Good grief. I don't feel especially creative this morning, but I've waited long enough to jot down some damn thing about the Vulcano Ultra Trail. Seeing as the Internet has long since fried my brain and whittled down my attention span to about 2 seconds...let's do an unordered list of random thoughts/sentence fragments:
-Had to finish an ultra in 2013, finished Vulcano Ultra Trail. Wonderful.
-Took longer than my worst 50 miler to go 40 miles.
-Was not fit, but did not realize the depths of unfitness in which I currently dwell
-Perhaps the best race in Chile in terms of location, difficulty, organization
-In thinking about the TNF 80k DNF that I had in October and without trying to make any broad generalizations for/against DNFing...I will say that, for me, that DNF really fucked up the ebb and flow of running for me. I should have just hiked the fucker to the end and then rested, got back to running like normal after a race. Lesson learned.
-Such a good weekend. Puerto Varas is awesome.
-Every race should have an official post-race after-party at a bar.
-Misery loves company. And beards. Lesson re-learned when I was contemplating dropping out and Canadian beard-master Jason Wright came up the trail. I told him I felt like shit and wanted to drop and he said "Screw that. Let's grind this out." Thanks, dude. Hopefully I returned the favor later in the race when his legs/hips started cramping so badly that he couldn't reach his shoe laces to tie them. He said "I might be done at this point." to which I replied, using all of my creativity and inspiration-giving ability: "Nah." We finished together in bromantic triumph. His girlfriend Emily finished just behind us and placed 3rd overall for the ladies. Powerful.
Photos!
The current bossjogg line-up. L to R: Matias, Bear Gay, Diego, Daniel, Moises, Max
The start of the race was a few k's of flat sandy trail, heading towards the volcano. A few of the bossjogging boys and I ran together for a bit, but then Max and I moved up towards the lead group, where Moises was already putting in a bid for a podium finish. Everyone went hard as shit in the beginning and, awesomely, most of those guys kept hammering for the rest of the day.
Sunrise on the way up. The first part of the volcano was covered in the softest moss/dirt stuff I have ever run on. It was like jogging up a giant, firm mattress. It was incredible. I wanted to lay down and sleep on it so badly. Speaking of which, I only sleep about 4 hours a night now. Edison used to do that, right?
Haggard.
Post-race party.
Feelin' the vibe.
Daniel's report. 3rd place in the 30k.
Max's report. 5th place in 60k.
Moises's report. 12th in 60k. (He came through halfway in 3rd, going strong, but had some wicked cramping. Cramping was a theme from this race. Volcano-induced, clearly.)
Even if you ain't read Spanish, the pics are nice for the lookin'.
This morning I signed up for the reborn Desafío de Senderos de los Volcanes next February (They didn't put on the race in 2013). I did this race in 2012 with my buddy Quim from Spain. Here's the report from two years ago. It's weird to look back even just two years and see how I used to give weekly training updates. Was that interesting? Maybe I should do that again?
It's cool to think that it'll be my 3rd volcano-themed race.
It's cool to think that I've lived here for over 2.5 years. The idea of returning to the States next year is actually starting to scare the hell out of me. I hadn't anticipated that, but...
If you can watch that without feeling nauseous, you're clearly ready for more Vo2-max workouts.
That's it for now.
