GoQii Trail Challenge -Dec 2019

Four years after doing the last Oxfam Trailwalk, got a chance to participate in the GoQii Trail Challenge 2019 which happened at Mandangad, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra yesterday. It was a 50 km trail with an outer time to finish of 18 hours. There were about 150 participants from across the country (including some from China) and it was quite fun and challenging at the same time.

Rahul Manek, who is also the founder of FyreEnergy, called me and Rajiv Sharma last month to check if we wanted to do this challenge, and we were instantly game. We reached Mandangad on Friday late afternoon, and did a ziplining adventure (the longest zipline I’m Maharashtra) — with Rahul brushing his arm on the steel rope and a thin layer peeling off (of his arm skin, not the steel rope, obviously). It was fun.

The walk was flagged off at 5 am sharp on Saturday, and we started walking at a good place. The terrain was full of inclines with a large part off-road, and it kept us going. Made some interesting friends along the way. About 35 km into the trail, one of us was dehydrated, and a fellow participant gave us a pack of ORS, which breathed in some life. One of us was about 30 minutes ahead of the rest of the team and he communicated that we were quitting because of health issues. Two of us managed to reach the road-head with more than a bit of struggle, and then bravado took over. We decided to attempt the last 10 km, AND WE MANAGED TO COMPLETE THE TRAIL!. It took us 15h 31m to finish, next year, hopefully, we should be able to do it in 12 hours.

All in all, a good experience, especially without having trained specifically for this event.

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