The Borneo marathon is held in Sabah, Kota Kinabalu Town, East Malaysia around early May every year. It is an important event in the area, runners from around the world come to join in this run every year. Held for seven years, 2700 men and 1900 women participate in the Borneo International Marathon, with 640 foreign runners coming from 40 countries. The race is IAAF and AIMS certified and is organised by the Kinabalu Running Club.
Race Expo
Joined this marathon 2 times before, it is relatively well organised. The race expo is not over hyped and is mainly just for runners to make their collection of bibs and tee shirts. There are a few booths selling some sporting items mainly gels and running equipment like hydration packs, race belts and gels. It is not difficult to meet up some Regional runners especially from Singapore and Malaysia. So it is also a good opportunity to catch up with the runners.
Beginning and start of the race is always at the Linkas stadium. The race organiser will arrange for pick up buses from around the the major hotels in the city centre, this makes it very convenient for all runners to get to the race start. There are also buses to send the runners back to their pick up points.
Runner’s entitlement include the running tee shirt, bib , finisher medals and for 42km there is a finisher tee shirt too. At the end of the race, organiser also catered many food items and also milo truck. There are ample hydration available too.
2015 was the second time I joined, this was the race pack collection
The course
The Race course is actually quite winding and hilly especially when it comes to the University area. The University of Sabah is one of the major Universities in Malaysia. It occupies a large campus compound and takes up about 15km of the whole running route. This is also where all the hills and winding roads are. I like the finishing part where the organiser put it inside the stadium, this gives it a really nice finishing shot. The only bad thing is that the shorter distances are also ending at the same place. There were also no segregation of the distances so there might be some blockage along the way. The race starts about 3am or 4am and the cut off timing is 7 hours.
The hydration points provide ample hydration and at some areas, there are banana and some watermelons. The energy gels were only given after the 30km.
As the race starts at rather early hours in the morning, runners are practically running a night race. For the regional runners, they can actually do a day trip in and back home. It can really get a bit hot during the late morning, so it will be good to finish the race as fast as you can.
Entrance to the university
The race track
You will get to run past many sights in Kota Kinabalu
Overall
This race is a simple and it kinda bring back the old memories of Singapore in the 80s where the stadium is not as fancy as our sports hub now.
Kota Kinabalu town is also very laid back and nostalgic, bringing back the old days memories. There are many good food to offer in the town, which also has a simple night market with seafood. In general, I come back to this race just to experience the days which are now lost in Singapore.
One thing to note is that getting a podium win might not be that difficult as usually there are no Kenyan runners joining the race. Prizes are also given for top 10 participants in each gender and categories. But that being said, in the future, there might be more Kenyan runners which I hope not 🙂
First time podium in 2012 coming in 4th place
So happen I was lucky the second time to come in for a prize, this time 5th even though my timing was better.
The preparation always
Dayaks are well known HEAD HUNTERS!
The medal itself