If you life in Germany, Austria or Switzerland you will find the all-new RUNNING Magazine at your local newsstand from today.

My portion can be located on page 32 and is about the unpleasant doping case of Martin Fagan.

Nice location for the advert, though…

I had four main objectives going into this lengthy sunday long run in Santiago de Chile:

1. Start
2. Finish
3. Negative splitting
4. Test Nutrition

When I crossed the noisy finish line at the Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue I could gladly tick off all open points – mission accomplished. Better than I anticipated!

A couple of thoughts went through my head when I got out for the 20-minute wake-up trot around the city at 5:30am. While jogging through the blank, misty and unkind roads of Rotterdam, Berlin or Florence the previous years at this time of the day, streets in South America are still busy with people lashing home or heading for another beer.

I never cared about a marathon less than I did about this one. The weeks flew by and I did not taper or did whatsoever special for this race. When I checked the course shape I was kind of stunned but still did not really care. Without the burden of running a PB I lined up in the middle of the pack and got mayor pleasure out of this race around the Chilean capital. I’m not good in warm climate and hills during a road race do not certainly suit me. On this day I couldn’t care less about those facts.

30 kilometer uphill, and the icing on the cake – a crispy 12 k downhill back to Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue. This is the course rundown in a nutshell (See Marcelo’s Garmin Recording for more info). My head divided the race up in twos and I told myself that this marathon is finished at 30k. I trusted myself and when I passed the 30k mark my head reset the system and I was hovering back down to the finish in the city. The finishing 4k hurt a lot and I was suffering.

As my watch died early on during the race I never realized what I was doing. I got the impression that I’m in nowhere´s land as the streets got less packed with runners the further I got. I passed people and the onlookers alongside the street threw “vamos flaco” and “dalle flaqito” corals at me. Pretty amusing and uplifting, I certainly had the beat.

When I saw the watch over the finish line I was surprised. Surprised in a positive way. 03:07:54 was not the time I estimated out of a intentional sunday training long run that should lead me to the Patagonia 84k in two weeks. I scheduled to walk the aid stations at the 10, 20 and 30 kilometer points to drink appropriately and take my gels. Combined with my tiny “pit-stop” just after 36k the outcome is spotless.

I walked of to get drinks and luckily bounced into Patrick who also looked to be delighted with a 03:11:34. Together with Marcelo Spinelli and my other mates from Buenos Aires we sat down in the finish area and enjoyed the break.

This day thought me a lot. More than I expected.

“It’s getting faster, moving faster now, it’s getting out of hand,
On the tenth floor, down the back stairs, it’s a no man’s land,
Lights are flashing, cars are crashing, getting frequent now,
I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, let it out somehow.”

 Joy Divison – Disorder

SPANISH VERSION

The past days involved a decent bit of travelling through the northwest of Argentina as I made my way down across the Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja and San Juan Provinces.

My final stopover before I head over to Santiago de Chile to run the marathon is the tiny oasis town called Barreal. Here I will pause a couple of days and rest up in the extremely picturesque middle of nowhere in the heights of the Mendoza Province just beside the “Parque Nacional El Leoncito”.

As the bus trips take a good bit of time I took lots of photographs with the „that vicious device that’s constantly stuck in my hands“ as my mate Flo’s Email signature worriedly states.

Until later.

I have to admit. I confess I totally forgot to script this test report way earlier.

It was half a year ago when I received a phone call from my local customs bureau requiring about a mysterious package waiting to get picked up. So I did pick up a box with the name “Altra” written all over the mysterious piece that flew in from the USA.

Edgy as a little kid on Christmas I opened the neat shoebox. What I was holding in my hands a couple of seconds later was a slice of nothing who looked like a shoe. I checked the box again an the name of this piece was “Adam”.

My barefoot running experience is not as sketched out as the one “Born To Run” offers. I do wear light shoes all the time and I do trust in a simple approach when it comes to footwear. When I used to play football we had to do the cool down barefoot. Nobody wrote a book or a thesis about some kids in Germany jogging without shoes over a football pitch. So for me it is nothing new.

Occasionally I run barefoot to warm up before a session or to cool down. I followed the barefoot running boom more less as an spectator but not really as an consumer. With the landing of Adam this had an end.

The instant feeling was great. Remarkably or maybe not surprisingly it felt “natural”. A well-worked piece that fitted perfectly to my big foot. I began to use the shoe for normal doings in and outdoors to get used to it. And then it happened that I overlooked “Adam”… I forgot I was wearing and using him.

At this stage I’m up to 30 minutes on all sorts of surfaces for up to 3 times a week and I enjoy the simple and trustworthy function he has to offer. Without recognizing it, and that is a good sign!

Adam certainly does the job. Once you are used to him he will help you a lot. He is there for all sorts of occasions as well. Just be cautious. It is a relationship that needs time. Get used to each other…

A exceptionally imposing landscape, sound people, good weather, great coffee, boundless trails, a vast set-up of sand-roads, a synthetic 400-meter track, a gym and a olympic size swimming pool. Picture all this up at 2.280 meter above sea level and you’ll find yourself in the laid back Andes village called Cachi.

I’m in Cachi since a couple of days and to say I’m stunned would not hit the note!

Running on the foot of gigantic snow covered Andes peaks in the middle of nowhere is something else. Combined with the great company and openness of all the other runners’ here makes it a special place to be.

PICTURES

Throughout my recent excursion I had the opportunity to shot stacks of photos.

And as I do not want to overload this blog I decided to set up a photograph only spot.

So if you click HERE or on the image underneath you’ll get spoiled with visual slices I create.

Hope you like them. Feel free to check regularly & share!

Montevideo has the vibe!

I had a great time Uruguay’s capital and came across a pretty solid artist.

Check out Santi’s page and his LP debut “Hay Pasto en la Grieta”.

Free Download HERE