I started running mountains because I wanted to forget cities for a while. The Great Himalayan Running Festival is the first race where I learned that pacing is not a number on a watch. It is a conversation between your body and the mountain, and the mountain has the final word.
The first thing the mountain teaches
My coach told me, the week before my first stage race in Himachal, that I should leave my pace targets in the hotel. I argued. I had spent six months training for a specific average. He shrugged. Bring it back at the end of the week and tell me how it went, he said.
It went the way he knew it would. The first stage, I held the pace. The second stage, I held the effort. By the third stage, I had thrown the number away.
Manali sits at around 2,000 metres. The Great Himalayan Running Festival climbs from there into the foothills of Himachal. The air thins. The sun bites. The trails twist. And the pace you brought from sea level is not the pace your body has agreed to.
What pacing actually means at altitude
At altitude, pacing is effort, not speed. Your watch will show numbers. The numbers are advisory. What matters is the conversation your lungs are having with your legs.
The three conversations
Easy — the conversation flows. You can talk to another runner. You can think about the trees, the light, the dust. This is most of every stage.
Working — the conversation slows. Short sentences only. Used on climbs and longer flat stretches.
Hard — no conversation. You are alone with your breath. Used only in the final two to three kilometres of a stage.
If you find yourself in the hard conversation in the first hour of a stage, you have already lost the day. The STRIDD calculators can help you map heart-rate zones onto these conversations once you know your sea-level baseline.
The stages are not equal
A multi-stage event is not five copies of one race. Each stage has its own personality. Each asks something different of you.
The first stage — the introduction
The first stage feels like a long warm-up. It is not. The first stage is where you set the bank account that will fund the rest of the week.
Run slower than you think you should. Walk anything that feels harder than working effort. Finish feeling fresh. The runners who pace the first stage well are the runners who are still moving on the final stage.
The middle stages — the test
The middle of a stage race is where the legs remember every kilometre they have already run. Sleep matters more here than fitness. So does food. So does the willingness to walk a climb you could run.
The final stage — the reward
If you held back. If you ate. If you slept. The final stage becomes the celebration the postcard promised. If you did not, it becomes the longest walk of your year. There is no in between.
A story from a friend
In 2022, a friend of mine ran his first multi-day race in Himachal. He is a fast marathoner. Sub-three on a flat course. He went into the festival thinking the mountains would treat him the way the road does.
By the third stage, he was walking sections he had planned to run. By the fourth, he was eating like he had never eaten in a race before. By the fifth, he finished — but his time was an hour slower than his projection.
He told me afterwards, sitting on a bench in Old Manali, that the mountains had taught him something the road never had. I thought I was racing the course, he said. The course was racing me.
The fuelling that matters
Altitude blunts hunger. The food you need at 2,500 metres is not the food you crave. Eat anyway.
The protocol that works
Breakfast within an hour of waking. A gel or solid carb every 35 to 45 minutes from kilometre 5 of each stage. 600 to 800 ml fluid per hour with electrolytes. Post-stage, eat within thirty minutes — carbs and protein in a 3 to 1 ratio. The STRIDD heat and monsoon guide covers Indian-specific electrolyte and hydration math.
You cannot out-train poor nutrition across five days. You can however eat your way through a tough stage.
What I learned about the Himalayas
The mountains do not care about your training plan. They do not know your PB. They do not see your watch. They offer you a series of trails and a series of mornings, and they ask you to figure out the pace that lets you stay in the conversation.
The pacing rule I now use
Run easy for the first two-thirds. Work for the next quarter. Push only for the final two to three kilometres of the day. Repeat. Sleep. Repeat.
It is unglamorous. It is also the only thing that has worked for me. The STRIDD ultramarathon plan structures this kind of effort-based training into your build. If your block needs to be shaped around acclimatisation weeks and specific stages, the plan generator can build it.
The festival is a teacher
People go to the Great Himalayan Running Festival for many reasons. The scenery. The community. The story. The challenge.
Most of them leave with the same lesson, which is that running in the mountains is less about pace and more about presence. You learn to be in the kilometre you are running, not the one you are about to run.
If you are going for the first time, read the event page early. Train with the altitude in mind. Pace by effort, not by watch. Eat to the clock. Sleep eight hours.
And then go run a mountain. Or, more accurately, let the mountain run you.
Next step
Open the STRIDD plan generator to build a block that accounts for altitude and stage structure. For more guides on mountain running in India, the STRIDD Running Lab has a steadily growing archive of pieces written by people who have been there.