A quote from my post last week ahead of the Mexico City Marathon;
“I’ll settle for anything under 3:25 but if the conditions are good and I’m feeling comfortable going into the last 10k, who knows.”
So, the question is, how did it actually go down on race day. (more…)
Mexico City, officially México Districto Federal or as locals call it DF, is the capital of Mexico and a major economic and cultural centre for Latin America. And if there’s one thing that strikes you about DF when you first arrive, it has to be the sheer volume of people. Just under 9 million people in the city itself and 21 million in the metropolitan area. The city also hosts the annual Mexico City International Marathon, the highlight of the country’s running calendar. (more…)
I decided to use the 2013 Telcal 21k as a warm-up for the Mexico international marathon taking place the week after. This was an opportunity to get used to high altitude road running over a longer distance before the big event in the capital. (more…)
There was a day when your typical ultra distance runner set out with nothing more than a pair of handsome sideburns, short shorts and shabby tennis shoes, drinking from cool mountain streams and drawing sustenance from the California sun. For better or for worse, things have changed a lot since then and your average runner nowadays is more akin to something like a modern-day Robocop. These days we’re guided to our destination by GPS, we wear specialised wicking dri-fit clothes, our trainers are developed in a hi-tech lab and we probably have a team of scientist somewhere working on nutrition schedules and optimal training plans. In fact, running has become big business. Everyone’s trying to sell you something and the choices can be a bewildering. It’s easy to be confused trying to tell proper science from pseudo-nonsence and finding out what works for our own individual style and preferences can prove problematic. This article describes my own particular experience with equipment over five years running and racing in Scotland and Oaxaca. First up, let’s look at running shoes. (more…)
Monday 22nd of July marked the 22nd edition of the Indio Nuyoó race in Huajuapan de Leon, my adopted hometown in the Mixteca region of southern Mexico. This race commemorates the heroic efforts of native Mixteco José Remigio Sarabia Rojas (better known as the Indio Nuyoó) to liberate the city of Huajuapan from Spanish rule in 1812. It takes place during the city fair and is quite an event, attracting runners from as far as Puebla and Huatulco on the pacific coast. This would be my second time running the race. The route is short but tough, taking in a climb of around 300 meters before a steep descent over wet rocks then a flat section of around 3k finishing up in the town square. I measured the distance as just shy of 10k and finished in just under an hour. (more…)
I’ve been living and running in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico for over three years now and it hasn’t always easy to find longer distance races. For this reason I was delighted to see a notice for a Q50 80km ultra marathon in Barro Jaguar nature reservation close to the state capital of Oaxaca de Juarez. I’d already run two 50k ultras in the US and one of these had a pretty serious gradient, but I knew that the climate and altitude (1500 meters) would make the Oaxaca Q50 an entirely different proposition. I wasn’t wrong. (more…)