The race almost started with panic, and honestly, looking back, maybe that was fitting.
The day before, during pack collection, I found out there would be no drop bag for my category. Just like that. Less than twenty four hours before the start, everything I had spent weeks planning around was gone. The extra socks, the backup nutrition, the contingency items. All of it. I told myself it would be fine, because what else could I do.
Then the next morning, standing at the start line at 6 AM, I realized I had also forgotten my electrolyte supply, my Garmin charging cable, and my extra socks. At that moment I still thought those were small mistakes. Funny how that works.
The race started and for the first few hours everything genuinely felt perfect. The atmosphere was electric. The scenery was the kind that makes you forget your legs exist. I was surrounded by runners from all over, each of them chasing something, and I was right there with them, feeling like all those months of preparation had actually paid off.
Then the sun arrived and changed everything.
By around 10 AM the temperature turned brutal. Not just warm, but the kind of heat that feels personal, like it has a grudge. Hour after hour it drained energy directly from my body and there was nowhere to hide. Every exposed section felt hotter than the one before it. Still, I kept moving.
The second major climb was where the race really shifted. The uphill was so much harder than I expected. Every step cost more than it should have. The higher I climbed the heavier my legs got, and I kept thinking the downhill would give me some relief. It didn't. The mountain simply demanded payment for every meter I had taken from it.
Somewhere around kilometer twenty seven I crossed a small river. Both shoes went completely underwater. For a few seconds it actually felt amazing, that cold water rushing in. Then I started running again. Wet shoes, wet socks, and no spare pair waiting anywhere ahead of me. I kept moving and tried very hard not to think about it.
Up until kilometer thirty I was still genuinely enjoying myself. Then my body started to negotiate. My legs got heavier. My feet got weaker. My energy just started quietly disappearing. The running slowed down, and then somewhere after kilometer thirty it stopped being running at all. It became walking, and it stayed that way.
My original goal was to finish under thirteen hours. As the day went on I revised it to fourteen, then seventeen, and eventually I stopped looking for a number altogether. I just wanted one thing. To finish.
When daylight disappeared and darkness took over, another problem showed up. At kilometer forty eight my Garmin dropped to eight percent. I started asking every runner I crossed paths with if they had a charging cable. Nobody did. I made peace with the idea that the watch would probably die before I reached the end.
Then at Bonan Dolok aid station my friend appeared out of nowhere. And he had the cable. I cannot explain what that felt like except to say it was like finding water in the desert. I sat down, plugged in the watch, and just recovered for an entire hour. When the battery hit fifty percent I stood up and walked back into the dark.
Eighteen kilometers still remained.
The crowds were long gone. The excitement had faded hours ago. This was no longer a race in any conventional sense. It was just me and the trail and the next step, over and over. I had no power left to run, no motivation to chase a time, no energy to think about anything beyond what was immediately in front of me. Those final kilometers felt endless in a way I have never experienced before. Every bend in the trail looked like the finish. Every kilometer marker felt impossibly far away.
Then near Tano Ponggol Bridge I checked the time and saw it was already 1 AM. The cutoff was closing in. And for the first time in hours I felt something like urgency again. I started running. Not because I felt strong or fresh but simply because I needed to cross that line before the race did it for me. The pace was nothing special but after nearly twenty hours on course it felt like the fastest I had ever moved.
At 1:40 AM I crossed the finish line.
I stood there feeling cold and alone and completely exhausted, and also deeply, quietly satisfied. The finish time was nowhere near what I had originally planned. But standing there I understood that the race had stopped being about a time many hours earlier. It became something else entirely, something about continuing when nothing goes according to plan, when the heat takes everything, when the climbs take the rest, when your shoes fill with river water and your watch is dying and your legs have stopped cooperating.
None of that mattered anymore.
Because after sixty six kilometers and nearly twenty hours on the trail, I had done it. I was no longer training for an ultra. I was no longer preparing for one. I was no longer hoping to become an ultrarunner someday.
I already was one.
