Cameron Highlands

It has always been my desire to run in a cool place. Cool as in cold. And the chance came when we went to the Cameron Highlands for a short getaway. 

Weather during the time we were there was terrible. We got our "cool" but most time it came with rain. Temperate was around 15 degrees in the morning and the fog was so dense in the earlier part of the morning. A little bit later and the traffic would have built up into a big jam so it was really difficult to fit in the run. Finally we managed to squeeze in a short run on the day of our departure.

We started off at about 7.15 am. The plan was to just do a short 30 minutes. What I wanted to do was to see how it feel like running at an higher altitude. Our hotel was at about 1600 metres above sea level which was about as high we can get start of from. 

Out of the hotel, it was a down hill run along the relatively empty road. It wasn't as bad as I thought. The altitude. Going down, we ran at an easy pace stopping to snap some pictures. We ran downhill for 2 km eventually reaching 1,500 metres above sea level which means we have descended about 100 metres only.

Running downhill

 Ok that was easy enough. And now for the difficult part. Running the 2 km back up. Temperature was a cool 16 degrees and great for running. But within a few pace of running uphill, I had removed my jacket and was sweating buckets, the first time I had done so during the past few days here. 

Running uphill

Aside from the fact that it is rare for us Singaporean to run in such weather and altitude, we also don't have any real hill to climb. And even though the ascent was only about 100 metres, it was enough to reduce our already slow pace to an even slower 7 minutes pace. And now a days later, our quads are still aching from the exertion.

But overall, I enjoyed the run. I only wished it could have been longer.