Atacama Crossing Lead Up: Running around San Pedro

After running in excess of 100 miles the previous week, my first week in Chile turned out to be my first non-running week in months. Due to back problems and then filling the weekend with cycling and hiking, a grand total of zero miles were run, but I’m convincing myself that it was ideal timing.

This week I’m back in the game, back in the Hokas, and back on the road and trail. It’s hard to gauge just how much running would be ideal between now and March 3rd. How to balance last minute training to get used to running in the heat and altitude, with the need for some tapering. I’ll aim to get out most days for something. I think there’s a lot to be said for making running a natural state of play for the body, so to get out maybe every day between now and the start for around 10k might be the way forward. That was the accidental technique that saw me to my best ever performance in Barcelona, all the fault of Marcothon getting me out every day leading up to the event.

It isn’t hard to get motivated to run in these parts, this area is just chock full of natural beauty, the hardest decision is which direction to choose. So far this week it has been the road to Paso Jama, a mountain pass through the Andes between Chile and Argentina, if only I had a bit more time and could get my hands on a decent road bike!

 

The runs have initially been in the evening, I’ve been wimping out a little from the hottest parts of the day but I will resolve this! With these kinds of views though, the evening/dusk certainly continues to be incredibly attractive:

 

While I was running, and setting the timer for these pics, I couldn’t help but think of the great website I’d seen earlier in the day: www.runnermuck.com  it has a selection of ‘run porn’, nothing too seedy just pictures of awesome trails etc, that us runners will drool over. It made me think that these pictures may fit that bill a little, but maybe even cross over into the realm of self-masturbation-run-porn. Is setting the timer and quickly getting into running pose as bad as those horrible self portraits at arms length you see so regularly on Facebook etc? Maybe, but I hope they also benefit from a far more laudable intention of whetting appetites for running in general, and running in Chile specifically!

In other news, an interesting development saw the latest Racing The Planet newsletter released. It looked gorgeous and if I wasn’t already out here to participate in one of the events, I’d be selling a kidney in order to get signed up to something. The Atacama news I found particularly amusing as it lists me as one of the favourites! I guess now I can no longer stay off the radar, that’ll teach me to whore myself out on blogs, podcasts, and other shameless self-promotion! 🙂

I guess I better keep an eye out for Daniel and Zandy. I don’t know much about Daniel but can remember following Zandy’s progress in last year’s event. He did great and will be a huge contender with previous course and distance experience. He also seems like a great guy which is unfortunate. It would be much easier to hate him and use that to fuel my race 😉

The whole newsletter had me racking my brains for money making schemes to sign up for everything they were basically advertising. How incredible does the Madagascar event look and sound!?!

If a miracle happened and I ended up doing really well this time round, it would be incredibly tempting to go back and have a real good go at Sahara and Gobi again too. Being here in Chile highlights the fact that each race is so very different. It’d be easy to think a desert is a desert is a desert but from what I’ve seen you couldn’t get three so completely different places as Sahara, Gobi, and Atacama. Each one magical in their own way, you can see why competitors such as Jesse Yoo who is here in Atacama for his 19th Racing The Planet event!      http://www.4deserts.com/

Gobi March 10th year anniversary: 2 – 8 June 2013

Hmmm, The Sahara Race now in February… sounds like a nice ‘winter sun’ opportunity 😉