minutes in CP4, I left and continued my journey after gave Lisia a goodbye hug. I spend another 3-4 hours to slowly ascend the hill. In order not to exert myself, I stop to catch my breath for 20 seconds after every 50 steps. Time passed without me realizing and I was already on the hill peak.

Once the runners arrive CP5 near Bukit Larut peak, they need to run back down to CP4 (now called CP6) on a tarmac road. During the first descend from Bukit Larut, I went slower to conserve my energy. Now that I have crossed the midway point, I started to be more lavish and ran down the hill. I was considering whether to push a little bit more and get sub-20 hours timing, but ended up I preferred to complete the race comfortably.

After pass through three more hills which were lower than 300m height, runners would reach the finishing line. The path on the first hill was more raw and filled with plants and grass. The paths on last two hills were more developed and have plenty of stoned & concrete roads.

I gotta admit that I was a little bit sad when I see no camera man waiting in the finishing line. The event was so well done that I expected I would see someone there taking my finishing moment. However I was not too down, since TMBT was the same.

Verdict:

Race location: Taiping, Malaysia.

Food and water supply: Well supplied. Organizer even supply Tailwinds as beverage in certain CPs.

Organizer's crews: Plenty of marshal and undertakers. I hoped for more photographers.

Route marking: Superb, in fact over-marked.

Difficulty: 5 out of 10 (from the scale of 0 to 10, where 10 as the toughest)

Results: Checkpointspot

Conclusion:
- In my opinion TNF-MMTF is doable with moderate fitness.
- Cut off time is lenient to majority, PROVIDED the weather is good. I believe the DNF rate would reach 50% if the weather was bad and trail become slippery.
-All in all, TNF-MMTF is a very high quality event.

 

 

The night view from top of Bukit Larut.

#TNFMMTF2019
#TNFMalaysia