Mt Elgon

My longest run ever | Time to make the most of the training camp. At least until a few days before the return journey home. I'm taking it easy the last few days, so I don't travel while I'm too tired, to reduce the risk of illness. The last week has offered some exciting training sessions. One of them was a 1000m threshold session with a couple of Norwegians who have also found their way to Kapchorwa. Senay Fissehatsion and Sondre Nordstrand who both have run under 29min on 10k before. We ran the session on the dirt track in town.Intervals on Chemwania track.A few days later I ran the Kapchorwa Hill Challenge. The same route used for the Ugandan Mountain Champs in 2022. I ran from the big junction in town to the HATC. It is 10.6k with 680m of climbing and goes from 1930m to 2570m altitude. The climb has a couple of short descents and varies a lot in gradient and has sections as steep as 13-15%. Impossible climb to get a good rhythm on. I ran it in 49.22min with an average pace of 4:42min/km. Would be great to see others try the climb one day.Later that day we went to the most popular place in the area. Sipi Falls. Also here other tourists are to be found. An area with some beautiful waterfalls and some caves. A cool place to go for a run for a bit of a change.Waterfall at Sipi Falls.The next day we went to the top of Mt. Elgon. Rough trip that ended up being 43km long. I've never run longer than 35km before, so it was pretty cool to push that limit a bit. It didn't make it any easier that there was also almost 3000m of climbing on the whole trip. Read more about that trip here.That made it three weeks in a row with just over 170km.On the way home where we ran into a bit of trouble.The last couple of days I took it easy. Actually not particularly tired after the mountain long, which I was a little surprised about. But maybe it sits a little more in the body than I just feel right now and here.Now the trip goes to Denmark, where the training continues towards the spring competitions.The trip in totals: Totals Average Nights at altitude 28 nights Total time runnning 53:34 hours 13:22 hr/week Total distance 619.9 k 155 k/week Climb 16020 m 4005 m Intens sessions 10 sessions 2.5 sessions/week Runs over80min or 20k 10 sessions 2.5 sessions/week Strength sessions 5 sessions 1.2 sessions/week Check this out to see a video of the whole Uganda trip.

4 days hike in 6 hours | We live on Mt. Elgon, so we got the idea that we should go all the way up to the top! It is Uganda's second highest mountain at 4321m above sea level. The shortest route is 43km with 2600m of ascent - the one we planned to take. Which may not sound that bad, but since we want to do it in a single push without wearing ourselves down too much in our general training program, it's a bit of a challenge. If we were to do the hike from HATC (nearest point from the Kapchorwa side) it would be a 70km run.Mt. Elgon is an extinct volcano from 24 million years ago. Elgon is the largest land-based caldera in the world. The hike up and down the volcano is usually a 4-day hike.Wakagai Peak - highest summit of Mt. Elgon, 4321m above sea level.Long trip to the trail headThe alarm was set for 5:00am. Milos, Tomas and I had a long day ahead of us. The day before we had found a local we could rent a boda boda/motorcycle from. Tomas has a little experience driving these from a trip earlier in Kenya. We managed to drive about 80m before it turned out that the tank was empty. It was still completely dark out, starry sky and Sunday. A bit of a problem that it was a Sunday, because this day people take the day off and go to church. So there were absolutely no people in the street. Some pushing of the boda boda and then the places it went a little downhill we could roll it. We were so lucky that we found someone we could wake up at a gas station in Kapchorwa, who could help us further.Ready for departure - while we could still ride it.Just when we thought everything was running smoothly, we got a flat tire. We had covered about 15km of the total 60km ride. Milos and I jumped off the bike, while Tomas tried to continue with a flat rear tire. After walking for 45min we finally got to Tomas, who had found a person on the roadside near Sipi who could help us change the rear tire. We were incredibly lucky with that, we were convinced that the trip stopped there. And it only cost us only 25k Ugandan shillings. Now we could finally continue. The last third of the trip was not on tarmac. Dirt roads that just got worse and worse! In the end it was almost impossible to get back and forth with the boda boda. It was now 8.45am and we could finally start the ascent - after more than 3 hours on the road.Towards the top via the Sasa TrailThe "run" started from 1720m above sea level, so we were expecting a climb of over 2600m. We all had a small backpack with us, consisting of; some extra clothes, chapatis, bananas, a soda and some water. This was hopefully enough to keep us going all day. We had just over 21km ahead of us towards the summit. For every meter we moved forward there was less oxygen in the air - at sea level there is 20.9% oxygen in the air, while at the top there was 12% oxygen in the air.The first part of the climb was really steep until we reached the jungle. From here it was actually a fairly easy climb and we were able to run part of the way. We had two short breaks along the way to eat something, otherwise we kept going pretty well. After almost 4 hours we reached the top. Pretty wild views from here over a large part of Kenya and Uganda.Pretty nice lake at about 4000 masl.A couple of places we could find some spring from where we could refill our water bottles.The trip homeMt. Elgon is located in a large national park, where you need a permit. And it is mandatory to hire a guide (with a rifle) to accompany the group. A guide will not really be able to run. I only say maybe, that we had a permit and a guide.Spetacular landscape. This is not far from the summit.Not everyone on the mountain was equally impressed with our achievement, so it ended up being a long trip home. But that's another story. The trip in totals: 43.2k 2670m ascent 6h20m (without breaks) 1720m to 4321m elevation Route: Sasa TrailsSee the route on Strava here.