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: 2011-12-14 2011-12-16 Colombia

2011-12-15:

18
Distance today: 41.0 km (Accumulated: 31378.0 km)
Elapsed time: 03:51:44
Country: Colombia

Start 09:00am, 26c, overcast, humid & no wind, at km-stone "46/4514" on hwy. 45 N. Finish 13:48pm., 33c, hummid, light wind & same, at km-stone "86/4514" on hwy. 45N.

A break in the 'traffic-stress' :-)

As you can see from todays pictures there were a lot of contruction work along todays stage, as they are building a new and wider highway. This gave me an oppotunity to escape the 'loco'/crazy truckdrivers for atleast 10 to 20km ! GREAT !!

Its hard to find a way to describe how profoundly it affects you when beeing in a little bit of danger on/off for 4-6hours every day. Having the busses and heavy trucks coming right up to you on the side of the road, going about as fast as they can; is not the most fun one can think of ;-) Its in general great and very hospitable people throughout the part of South America I have experiensed, from Chile in the South to Colombia in the North, but the danger and indifference towards 'soft' people in traffic puts one's exitement down a fair bit. (You can only have 'a gun held to your head' so many times before you get a little less happy about it all ;-)

Yet, as mentioned in yesterdays report too - it seems as just when its too much, there comes one of those typical South American moments where helpfullness, friendliness or just the cheerfull spirit of most people here brushes away the bad experienses.

Today it was the curage my good supportdriver from Colombia, Alexander, showed by insisting in driving slowly behind me, sheltering me from fast trucks coming from behind. A fairly dangerous thing for him too, as there often wouldnt be any change in their speed, just a slight swerve to barely pass his car right behind me. But it kept me safe and for a while without having to worry about getting through in one healthy piece; and instead using the focus and energy on the running :-) GREAT EFFORT, Alex' !

Christmas calendar, day 15:

Todays advice to reduce or at best avoid running-injuries is one of the most classic, yet unfortunately not always followed: Patience ! Both in training as well as with recovery if injuries should happen. Through almost three decades of competetive longdistance running first at normal long-distance and later in ultra-running I've seen a lot of talented runners get injured. Often a harmless injury can become more severe by beeing too eager to get quickly back into training. Especially its a problem if one jumps' back to resume at the point in training where the injury broke the progress off. One thing is that the body requires a carefull build-up to the level you were at - but just as critical: there might be a need to adjust the training since most likely the type of training you were doing was what brought the injury... So beeing too hasty' in getting 'back to business' w. your running might actually be the slowest way to achieve progress !

Take time to evaluate what went wrong, find out how you can correct it or even better, develop another way to increace you training effect - then you instead get something positive out of the break' :-)