Decade
in Making.

A chance meeting with V.G Siddhartha of Coffee Day in March 2016 sparked our journey. Thanks to his vision to promote the Malnad region and coffee, we were able to visualise a trail ultra through some pristine estates in the vicinity of Kemmanagundi. Our first set of volunteers, many of them runners themselves, convinced over 200 runners to try our fledgling event although none amongst us had experience of organising a running event.

We saw the spirit of bonhomie being demonstrated first-hand when Athreya and Manoj decided to the 110K finish together.

For the very first day, it was clear to our team that this was going to be a passion project. We also committed to the mission of promoting trail running in India and remain a non-commerical, volunteer-driven event.

There were huge learnings for our team from the first event. The one key learning was to merge all our starts and finish at a single location to ensure that we could manage the course better. As a result, we modified our 110 KM course and anointed Lalbagh Estate as the single start and finish for all categories.

We also hosted our first elite international, Paul Giblin (UK) and some of India's top runners like Kieren and Sandeep.

Mostly through word of mouth, our event caught attention across India and a few international runners thanks to Amit. We jumped to over 1200 participants including 56 internationals with 153 ladies.

Hayden Hawks, ranked within the Top-10 in the world shaved off over one hour from the existing course records. Jo Meek, aka Running Squirrel, finished within 15 minutes of the top male finisher, Tim Hewitt, in the 80 KM.

A strong field of Indian runners put up a spirited display. Trail running had finally arrived in India!

The shock loss of our patron VGS at the end of July put us in a difficult situation. With a little over three months to go for our event that year, we had lost access to our course. With sheer grit and a determination to keep this event alive as a tribute to him, we were grateful to receive the support of other plantation owners in the area. We managed to offer the event to over one thousand participants who had already registered and made travel plans.

We became the first qualifier for the Western States Endurance Run.

Heavy monsoons and landslides during the week before our event made it all the more difficult. We had to identify new courses for all categories. Performances dropped due to the inclement weather, slush and leech-infested trails.

From an organiser's perspective, we were unable to deliver to the standards that we had set for ourselves. Nevertheless, our team stood strong and we managed to complete the event safely.

After missing 2020 due to the pandemic, we identified an all new course near Mudigere a little over 30 Kms to the west. Since the monsoon seemed to have moved into October, we decided to push our event date into November.

Training and lives for many runners and their families had been disrupted by the pandemic. We therefore decided to offer only the 50 and 80 Km categories. Despite these changes, we only hosted a little over 400 runners. The pandemic had taken its toll on trail running that year!

As luck would have it, two herds of wild elephants moved into the area a few days before our event. Due to safety considerations, we were forced to shut down a section of our course on the morning of the event! However, due to our past experiences, we were resilient and managed to reroute runners on event day and were grateful that there were no serious mishaps.

After two turbulent events, we decided to take a step back and redesign the event from scratch for the following year.

After two difficult years, we seemed to have hit a wall and our resolve was being tested. As organisers, our first concern has to be the safety of our runners and volunteers with the added responsibility of providing a great experience.

We spent four months in early 2022 scoping out the area and decided to move near Mallanduru, about 40 Kms to the north, to minimise risks due to wildlife and to zoom in on a 'permanent' course. After speaking to the plantation owners and other stakeholders, we got adequate support to try out this area. Truly, a rebirth!

We also took a decision to standardise on three categories - 30 KM, 50 KM and 100 KM. The 30 KM distance was included to initiate first-timers into trail running.

Encouraged by the support system in Mallanduru, we moved our course slightly to make Mallanduru town our hub. With scores of homestays and better road access, this is the location of Malnad Ultra in its current avatar.

Shashwat became the first repeat winner in the 100 KM category.

We also decided to conduct our event on the 4th Saturday of November each year in order to help runners and other race organisers with their planning.

With a settled course and the strong backing of locals, we continued to refine our processes and systems to ensure that runners got the best experience possible. By now many of our volunteers have contributed in multiple editions and we have a diverse knowledge base coupled with experience. This allowed us to distribute various aspects of management within the team.

We also paid more attention to supporting our runners with their travel and accommodation. We appreciate the fact that participants spend a considerable amount of money to travel to our event. Since information is sparsely available on the Internet, we started to publish information to help our participants travel and book their accommodation with less stress.

With a deep knowledge of the coure and the area, we were able to work on further improving our internal systems and processes. After ten years, it was also a good time to start thinking about longevity.

Many of our runners had now come to multiple editions of our event. With a settled course, they are able to plan their training and improve their performance. The finish times clearly reflect progression of the runners.

Soma became the first female to finish first in the 100 KM category.

Based on the feedback we received, we added a 50 KM (Night) category to give some of our returning participants the thrill of running our course in the dark.

We had slowly clawed our way back to the levels of 2018. This was the right stage for us to think about succession and future-proofing with better documentation, training for our volunteers and IT tools.