Lost In Madagascar: Why I Ran A 250k Stage Race After My First Marathon

Back in 2012, I ran my first full marathon — and immediately told myself it’d be my last.

I hadn’t been a regular runner until my mid-20s, and I’d assumed I was a one-and-done marathoner. I liked the idea of being someone who had run a marathon. I thought I’d train up for it, run the big, audacious 26.2 miles, get the medal, and then retire back into being a mere recreational runner for the rest of my days.

My first marathon ended up going so-so: without really knowing what I was doing, I walked up to the start line of the Stanley Marathon in the Falkland Islands (where I was living at the time) in board shorts and a worn-out pair of Asics Nimbus.

Typical for the Falklands, there was a strong westerly wind throughout the day, which meant a headwind for much of the marathon course. I pushed through sore legs and crossed the finish line in three hours, 57 minutes, then ate a burger, went home, struggled with stairs for the next week or so, and swore off running any more marathons.

I had the medal. I’d beaten the sub-four hour goal through sheer will.

I was done with endurance running events.

Or so I thought.

A few months later, I was bored in the office, surfing the internet, looking up holiday ideas and backpacking trips. When somehow I stumbled upon an event called RacingThePlanet Madagascar Roving Race.

It was a 250-kilometer, one-off, six-day, totally self-supported stage ultra through rural Madagascar.

It required running a marathon every single day (except day five, which was the equivalent of two marathons).

You had to carry everything you needed for the week on your back (the race organizers only provide participants with water and a tent each night).

Without blinking, in that instant, I knew in my bones I was going to do this race. And finish it.

(This post is less of a how-I-did-this, and more of why-the-hell-did-I-do this… and I’m still not sure I really know the answer).

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One Year Of Preparation

The idea of completing the Madagascar race seized me completely.

Only with hindsight can I parse out that, in the build-up to the race, my whole life became focussed on the goal to “complete the Madagascar race, no matter what.”

I didn’t care about finishing times or positions, I just wanted to be someone who had completed this race.

I knew that if I wussed out, or dropped out midway through, it would become a heavy regret.

So, I started serious prep for the race a full 12 months out. By this point, I’d switched jobs and continents, and was based in Mumbai, which had positives and negatives in terms of Madagascar race preparation.

I won’t give the blow-by-blow prep details, but here are some of the highlights of those 12 months:

• The majority of Saturdays and Sundays were spent doing long hikes/jogs through Mumbai with a 10-kg pack, usually for three-to-four hours.
  It’s a pretty poor city for running, but for urban “hikes” and exploring, it was great.
  For those who know the city, my go-to route was to start at home in Juhu and make my way on-foot to the Gateway of India — then get a burger and beer in Colaba and a taxi ride home. I tried to get a little bit lost and take a different route every time.
• I shelled out over $4,000 on the race entry, gear, plane tickets, insurance, and freeze-dried food. The financial sunk cost was another motivator.
• I hadn’t discovered the benefits of strength training at this point (and ended up losing a ton of muscle mass while I trained, dropping to 66 kg/145 lb before the race), so my cross-training consisted of foot strengthening exercises from Eric Orton‘s book, and a morning leg stretching sequence — I did both every single day.
• I took the “mental toughness training” stuff a bit too seriously perhaps, including:
  • trying out my camping gear by sleeping on the tiled floor of my bedroom with it,
  • running a couple of marathons on the beach – partially because it was the easiest place to run near my house, also for the physical and mental drain it put on me,
  • doing an 8-hr session on a treadmill one day (this was during a Sunday in the height of the monsoon, so training options were limited and I saw it as another ‘mental toughness’ badge of honour).
• Buying a scales and weighing and measuring every single piece of food and kit I was going to take with me. Every single item was scrutinized for weight to try and get my overall pack weight down – any extraneous straps or clips were removed. I tracked it all in a spreadsheet, which I sweated over way too much.

The Journey To The Start Line

Finally, the race drew near. I’d been off alcohol for a couple of months and being careful where I ate, just to try and get to the start line in *pristine* condition. I’d even got a pedicure to minimize the risk of toenail issues during the race. Overkill? Maybe, but I had decided to leave nothing to chance.

After three flights (Mumbai > Joburg > Antananarivo > Ansiranana) I arrived in the host town and shacked up to the race hotel. As I watched other runners arrive, I got pretty nervous.

I didn’t know anyone there, and it felt like everyone else there had at least some ‘ultrarunning chops’; they were socializing, joking about how underprepared they were, and going out to buy some last-minute pizza.

I wasn’t able to relax – I was too busy revising my gear, making sure my GPS was getting a full charge, and looking over the course distances for the 423rd time.

They packed us into mini-buses and took us off to campsite #1, where we’d spend the night before Stage 1.

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Act I: Finally, The Race Begins

After 12+ months of anticipation, when the starting gun finally went off, the nervous energy I’d been carrying dissipated: now, it was time to get to work.

With the simple goal of finishing the race, and with ample time each day to cover the allotted mileage, my strategy from the start was slow and steady. In other words, hike at a cautious speed. The fable of the hare and the tortoise was my guiding principle.

And that’s what I did: setting off along the coast, I carved out a nice, easily sustainable hiking pace and plodded onwards. We passed old lighthouses, tiny fishing villages, beaches, and farms.

I’ve traveled plenty, but I don’t remember the feeling of ever being so remote as I was on that route. Passing through villages, there would be stalls selling vegetables and raw meat.

At one point another runner said to me, “Where’s the Coke?” – the fringes of Madagascar are one of the few places in the world that Coca-Cola had yet to infiltrate.

And despite my exhaustive training, there were two elements I encountered on day one I just wasn’t prepared for: the heat, which was a few degrees above Mumbai; and sand underfoot. Almost the entire route was on sinky, sandy tracks and trails.

I took around 7 hours to complete the first day due to the heat and sandy trails, which was a couple of hours more than I’d expected. The campsite that night was on a pristine beach – which was awesome.

But day one, which I’d thought would be an easy start, had humbled me. I was tired and achy. I was less than 20% of the way into this thing, and it was beating me up.

My tent happened to be full of first-timers like me, and collectively that evening we all had a little wake-up call of ‘this thing is tougher than we thought’. A ton of surplus gels and energy bars were jettisoned that night in an attempt to make the next day easier.

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Act II – Venturing Deeper Into The Unknown

The feeling of being humbled just compounded on day two.

The day’s course was 47km in temperatures reaching above 105 f / 40 c.

My strategy of ‘slow and steady’ came back to bite me as the first few kilometers were a snaking route through sharp rocks near the coastline, that all 200+ competitors had to essentially pass in single file. I’d basically chosen a position near the back of the pack, which meant I probably lost a good hour here and, therefore, was going to spend more time in the sun that day.

I arrived at the first checkpoint about 10 minutes before the cut-off – and the cut-offs on these races tend to be generous – and realised I’d better push on.

Then came the water crossings, muddy rice paddies, and … rivers?

The course had felt more like an obstacle course on day 2: when it wasn’t deep sand tracks, it was crossing rivers, getting stuck in rice paddies, or wading through waterways with locals for the last couple of kilometers.

Plenty of runners had fallen by the wayside and pulled out, or been forced to stop by the medical team, due to the heat.

I got into the campsite just as dusk was setting in: I was beat.

That’s when I learned; the more you take your time on the course, the less time you have to relax and recover. I basically had time to just prepare my food and crawl into my thin sleeping bag.

I stopped by the medical tent before hitting the hay and was complaining that my feet were aching.

“Do you want my shoes?” another British runner unexpectedly suggested. “Why, do you have a spare pair?” I asked him. But no, day two had killed his appetite for continuing the race. He was going back to the host town, to stay by the pool, he’d decided.

That was another lesson I learned that day: if you can physically make it to the start line of the next day, do it – no matter what your brain is telling you. The allure of dropping out is strong – especially in the first half of the race. You start to daydream about the nice hotel pool back at the host town and the food you’ll order. But I would bet that in a day or two, you’ll be kicking yourself for not having given the race your all.

Days 3 and 4 were both long and tough, but as you progress and get deeper into a week-long race, your body and brain adapts to the stress and you learn to persevere.

I realised during these days that too much of a leisurely pace was a bad thing: you left yourself out on the course too long, got beaten up, then didn’t have time to recover.

My pace gradually picked up as I got my head down and battled through days 3 and 4 – both long, winding days through tracks, trails, canyons, and … more sand.

At one point in the middle of the night after day 3, I woke up in my tent with aching feet. Although I’d put in the hours in training, I hadn’t been prepared for the extensive amount of sand trails; every step cost much more energy than on a regular gravel trail, and my feet felt like they’d taken a pounding.

In that dream-like state, I became convinced that I’d have to pull out the next day due to sore feet. I barely slept for thinking about it.

Yet the next morning I got up, massaged and bandaged my feet, and limped to the start line. I decided, if I can start, I should start, and see where it takes me.

I latched onto another runner, Alex, and expat Brit, to pull me through the first half of day 4. We talked a lot which distracted me from my concerns about my feet, then I gradually limbered up and realised I could actually run a little.

I left Alex behind, and finished the day strong. I got one of the medics to check out my feet, and he said they were just beaten up – but if I could live with a little pain, I’d be fine. So, on I went.

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Act III – The Long March; And Learning That I Could Run

So, the format of all the RacingThePlanet events is roughly the same: the first 4 days are around a marathon each day, then day 5 is a ‘double marathon’ – usually around 80km; then the last stage is a simple 10k dash.

With that in mind, a decent rule of thumb for tackling one of these is to get to the start line of day 5 in the best possible condition.

And by the time I got to day 5, I felt like I’d already run the gauntlet.

I’d survived the first 4 days; I learned I could actually run a lot of the way (rather than just walk cautiously) without tiring myself out too much. My feet, which had ached most of the week, seemed to have adapted to the daily pounding. And my brain had adapted too; I was used to long, uncomfortable hours of marching through inhospitable terrain.

So, I launched into day 5 with gusto.

I took the first half of the day fairly easy, pacing myself as I knew there was a long way to go. But once I crossed the halfway point, I decided to start running. And it was pretty exhilarating. I started to pass other runners that had been miles ahead of me all week.

As dusk set in, the course led through a maze of paths cut through 10ft high wheat fields, then through a forest trail with makeshift huts and houses scattered along the way. The last 20k or so was run in blissful darkness, knowing that I’d beaten the beast and that the tough parts of the race were all behind me.

I crossed the finish line after 13hrs out on my feet, and in the first half of the pack (for the first time all week). It was a watershed moment, realising that I could hold my own against other ultrarunners.

Racingtheplanet gives runners two days to complete the long march, so for most of us the next day was a rest day at a campsite, licking our wounds and getting ready to run the last 10k.

The last 10k was a victory lap, essentially: I run the whole thing in 47 minutes – not bad considering what I’d done in the preceding days, and that I still had a 6kg pack on my back.

The finish line was in the main drag of the town of Ambilobe, where there was a bustle of locals lining the last 200m uphill sprint. Crossing the finish line was a true catharsis. In the space of a week, it felt like I’d lived several months. I’d entered as a recreational runner and left as an ultrarunner; medal and all.

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Afterword

The Madagascar race remains my most intense and transformative running experience. After I’d finished it, I (again) said “well I’m not doing that again”. But within 9 months I was doing another stage race in Sri Lanka; then in Cambodia. Then a few more.

I started doing more ultras; yet after being bored of run training in Mumbai, I spent more time in the gym strength training than running.

And that’s when I started to climb the rankings.

I podiumed in the stage race in Cambodia. I won a 100k – the Run the Rann race in India. I came 3rd out of 220 runners in the RacingThePlanet Namibia race, just 18 months after the Madasgascar. I was on a stage race high: I went and self-published the Stage Race Handbook, which is the book I wish I’d had when preparing for the Madagascar race.

And I started MarathonHandbook.com. Initially, it was meant as a personal blog for my ultramarathon race reports, but it started to snowball soon after that.

But that’s a story for another time.