World Run II / Reports

The map shows the position of which the pictures for the day are taken (if any). The start and finish markers are placed at the first and last valid registered position. This is not nessesary the actual start and finish position, if GSM or GPS signals was not available.

Goto: 2011-02-03 2011-02-05 Argentina

2011-02-04:

15
Distance today: 40.0 km (Accumulated: 22636.0 km)
Elapsed time: 04:10:15
Country: Argentina

Start 09:25am, 19c, m. wind, half cloudy. At white industrial-sign "Laboratorio Industrial Epsilon SRL", just N. of Commodore Rivadaria on hwy. 3 to Bournes Aires.

Finish 14:45pm, 22c, strong wind and cloudy. At bl.&white roadsign "km 1789"
on hwy. 3.

Revolutions, of sorts..

Todays run brought both a slight revolution in weather, terrain and runningpace; as well as the awareness of a need for a revolution in the driving culture as experienced from about one jump off roadside.

As you will hopefully see from the pictures from todays stage, there was a very pleasant change in landscape: the first cultivated land. About halfway through the run I passed two small farms w. vegetables growing in a narrow volcanic valley, with sheltering trees in lines between the growth (the tall trees also a new thing; so far there has max. been scrubberies and a week back a couple of low trees at roadside). Amazing that it took 1200km from the tip of the continent untill the land is farmed. Indeed a harsh inviroment with its strong sweeping winds across the normally low and open landscape !

Speaking of the wind; also here a change from the usual. But this time not a pleasant one.. I had the strongest headwind that I have encountered so far since the beginning of this second half of wr2. And possibly in wr2 in total. And this then in its own right brought a tiny "revolution" in the way that I clocked the slowest runningpace pr. kilometre that I can remember to have done ever during these runs; a very unimpressive 8 to 8:30min/km - which amounts to little less than slow walking pace.. Despite running with more force in each step than when doing the usual 5-6min/km.

Luckily it was only for about 15km that the stormy headwind pushed me back for each 'takeoff' in the running steps and if you look at the live-gps track from today at the endomondo-service on the frontpage of worldrun.org you'll see that I on the other hand has quite a tailwind during the last 5km :-) How it came to be that the wind changed 180c withing a few minutes I dont know; but, I LIKED IT !!!
(Btw.: Todays run is split in two in the live coverage - the first 32km and the last 8km. The strong headwind meant that I got the gps-phone from Nokia, an Excellent E55 model, wrestled out of my hand by a sudden wind-gust and thus the battery went out and the phone & gps-program had to be restarted).

But wind-force was not the only challenge today. By literally a long leap the biggest challenge was the traffic. The Argentinians are a very hospitable and friendly people, often with a smile and a helping hand ready for foreigners which makes the contry a pleasure to travel in !! But, this does not include traffic. More or less the same way that the wind changed 180c during todays run, so does the experiense of Argentina change abruptly once you enter the traffic on the long tarmac roads between cities: The mentality is still friendly, by all means, but; its friendliness which involves swerving over to your side of the road making it even unsafe to run well off the road itself, on the gravel 'shoulder' of the road. Wether its an expression of Southamerican energy or a result of the very very sparse traffic police /enforcement of trafficrules, I dont know, but the adrenaline certainly keeps at a high level with maneuvers like: double truck-overtaking at bends or hilltops (w. "no overtaking" lines & signs, ofcouse), driving to the other (opposite ;-) side of the road when coming from behind, to "greet" a surprised runner or just the casual swerving from left to right at unexpected moments..

As said a very friendly people, but with a traffic which I havent experiensed as dangerous, not even in the much talked-about between travellers: East Africa, Kenya and Tanzania, or Russia - there you can fairly quickly learn to predict which drivers are going to be "dangerous"; not so here !

This though, not to say that the Argentinian drivers arent skilled. You Must be skilled to survive in a traffic like that ;-)) And they have actually had several formula one championship-level drivers; first and foremost Juan Manuel Fangio (who dominated the sport for decades in the early 19th.century and by many is considered to be the most skilled F1 racing driver of all time along w. modern day Schumacker of Germany).

As it happened todays eventfull 40km run quite conveniently ended at the km-sign "1789" - the year of the perhaps most signifikant revolution in political history: The French Revolution, which shaped the modern european state form, brought forward the idea of individualism and the understanding that the archaic notion of kings as rulers of contries eventually had had its time !

Ps: Judging from our map and the roadsigns there will be approximately 400km's running to the next city so the next picture uploads may take a little while. But the daily reports hopefully will still be posted as they are send by sms ! The past two days (50km and 32km) will be posted shortly.