TMBT 2027 Fuel Plan: Eating and Drinking Around Kinabalu
For TMBT on 11 and 12 September 2027, fuel hard through the hot morning valleys, then drink less as you climb towards 2,000 m and the afternoon rain comes in. Aim for 40 to 70 g of carbohydrate an hour, plan sodium for the hot first half, and carry more than the distances suggest, because on this course a few kilometres can take an hour.
TMBT, The Most Beautiful Thing, circles the western and southern foot of Mount Kinabalu. Most Sabah and Peninsular races get hotter as the day goes on. This one starts in the heat of the Kota Belud lowlands and finishes high, cool and often wet. A plan built for Klang Valley heat and kept unchanged all day is the mistake the course punishes.
What is confirmed for TMBT 2027?
We checked the official site, borneoultra.com/tmbt1, on 16 October 2026. It confirms the 15th edition on 11 and 12 September 2027, with registration expected to open in March 2027. Categories are the 100 km (about 109 km on the current course), 50 km, 30 km, 37 km night challenge, 12 km and a 7.5 km family run.
- Start: Saturday morning at Kg. Lingkubang, Kota Belud, staggered by category. The 37 km night challenge starts at midnight in Kundasang.
- Finish: the 50 km ends at the Kinabalu viewpoint in Pekan Nabalu. The 100 km passes its halfway point and finishes at Mount Kinabalu Heritage Resort and Spa (formerly Perkasa) above Kundasang.
- Altitude and weather: the highest point is just under 2,000 m. The organisers describe it as usually hot early in the day, with a good chance of tropical showers in the afternoon.
- Terrain: steep climbs, technical trail and numerous stream crossings, plus a mandatory kit list.
Not yet published: start times, cut-offs, the aid station list and what each station serves, and total elevation. The site says its information is still based on 2026 and the route may change. Check again when registration opens.
Phase one: hot valleys from Kota Belud
The first hours are the hottest and the easiest to eat in, so this is where the day is won or lost. Every category runs through the villages and river valleys to Lobong Lobong (W3), a ridge village above a river confluence.
Start drinking from the first kilometre. The heat consensus statement led by Racinais recommends starting well hydrated and drinking enough to limit body-mass loss, rather than a fixed volume (Racinais et al., 2015). For most people that lands somewhere in the ISSN’s range of 450 to 750 ml an hour for ultra racing (Tiller et al., 2019). Your sweat rate decides where; our sweat rate calculator gets you a number from one hot training run.
Eat early too. Gut problems tend to appear after about two hours of hard exercise and heat makes them worse (Costa et al., 2017), so the cool-ish, flatter start is when to get carbohydrate in. Jeukendrup’s guidelines put the target at 60 to 90 g an hour for long events in trained athletes (Jeukendrup, 2014). The ISSN stand is more cautious for ultras, at 30 to 50 g (Tiller et al., 2019). If your gut hasn’t been trained, start in the middle, around 50 g. Our guide to why your stomach fails during ultras covers the training side.
Phase two: the big climbs
After the river crossing, the 50 km climbs to the Pineapple Ridge with Kinabalu’s southern face ahead, then contours to Kiau Nulu (W4), where the 50 and 100 km split. The 100 km drops to the valley floor, crosses two bamboo bridges, then climbs a ridge to W5, about 500 m up.
On climbs this steep most people hike. That’s good news for fuelling: it is the easiest time to chew real food. Rice balls, boiled potatoes with salt, a few dates. Our piece on gels vs real food covers how to mix them. Leave the descents for gels, or nothing.
Fill up before each climb even if the next station seems close. A section that is 6 km on paper can take well over an hour with 500 m of ascent.
Phase three: high, cool and wet
This is the part a lowland plan gets wrong. By the afternoon you are higher, it is cooler, and there is a good chance it’s raining. On the 100 km this is the second half: from the halfway point at Kundasang through the Mesilau vegetable farms (muddy and slippery, according to the organisers) close to the eastern ridge of Kinabalu, then the long descent and a final 800 m climb to the finish.
Your sweat rate falls. If you keep drinking at your morning rate, you’re drinking more than you lose. The hyponatraemia consensus names exactly this, drinking well beyond sweat losses, as the main cause of exercise-associated hyponatraemia (Hew-Butler et al., 2015). Weight gain over a race is the warning sign. Up here, drink to thirst.
Keep eating, though. Cold and tiredness both kill appetite, and a runner who stops eating at 1,800 m in the rain gets cold fast. Warm, salty food at the halfway point is worth more than another gel. Pack the mandatory jacket where you can reach it without taking the pack off.
For more on the mountain itself, our Kinabalu climb food and water guide covers the summit trail, which is a different event but the same weather.
How much sodium, and when?
Mostly in phase one. The 7.5 km family run and fast 12 km runners need only water. Everyone out for longer than 90 minutes in the valley heat should plan sodium and size it to what they drink: 200 to 550 mg an hour is a starting range. McCubbin’s modelling found replacement mattered most where long duration met high fluid intake and salty sweat (McCubbin, 2022).
The logic follows the fluid. When you drink less up high, you need proportionally less sodium too. A fixed hourly dose all day ignores the way this course changes under you. Our sodium per hour guide shows the arithmetic.
A worked example: a 10-hour 50 km
Take a 60 kg runner who trains on Penang’s hill trails and is aiming for about 10 hours. Their hot-weather sweat rate is about 0.8 litres an hour.
| Race hours | Where | Carbohydrate | Fluid | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 4 | Valleys to Lobong Lobong | 55 to 60 g/h | 600 to 700 ml/h | about 400 mg/h |
| 4 to 7 | Pineapple Ridge to Kiau Nulu | 50 g/h, mostly real food | about 500 ml/h | about 300 mg/h |
| 7 to 10 | Kiau Bersatu to Pekan Nabalu | 40 to 50 g/h | to thirst, often 300 to 400 ml/h | 200 to 250 mg/h |
The totals come to about 500 g of carbohydrate and roughly 5 litres of fluid. The point of the table is the shape, not the numbers: front-loaded, and tapering as the course climbs and cools.
What one finisher learned
Our own TMBT 50K account from 2026 finished in 8:29:40, 14th overall, with cramps from km 38 after a near-fall. It is worth reading before you plan, mainly for what it says about technical terrain late in the race: the hardest part of TMBT often isn’t the fuelling sum but staying upright and still eating when the legs are gone.
For more races, see our Malaysian race nutrition guides, including the Borneo Ultra Trail Marathon fuel plan for the same organisers’ April race, and the ultra marathon nutrition guide.
References
- Racinais S, Alonso JM, Coutts AJ, et al. (2015). Consensus recommendations on training and competing in the heat. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49(18), 1164-1173. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-094915
- Tiller NB, Roberts JD, Beasley L, et al. (2019). International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: nutritional considerations for single-stage ultra-marathon training and racing. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 16(1), 50. doi:10.1186/s12970-019-0312-9
- Costa RJS, Snipe RMJ, Kitic CM, Gibson PR (2017). Systematic review: exercise-induced gastrointestinal syndrome, implications for health and intestinal disease. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 46(3), 246-265. doi:10.1111/apt.14157
- Jeukendrup A (2014). A step towards personalized sports nutrition: carbohydrate intake during exercise. Sports Medicine, 44(Suppl 1), S25-S33. doi:10.1007/s40279-014-0148-z
- Hew-Butler T, Rosner MH, Fowkes-Godek S, et al. (2015). Statement of the 3rd International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49(22), 1432-1446. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-095004
- McCubbin AJ (2022). Modelling sodium requirements of athletes across a variety of exercise scenarios. European Journal of Sport Science, 23(6), 992-1000. doi:10.1080/17461391.2022.2083526
- TMBT official site: General race information, Maps, profiles and data and Registration, checked 16 October 2026.
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