The BRM600 Big Hills Challenge 2.0 that I rode over the weekend was touted as Malaysia’s toughest BRM to date, as a follow-up to another Big Hills Challenge on the same month last year, but with more elevation than before. Preparing the route on RideWithGPS gave a total of 9464m (51050ft) of elevation gain, but post-ride my Garmin Edge 1030 recorded just 6765m (22195ft).
For this ride we got a 1-hour extension due to the difficulty of the route, making it a 41-hour ride that starts at 4:00am Saturday and ending at 9:00pm Sunday.
My plan was to treat this ride as PBP training. There’s cold temperatures up there in the high altitude mountain ranges, as well as all that tough elevation to get over. But it turns out I got more than I bargained for – rain, a puncture in the dark, and massive sleep deprivation. More on that later.
We had a total of 142 riders, although this was a mixed event consisting of a BRM200 and a BRM600. Riders doing BRM200 would reach the first control at 100km and then turn back; even that alone was about 3700m of elevation (12139ft), based on the Strava records of the participants whom I follow.
Long climb in the dark
We started as early as 4 a.m. in the morning, so it was a cold and dark start. Halfway up the first climb, we encountered a bit of light rain. Not enough to warrant stopping to break out the rain coat, but enough to make it feel cold. Peak elevation is approx. 1500m (4921ft); I paced myself to avoid going into the red and stay comfortably in the Z3-Z4 range… but it seems like everyone else had a different idea and most of the riders quickly passed me. On the other hand, I managed to get to the top at a steady pace without needing to rest (except one photo opportunity near the peak), while I passed a couple of people who did need to rest.
Sadly, view near the top isn't as nice as past years
Had a short break at the only petrol station at the top. Instant cup noodles to keep warm. After that, had a very enjoyable descent. Getting a nice 60-70kph (37-44mph) roll to the bottom, which was also a nice test of cold tolerance… though the lowest recorded temperature on my Garmin was just 13C (55.4F), and I’m guessing it can be colder on a cold night in France.
Long descent
Rolling all the way down would just be about 87km, then another 13km of rolling hills to the first control. This was the annoying kind of rolling terrain where you can go stupid fast down a descent, but still not have enough momentum to get you anywhere near the peak of the next ride, so the good ol’ strategy of powering up over the crest often does not apply here.
After the first checkpoint, is another 57km of similar, annoying roads to the second checkpoint. During this time the sun had risen and now we’re dealing with afternoon temperatures. I did not have my sunscreen lotion on at the time because it was still a cool and overcast sky when I left the first control, didn’t expect it to turn hot so soon. Anyway, it was just a little under 2 hours under the sun, but apparently that was enough to screw with my nutrition. I ordered a plate of chicken rice at the restaurant near the second control but couldn’t even finish half the plate.
But fortunately I had my supply of sweets that I picked up from petrol stations along the way – gummy bears, sugar-coated gummy sweets, dried mangoes; those helped keep me going even though I couldn’t finish proper meals.
Cows along the way
Ominous clouds
Ride to the third control at 274.4km was mostly an exercise in patience. It’s practically a long 114km stretch, mostly light rolling and only flatting out around the last 30km or so. Ominous clouds were also coming up and, as predicted, we experienced heavy rains along the last 30+ km of the route. Had to stop to break out the rain jackets and then lost momentum along this stretch since the rain, along with night riding, impaired visibility so we had to take it slow.
So the third control was at a Marry Brown restaurant. Some of the people I was riding with stopped for dinner but I was doing the math in my head and I figured we were already on a time deficit; furthermore I doubt I could eat anything proper so they told me to go on ahead first and that’s what I did. I soloed my way to the fourth control at 408km, but this was quite an eventful journey. First mishap of the day was a puncture to the rear tire. Changing tubes in the dark and wet was no fun, and furthermore something weird happened to my CO2 inflator and I wasted one good canister as a result. Didn’t want to risk another canister and just inflated my tire with the hand pump… slowly.
I reached my planned stop, a petrol station at 358km, but by that time it was slightly past 3am in the morning. I had planned to get some sleep here but considering the time, that was out of the question. So I lay down and tried to get a short 20-minute sleep, but couldn’t get myself to doze off. Had another cup of instant noodles before setting off, but still not able to down it all.
The climb up to the fourth control wasn’t as tough as the first one, but still quite a monster. 1000m (3280ft) at the peak, in the dark, solo, and hit with a serious case of sleep deprivation. Had to stop every 10-15 minutes to just close my eyes and shake off the sleepiness. Eventually morning came, I found a small coffee shop where I ordered a hot cup of coffee and buried my head on the table and somehow managed to doze off. It wasn’t very long though, when I woke up my coffee they already served my coffee and it was still quite warm, but most important thing is that this little bit of nap managed to fix my sleep deprivation woes.
Cold and misty near the peak
Finally reached the fourth control at the peak. Cold and misty up here. This is supposedly a rest area for travelers heading across the mountain range, but the only “shop” that was open was the public toilet where you had to pay money to use. Even had a bath there, but considering the temperatures up here, I doubt most people took that option. Anyways, I took a 30-minute rest before setting off, but it started drizzling during this time. I rode down with another rider, and we ended up sticking together for the rest of the ride. This time the descent wasn’t that great though; I suspect it was my rain jacket that acted as a speed cap, keeping me stuck at 48-50kmh (30-31mph) for most of the descent.
Long bridge across the lake
We passed a nice lake, supposedly a tourist spot but not-so-nice reviews left on Google. Didn’t have much time to stop for photos though, but immediately after the lake was the third climb. This one’s not so tall – about 600m (1968ft) at the peak – but it had stretches of long and continuous 8-9% grades to deal with. Usually this is not a problem, but after all the climbing beforehand, this was starting to make my lower back hurt. Fortunately those 600m went by quickly, and then it was a pleasant roll down.
Found a small restaurant open for lunch. Got just a very small amount of rice, topped with bean sprouts and a fried egg. Surprisingly managed to down it all. After this, no more big climbs to deal with; just some moderate rolling hills all the way back to the finish. We were pretty short on time though; my ride mate kept telling me he thought we might DNF as we still had about 8.5 hours to do 180km but I thought as long as we didn’t encounter any nasty terrain or elevation, that’s still doable with a nice and steady effort with minimal rest.
Only problem is, that annoying sleep deprivation thing came up again. This time I couldn’t shake it off by trying to nod off during one of our short coffee shop breaks. Instead, I had to somehow endure it (and nearly swerve off the road at least twice, as far as I recall) but what saved me was an energy gel. I rarely use these but keep them in case of emergency, and in this case it really helped (or maybe it was a combination of the sugar and caffeine in the gel, I don’t really know).
Roadside scenery
Funny thing at 5:15pm. I called for a short 15-minute rest at a coffee shop by the side of the route. By this time we had another 60km to go, and doing some math in my head, I casually asked my ride mate: “how about we try to finish this before 8:00pm?” I wasn’t expecting much but surprisingly, he decided to go along with it.
The remaining 60km wasn’t exactly flat, easy-peasy though. A bit of rolling, some traffic, also a bunch of red lights the closer we got to the city had us accumulate some amount of stopped time. It was about 9.5km left and 19 minutes on the clock if I wanted to complete by 8:00pm (and therefore within the standard 40-hour cutoff instead of the extended 41-hour period). So I did what you guys like to call it on the forum and “droped the hamer”. It was such a crazy stunt I didn’t even think I could follow through all the way. The hardest was the standing starts from red lights at intersections, but somehow I still managed to complete it at 39h 58m, with my ride mate barely managing to complete closely behind.
Post-ride, I wanted to check on my HR data for that last 10km stretch but surprisingly it wasn’t as high as I thought it would be. Just barely over the lower range of Z5. But I also remember reading from ultra-endurance people that HR data tends to be close to useless for long distance as HR typically drops and stays low especially on day-2 onwards?
The official timings aren’t out yet, but I believe the DNF rate for this ride was pretty high. Some people I knew already abandoned at the second control, and only two out of the group I left behind at the third control opted to continue riding. I also counted at least 2 or 3 groups of riders, in their support cars, passing by on the way back to the finish. My friend back at the finishing point made an interesting observation – those who show up with support cars tend to DNF first because that is the easy way out, whereas those who don’t have support tend to push on, because no one is going to bail them out (save for an expensive Grab or similar).
Most of the pictures above are actually screengrabs as I take more video than photos during a ride. Here's the full
ride video.