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: 2011-12-13 2011-12-15 Colombia

2011-12-14:

16
Distance today: 42.0 km (Accumulated: 31337.0 km)
Elapsed time: 03:47:21
Country: Colombia

Start 08:47am., 25c, allmost overcast & light wind, at km-stone "4/45-14" on hwy. 45 North. Finish 13:59pm., 37c, humid, half overcast and same, at km-stone "46/4514" on hwy. 45 N.

Turtle-like progress... !

One of the luckily rare days on the world run's where the motivation is Low. After two days of only a little more than 30km's each I should have been able to put in a good effort today. And certainly I had "good intentions" when I prepared for the stage - while streatching and preparing the gps-equiptment I noted to my colombian suppordriver Alexander that todays run sould be atleast 60km :-)

An hour into the stage and I had negotiated myself into the oppinion that "50km is surely a good effort on a hot-humid day like today".

Further 2 more hours in the usual madness-traffic of South America with heavy trucks 'brushing elbows' both with eachoter and... with a solitary runner on the rough shoulder of the road. Although, today there were no rough shoulder - so I had to run in the traffic lane itself. Not really possible to explain how it wrecks your nerves to once every 10minutes or so have a "near hit" by a truck wich has better things to occupy their brain with than safety, apparently. So, the argument became: "If I want to see tomorrow and be able to do a bit of running, I better stop while I havent become road-fill yet. And 40km itsnt a bad distance !".

The end result was 42km's. On a day where I should have been able to put in the effort and determination and done atleast 60km if not more. The muscles were fine, there was no injuries or indication of injuries. And yes, the traffic were particularly dangerous today since there was no space to run on next to the road (there's grass - but - there's also a lot of interesting snakes here in Colombia; and a fair bit of them end up beeing road-kill so it suggests one way or another that the grass next to the tarmac may not be the greatest place to run ;-) But for about 25km's of the run I had a police escort behind me, trying to help making it more safe for me to run - and, forcing the trucks to slow down the minute or two it took them to find a spot in the oncoming traffic to overtake in.

When all the reasons and excuses are counted in: a poor effort. Very fitting that I'm staying at the "Morrocoy" hotel tonight. (and no, Morrocoy doesnt mean moron in spanish, it means "Turtle" ;-)

The positive' of today was a thing wich is as typical for South America, and Colombia in particular, as the mad traffic is: the generosity and friendly attitude ! On one of the water-and-food reststops that I take every 5 or 10km's my supportdriver and I was looking up at a huge mango-tree next to the road. It had many delicious looking mangoes, but, it was standing behind a fence on a private space of a hacienda'. The owner, relaxing in the garden, saw our interest in the mango's and before we even had time to say "Hola Amigo" he had collected a couple of handfulls of fresh mango's for us ! What great hospitality :-)) And it seems to always balance the impression when I've had almost my limit of South American traffic'...

NB: There's not pictures of the dangerous situations in traffic today. Normally I have enough calm to take a few example-shots, but today it was a matter of concentrating on beeing safe during the run and not playing 'photo tourist'.

Christmas calendar, day 14:

Todays injury prevention advice is to pick the right food ! There is a fair chance that many injuries can partly be prevented by keeping a good healthy diet. Or so the experts say - I stick to chocolate, canned' bakedbeans and perhaps a few mango's and it has worked fine so far ;-)

But in case you dont like chocolate maybe the advice is worth following. Atleast there is no shortage of 'health-wisdom' to be found in various running magazines etc. And it seems that every decade has its main health expert, or atleast it used to be so back in denmark; wich makes one wonder if the human nutrition-basics changes about every 10years ;-) I guess eating varied and follow what your body suggests may bring you a long way - but ofcouse that can't sell many healtmagazines.