Mount Mulanje Porters’ Race 2010

Outside the pizzeria after the race, with my child-like sign writing!

(Can someone pass this on to Graham Bee and Fin Wild?, I’m not sure they are following the blog but might be interested)

(I thought I should write this up before rose-tinted retrospect encourages me to give a less gruesome depiction of the day.)

(photos to come later)

The reasoning:

Before we had even arrived in Malawi I had heard of the fabled Mulanje Porters’ Race. Naturally my reaction was, ‘that sounds painful, must remember not to do that’… Upon arrival in Malawi my thoughts were unchanged, except perhaps to add in that it would be very sweaty. When Rach and I joined the Hash House Harriers running group we shared our first day with a dutch guy, B, who stated his intention to run the race. At this point I was still set against it, and assumed he must be crazy or very fit, or both.

However, as time passed, and I visited the mountain, and saw some of the route, heard tales of others who had successfully survived it; and lured in by the likelihood that this would be my only chance to do it I began to think more favourably on the option. Having hiked some of it on the Sapitwa Sleepover with a heavy bag full of food and camping gear I realised it was not beyond the realms of my humble abilities to complete the route in a matter of hours (I calculated around 4 hours). I then thought about whether or not I was willing to be out of breath, sweaty and in pain for 4 hours and incomprehensibly came to the conclusion that yes, that would be a good use of my time.

So I said to B, “OK, I’m in.”. He was very pleased about this and offered to give me a lift there for the early morning start, which I gratefully accepted. The arrangements were all in place.

The week before the race Rach and I were at the Lake on the workcamp which I have already described. I put my running trainers in and went for a few runs while I was there, up the medium sized hill behind the village (where the photos were from before). The lake, however is at a far lower altitude than the mountain, so it wasn’t an ideal training camp – but was rather nice and relaxing.

While we were at the lake the Netherlands progressed to the finals of the world cup and I got an apologetic text from B stating that he was bailing out on the porters race and would be heading to the world cup instead. This was quite an issue, I started to ask around people I thought might know of other entrants (i.e. the people who organise the Hash) but I now think they were probably on ‘summer’ holiday in the UK and won’t have got my texts. So on Friday night I was left with 2 options, hitch-hike or don’t do it. Now hitching in Africa may seem like a foolish idea, but I was being quite specific about who I wanted a lift from. I was pretty sure there would be plenty of people who I had met at various ‘asunugu’ events who would be likely to be heading out for the event, but I did not have their number. Luckily the main road from Blantyre to Mulanje goes past our township so it was not too much hassle to head out to the road.

On Saturday morning I woke at 4.30, ate a wee bit of food and took my malarial before gathering my stuff and heading out. I got to the compound gate and found it locked, so spoke to one of the guards who was understandably perplexed as to why I would want to leave at this time in the morning. Luckily, this was shift-change time so I walked along the road in the dark (not normally recommended) with one of the guards who had just finished, who would be able to diffuse any troubles. He even stayed with me while I was trying to get a lift, and explained to some confused Malawian lorry drivers why I didn’t want a lift from them. I had given myself until 5.30 to get a lift, and 5.30 came…and just as I was about to give up a car pulled over for me so I ran up the road. It turned out to be some people I had regularly met at the Hash, so that was really great. I waved goodbye to the guard, thanked him and was on my way.

The race:

In talking to experienced runners and hikers before the race I adjusted my aspirational time to 4 hours 30 as it seemed I had underestimated a section of it. I also heard that there was a guy I had cycled around Mulanje with who normally took 4 hours 30 so I decided to stick with him for a pace-marker. The field was mostly Malawians, but there were also a fair number of non-Malawians – perhaps 50? Many of the Malawians were in bare feet, girls in dresses, but they were fit from working on the mountain every day either as guides, porters or gathering wood. Most of the non-Malwians would not describe themselves as hardcore, focussed runners, but were taking part for the experience in a similar way to me. A few of them were even only planning to walk the route, and not run at all.

As the race eventually started (Malawi time was in full swing) I jogged off gently, fully aware of the 3000ft climb which the first section held. I hoped to get this done in just over 1 hour mainly by walking fast. I kept with my pace-marker for about 10 minutes then decided I could go faster and then be caught later by my pace-marker at a later time. It’s pretty important to run at your own speed, running either faster or slower than you naturally feel like doing will make the route harder. So off I went into the unknown, with no way of knowing what sort of pace I should be doing. I was surrounded by Malawians as we puffed our way up the hill, walking fast now as it was too steep to run. I got the first climb done in just under an hour and set off across the ‘plateau’. As I have mentioned before, Mulanje ‘plateau’ is not very flat or ‘plateau’-like, so I struggled to run much across to the next marker, Chambe hut (a beautiful route, by the way, running along side the massive face of Chambe peak). I was still ahead of my estimated time, and ploughed on jogging when I could and walking fast in between. The next section was the one I had underestimated, and it was long and hard. Lots of steep ups and downs meant very little in the way of proper jogging, my legs by this point were cramping up quite a lot so I started trying to consume the salted nuts I’d made the night before, but this didn’t solve the problem entirely (possibly not salty enough). It was at this point, about 90 minutes in that it became really rather painful and not fun anymore. However, I would say that the route would be a lovely walk! As we continued across the ‘plateau’ I had a vague idea of where we were heading, for the last marker before beginning the descent, and so I could keep myself going knowing the decent was approaching.

However, the decent proved to be the worst part. Across the plateau I had slipped slightly and somehow winded myself in the process of staying upright. This proved critical to my enjoyment of the decent, as I had to take small delicate steps rather than romping on down hill, as the jarring from each footstep would make me nauseous. The cramps were a bit of a problem by this point and I tried to stretch them off a few times, but stretching one muscle group would cramp another group! The decent was long, far longer than the ascent, and mentally really really tough. The ground was incredibly slippery as it was covered by a thin film of greasy mud, and was very uneven. I was delighted to be overtaken by teenage girls in dresses and bare feet – incredible! So basically, the decent was not enjoyable at all for me, knackered, stumbling and making all sorts of involuntary noises...pretty grim. However, as with all things, it did end and I crossed the final river and was advised by helpful tourists that I only had 1km to go.

Crossing the line in a time of 3 hours 41 minutes, I was 5th non-Malawian. The fastest non-Malawian did it in 3 hours 10 minutes, and the fastest person took only 2 hours 8 minutes! Unbelieveable!

It took my nausea a long time to leave me, even with tea and lots of water. It was only fizzy drinks that eventually brought me back to human standards of conversation and energy.

I was lucky, some other equally fit competitors had a hard time with vomiting, cramps, sprained ankles, etc etc…

Would I do it again? Absolutely not! Am I glad I did it…yeah, I think so – although more for the bonding experience with the other competitors than the actual experience of the run. I think I found this a particularly hard task as normally my exercise is accompanied by adrenaline, whereas there was little of that natural drug to boost me during the run. Or maybe it’s just because it’s damn hard!