Today’s first stage of the 4th edition of The Last Secret started with an emotional opening ceremony. 500 students of the Punakha Secondary Highschool sang the national anthem of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

The Lama of the Punakha Dzong blessed the runners before the start and wished all of the participants a successful race and good weather conditions.

The first stage was set at 30,7km with 2 checkpoints. Runners had to run along the Punakha river before passing the longest suspension bridge of Bhutan. After checkpoint 2 runners had to run the final 6km purely uphill and finished the stage at the Chorten Ngyinpo Monastery in 1800m altitude.

The camp is set inside the courtyard of the monastery. Tonight the participants have the unique opportunity to join the Buddhist evening ceremony in the monastery.

Winner of the first stage was Greek runner Argy Papathanasopoulos in a record time of 2:48hrs followed by Swiss runner Peter Osterwalder in 2:54 and first female runner, Véronique Messina from France, also in a course record time of 3:07hrs. Second woman was French Véronique Chamberland in 3:26hrs. All runners have finished the stage in less than 6hrs and now enjoy the fantastic scenery at the monastery.

Tomorrow 2^nd stage is expected to be the toughest of all even if it “just” 29km, however the first 19km is strictly uphill before running 10km downhill on the other side of the 3400m pass. A total 2400m of elevation gain has to be managed.