Most Beautiful Thing Ultra Trail Marathon
Join Most Beautiful Thing Ultra Trail Marathon
The TMBT is Malaysia’s oldest Ultra-Trail® Marathon with the inaugural race held in 2011. The acronym stands for "The Most Beautiful Thing", and makes reference to the iconic Mount Kinabalu, which at 4,100 m is one of Southeast Asia’s highest peaks and a world heritage site. The TMBT course is set over the ridges and in the river valleys around the base of Mt. Kinabalu, with the highest elevation on the race course just under 2000m.
The event takes runners from the quaint native villages at the foothills on the western side of Mount Kinabalu towards the southern side of the mountain with the 30k and 50k categories finishing at the viewpoint to Mt. Kinabalu at the township of Pekan Nabalu. The 100k category continues around the base of Mount Kinabalu and to the South-Eastern ridges of the mountain to finish in the village of Kundasang.
The routes are challenging but beautiful and give runners an opportunity to experience remote villages and follow village trails through a varied landscape of forest and cultivated areas. Trails pass paddy fields and climb steep ridges clad in pineapples with amazing views to Mt. Kinabalu and over the surrounding ridges and valleys which are often shrouded in clouds. The routes cross numerous streams with refreshing water on a hot day, while most larger rivers are crossed via hanging, bamboo or log bridges. Part of the trails follow the old heritage trails that used to be a part of the old buffalo trading routes linking villagers from Kota Belud to Bundu Tuhan.
The race has a reputation for being challenging to complete with a combination of steep terrain and technical trail sections, and the weather, usually hot in the first part of the day and with a good chance of tropical showers in the afternoon, often add to the challenge.
Course highlights
The TMBT consists of a mix of trails, dirt / gravel roads and shorter sealed sections. The trail conditions are highly weather dependent and can be technically challenging. There are steep sections with drop-offs and sections with roots, mud and loose soil, all requiring extra care to avoid falls and injury.
The "trails" on the TMBT may be a little different than for instance Hongkong trails, which are mostly established hiking trails with firm surface, etc. Most of the trails we use on the TMBT are used by farmers or simple connections between villages/fields in the jungle, and they are at times very overgrown and hardly a trail. They also often change due to landslides, fallen trees etc. and in the wet they can get very muddy and slippery.
We strongly recommend trail shoes with a good grip. On the first half of the course there are several stream/river crossing – do expect wet feet. For the 100 km course, you may wish to have some dry socks and perhaps a in your drop-bag for the halfway point. There are sections on the second half that can be severely muddy and wet, but there are no major stream or river crossings that do not have a bridge, so you should be in for a better chance of keeping dry feet if it does not rain .
20-30% trail on the 100k does perhaps not sound of much, but the feedback we have from competitors is generally that they are more than happy to come out from the jungle trails onto a little easier surface - I don’t think we have ever had a single complaint from a participant that there is too little trail for TMBT.
The sealed roads are mainly to connect different trail sections. We want to keep the sealed road sections to a minimum and have looked at alternatives to these sections, but the trails we have been over are just too rough and steep and we deem them not safe for the race. The sealed road sections offer safety and security from these risks but for short distances. So just be aware that the percentage surface composition may not tell the full story .
Route map
directions_runStart address: Lingkungan,my
flagFinish address: Lingkungan,my
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The race information has been found on the official website of the event or through publicly available sources. Always refer to the official website the latest race information. Please let us know if any data is wrong or missing, by emailing us.
