I started running in May — a month, a season, a state of mind. The Bir Running Festival, run from the paragliding capital of India in the foothills of Himachal Pradesh, is the kind of race that asks you a question before it gives you an answer. The question is simple. Are you here for the medal, or are you here for the valley? This checklist assumes you are here for both, in that order. The festival has shifted its dates between years, so confirm the current edition before you book anything.
The valley you are running into
Bir is a small village famous to most Indians as the launch site for paragliders. It sits in the Bir region, in the hills above the Kangra valley floor, in Kangra district. It is its own pocket, separate from the Dharamshala and Palampur belt that travellers sometimes confuse it with. Runners arriving for the festival find a stranger thing than a tourist town: a road that climbs and falls through deodar forest, monasteries with maroon-robed monks, and stretches where the only sound is your own breathing.
A May morning in Bir means a cool, fresh start before the monsoon clouds gather, and afternoons that warm enough to remind you that you are still in the Indian foothills. The trail is real trail in places, broken tar in others, and packed dirt where the locals have walked it into being. Read about the course personality on the Bir Running Festival event page before you finalise your kit.
72 hours out: stop training, start arriving
The most important thing you can do in the three days before Bir is to slow down. Not the running, the everything-else. The race is hard enough; the travel and the altitude and the new air are harder.
Travel and altitude
Most runners reach Bir overland. The nearest airport, Kangra (Gaggal), has limited flights, so plan on a bus or a long drive up rather than counting on a convenient connection. Bir village sits at roughly 1,500 metres. The route climbs from there toward Billing, the paragliding take-off point, which sits around 2,400 metres, so depending on your distance you may be running through a fair chunk of that 900-metre gap. That isn't Leh, but it isn't Mumbai either. Arrive 36-48 hours before the race to let your body adjust. Sleep on the first night will be lighter than usual; that's normal. Walk for thirty minutes after lunch on the day you arrive. Don't run. The trail will still be there on race morning.
Know the warning signs. A pounding headache that paracetamol won't shift, nausea, dizziness, or a strange mental fog are altitude talking. If you feel them, stop climbing, lose some height, rest, drink, and tell someone. Going down a couple of hundred metres usually fixes it. Pushing on does not.
Food and water
Bir's local cafes serve a lot of Tibetan and Himachali food — thukpa, momos, dal-rice, simple thalis. Eat the dal-rice. Save the experimental meals for after the race. Filter or boil drinking water; the tap is fine for showers but uncertain for stomachs. Hydrate steadily through the day before. The mountain air dehydrates faster than the plains.
Kit, item by item
I once ran a hill race carrying things I did not need. The race remembered, even if I didn't. Bir's checklist is short, deliberate, and built for the valley you'll be running in.
On the body
- Trail shoes you've trained at least 150 km in.
- Light long-sleeved layer for the first 4-5 km, easily tied around the waist when the sun comes up.
- Shorts or three-quarter tights with a zipped pocket.
- Wicking tee, dark enough to not show sweat as a banner.
- Cap for the back half when the sun gets honest.
- Lightweight gloves if you run cold; the first kilometre is brisk.
In the vest
- Hydration bladder or two soft flasks. Bir's aid stations are good but spaced.
- 4-6 gels or chews you've trained on.
- Small zip pouch: paracetamol, electrolyte tabs, band-aid, anti-chafe balm.
- Phone with offline map and emergency numbers pinned.
- A buff. The wind shifts.
- ₹500 cash and a UPI-enabled phone for after.
Read the heat guide, even for a cool race
Bir is not Hyderabad, but the protocol from the running in Indian heat and monsoon guide still applies in the second half of the race when the sun is up. Especially the bits about salt loss, sock changes, and lubrication. A May morning starts cool. A May noon at this altitude, with the sun finding the gaps in the trees, does not stay cool.
Race morning, hour by hour
Wake at least 2.5 hours before flag-off. The mountain takes longer to start than your body wants to.
The first hour
Drink 300 ml of water with electrolytes in the first ten minutes. Eat a familiar breakfast: oats with honey, white bread with jam, two idlis if you can find them, or a banana with peanut butter. Roughly 80-100 g of carbohydrate. Avoid milk if you've never trained on it. Visit the toilet at the venue, not at the homestay.
The second hour
Layer up. Stand outside. Walk to the start area 35 minutes early. Jog for five minutes, three 20-second pickups, then stop. Sip 150 ml more water 20 minutes out. Stop drinking. Stretch your calves and ankles for one minute each side. Take one deep breath that fills the mountain air.
How to run the valley
I once asked a friend who'd run Bir three times what the secret was. He thought about it for a long time and then said, "Don't argue with the climb." That's the whole strategy.
The first third
Run the first third 20-30 seconds per km slower than your goal average. The climbs and the cool air mask effort early. Use your heart rate as the source of truth, not your legs. Walk the steep bits without ego. The runners who blow up at Bir blow up because they tried to be heroes in km 8.
The middle third
This is the meditation block. The valley opens up, the body warms, the breath finds rhythm. Take a gel every 35 minutes. Drink water at every aid station. Eat one piece of fruit at every other one. Look up. Look up often. The whole point of running Bir is to actually see Bir.
The final third
The final third is where the work shows. Power-hike anything steep. Run anything flat. Trust the training. If you followed an ultramarathon training plan with hill specificity in the build, you have the legs. If you used the STRIDD plan generator to map the weeks, you have the structure. Trust both.
After the line
Walk for ten minutes. Drink 500 ml of fluid. Eat real food within an hour — momos, thukpa, dal-rice, whatever the line at the village cafe offers. Lie down with your legs up against the wall for fifteen minutes back at the homestay.
Then, before you forget anything, take out your phone and write three lines. What worked. What failed. What you'll change. I do this after every race. The notes from my first hill race in 2019 still sit in the app, and I still read them. They have outlasted the medal.
If Bir was your first hill race, the next plan is somewhere in the STRIDD calculators and the Running Lab archive. Find it. Build it. Come back for the next edition. The valley remembers the people who came back.