Tired

I woke up this morning feeling pretty lousy. Nevertheless, I got up at the usual 7:00 and ate a nice hearty breakfast of pancakes, yogurt, juice, and bread. I was still feeling pretty sluggish after this, so I laid down for a few minutes to try and rest it off.

I woke up a few hours later feeling only a bit better. I had trouble sleeping the night before and it´s been a pretty tough training week. I guess I´m just over tired.

Yesterday was the big election that has been polluting Ecuador´s TV airwaves since I´ve been here. I don´t really speak enough Spanish to understand the fine points of the election, but basically one side wants a constitutional reform (this is the current president and the seemingly more liberal side) while the other side wants to get rid of the current president and keep the old constitution (this side is managed by the current Mayor of Guayaquil).

Well, the result was sí, or yes, by a pretty hefty margin (something like 65%). I was a little nervous yesterday when a woman in a store told me that there were going to be riots and protests just as in Cuba and Bolivia. I´m really hoping the country doesn´t fall apart. So far, so good (I think).

Benedicte, my flatmate, left last night on a night bus to the jungle. She´s doing a 4 or 5 day trip there with a language school. Apparently they take classes in the morning and do excursions in the afternoon. It sounds pretty cool and I´m going to have her give me the report on it when she gets back. As long as I can still maintain my training there, I think it would be fun. I´d love to see the jungle.

I think that this coming weekend, we´re going to head to the coast for a few days. Benedicte leaves next week, so we figure it´s as good a time as any. I´m not too worried because I´ve now been at 9500 ft or higher for a month. A few days down at sea level will be nice. I can get in some good fast running! And more importantly, relax a bit, enjoy some warm weather, and have a grand ol time.

In other news, I´ve gotten strangely nostalgic for things from home. And they haven´t been the things I would expect like my house or my room. It´s strange little things that I didn´t think about much but were, now that I´m thinking about it, a big part of what I did. Here´s a brief list:

Driving. Though I would never want to drive here (the drivers are absolutely insane!), I really miss driving. I never really realized it until now but just driving around from place to place and listening to music often accompanied by Annie or Duncan or Paxton or whomever was a really relaxing time for me.

Running in Concord. Running here is a huge mixed bag. In one sense, it´s great to have the altitude. A little resistance is really great. On the other hand (and I don´t think this is just Quito) running in cities super sucks. There´s a ton of pollution from big ugly buses, and more importantly a bunch of people who have no sense of sidewalk etiquitte. I´m constantly having to duck into the street or into a bush to avoid plowing over a bunch of slowly meandering Quiteños. Moreover, I also hate having to stop for stoplights which, until I get to the Carolína, is something I have to do pretty often. I really miss some of my routes at home. I miss running on Harrington Avenue, I miss my big triangle of lowell rd, 225, and 62. I miss knowing exactly where I am and exactly what pace I´m running. I also miss running on trails. I miss having people to run with. I miss running with Annie through estabrook or with David around Concord center.

Duncan´s living-room: I was thinking last night about this place. It was honestly one of the first places that I began to miss. It´s a little wierd, but I think it makes sense. So many of my memories over the last few years have taken place in Duncan´s living room. I miss playing rock band with Max and Pax and Duncan and Will and watching ridiculous movies just chilling out and listening to telefon tel aviv.

Elson: For some reason, I really miss Annie´s huge dog, Elson. Perhaps it´s just a manifestation of something that reminds me of her and it´s easier to miss a dog than a person, but either way, I miss you, Elson.

I guess all these things are the kind of things that were really important to me but I never really realized it before. All of these things were a part of my life on a daily level and I guess I took them for granted. Oh well, it´s all good. I´ll be back soon enough.

I miss you Timothy Treadwell

This morning it was super clear, so Benedicte and I decided to hop over to the TeleferiQo again and admire the views. As expected, it was beautiful. We didn´t do a whole lot of walking, but a lot of sitting and just enjoying the scenery. I decided to do a few striders to see how they felt and to see if I could get a good picture.

After this, we headed into old town Quito, a place that we hadn´t yet been, despite been raved about by the locals. Our taxi driver there was kind of a dick and took us to the wrong place and over charged us. Oh well. It was a little overwhelming at first. There were about a million people in these crowded streets. Needless to say, this was a hands in pockets expeditition.

We saw the one really big church that we came to see and then walked around exploring for a bit. Benedicte was seeming a bit uncomfortable with all of the people (ring any bells, Puerto Rican parade?), so we snagged a cab a got out of there.

We grabbed lunch at the Quicentro (yay pizza hut!), since Maria was out voting and told us she couldn´t make lunch today. We grabbed a cab back to the house and I had just enough time to breathe, lace up my Asics Gel-DS and head out the door.

Inspired by Haile´s unbelievable 2:03:59 (see below), I decided to try a bit of quicker running. I was going to jog to the Parque Carolína (about 1.5 miles) slow, and then run around the park speedy speedy (around 4k), and then cooldown back home. I haven´t done any fast running in about a month, so the fact that I´ve had no speedy runs in my legs and the fact that I´m still up pretty high made me a little dubious. I was hoping to run under 15:00 for the 4k which would be right about 6:00 pace.

I went out hard and fast. I flew by groups of slowly meandering Quiteños shirtless and got a lot of wierd looks. The heat really took its toll on me after about a half mile. I ran under a fountain to cool off.

About 10 minutes into it I started to feel the oxygen. I told my body to go but it just wouldn´t. Faster, Faster! but I got nothing. The last few minutes were pretty brutal. I don´t know my splits or anything, but I imagine I was going over 6:00 pace for the last half mile or so.

I ended up coming in around 14:14 (5:43/mile pace), which I was surprised and happy with. I jogged back to the house aroudn 9:00 pace and retired to my shower feeling satisfied. Not too bad for my first real fast running in a while. I think I´ll do the same run next week and see if it gets any better. I don´t think it´s a matter of pacing it´s just a matter of oxygen.

Because I missed the New England cold SO much... (Finally, a Cotopaxi post!)

I have never wanted to stop doing something as much as I wanted to stop climbing Cotopaxi at about 3:30am this past Sunday. I remember having an intriguing thought as I stood on the side of a glacier, several miles up in the dark, buckled over with terrible stomache pain. I though: ¨Fuck, I´m actually paying to be here right now.¨

My Cotopaxi expedition began really a few weeks ago when I was talking with my then Spanish teacher about mountains in Ecuador. I had known that I wanted to do some climbing around Ecuador while I was here, but I didn´t really know where to begin. After seeing a few pictures of the nearly perfect conical volcano, I was hooked; it was love at first sight. I had to be there.

Yet, I tamed my enthusiasm for a while. Cotopaxi was a good 10,000 feet taller than any mountain I had ever climbed. It seemed a little bit unreasonable to me at first. Yet, after my running got pretty normal and a pretty sucessful hike around Guagua Pinchincha, which is still a good 6000 feet shy of Cotopaxi, I felt pretty solid in terms of my confidence.

And so, I found myself first in the office of Safari Tours, a guide company recommended to me by my project coordinator. However, Safari Tours seemed a little too touristy for me. The prices were ridiculous and everything was in English (including the people working there), which I took as a bad sign. So, I wandered through the Mariscal, something I hate doing, looking at the several million tour companys, and finally found my way into Ecomontes, a tour company which said it ¨specialized in eco tourism.¨Sounds good.

I immediately felt much better in here. The man started to describe to me the programs they offered and the prices of each. Everyone I had talked to maintained that it was imperative to do an ¨acclimitization hike¨, a hike of a smaller mountain but still tall enough to give your body a day to get used to a much higher altitude and thus much lower air pressure.

I settled on a hike up Pasachoa on Friday, returning to Quito to sleep on friday night and then climbing Cotopaxi saturday night-sunday morning. A note about this: since Cotopaxi is a glacier, it has to be climbed in the middle of the night when the snow is hard. During the day, with the equatorial sun high in the sky, the snow actually softens and can create large gaps in the ice where it is possible to fall through the ice and die. This is why we hike at night.

Anyways, a few weeks went by and a few days before I was supposed to depart, I headed back to Ecomontes to get my gear. I had to be fitted for cramp-ons, snow boots, lots of warm clothes, special wind proof glasses, etc. When I arrived, my friend there told me that apparently another couple was climbing this weekend and I could team up with them for an acclimitization hike nearer to Cotopaxi, which would thus allow me to sleep up at a much higher altitude than Quito. To be perfectly honest, the only thing that I was thinking about at this point was how I was going to keep my weekly mileage up... I figured I could run friday morning before leaving for the acc. hike and then maybe Sunday afternoon when I got back. So, it was all good.

Friday morning, I indeed went for a nice little run and then headed to ecomontes with all my stuff. I was a little anxious because the place was closed and there was nobody there when I got there, but I got an ice cream across the street and just chilled. Eventually, my friend showed up and a few minutes later, I met my guide, Henry. Henry (for some reason pronounced Ken-Jee), was a great guy right off the bat. He spoke great English but I tried to just talk to him in Spanish when I could.

We loaded up our 4x4 and headed out of Quito. Pretty quickly, he was able to point out the first mountain we would be climbing, Rumiñahui. Rumiñahui has three jagged peaks with the highest around 4800 meters.

We stopped in the small town of Machachi and picked up a bunch of food for the trip (juice, yogurt, cheese, bread, etc), and then headed into Cotopaxi National Park. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible when we first arrived. We literally drove into a cloud. After about 45 minutes on one of the worst roads I´ve ever encountered, we arrived at Paja Blanca, a small restaurant and set of Cabañas (little cabins), where we would be sleeping that night.

I figured it was a good sign that as soon as we walked into the restaurant, everyone there, owners and other guides, seemed to know and like Henry. I was feeling better every second until it started to rain.

After a few minutes, the rain turned to a torrent which turned to hail which at that point included some of the loudest thunder I had ever heard. I was doubtful that we were going to get our acc hike in. However, as I was told, the weather up high changes quite rapidly, so as the rain started to die down, we hopped back in the 4x4 and drove a few minutes up the road to a parking lot where would begin our hike.

The landscape was otherworldly as we drove up. We were in the middle of a huge flat rocky plain surrounded by these enormous jaggy and often snow topped peaks. The hail had left a nice white dusting on everything, as if it weren´t wierd enough.

We started our hike on the side of a lagoon. What began as a flat walk, became a relatively steep uphill climb. My guide didn´t seem to care to much about the idea of a trail, and at this point, most of the terrain was tall grass and bushes, so we just sort of pushed our way through.

After about an hour, we reached the top of a bluff where my guide informed me (in spanish) that I was his first client who had ever made him sweat. Looking back behind us, it was true; we had come quite a ways in that first hour (up and across).

We made our way then across a ridge, which was possibly the most beautiful part of the entire hike. We carefully made our way across a razor thin ridge with wild cows and horses on one side and a drop of about 1000 meters straight down on the other side. The storm had receded and you could just about see all of Cotopaxi across a long open expanse. It was stunning.

After the ridge, the hike became really difficult. Not only was I starting to notice the lack of oxygen, but the trail became much steeper and much sandier. For about an hour we were basically climbing in a sand box. You would take a big step up and slide down about 80% of the headway you just made. This made the going tough and frustrating. After another half hour or so, we eventually made it out of the sandbox and to the final part which was a steep steep rocky climb.

At this point, the altitude was really getting to me. We were well above 4500 meters at this point, and I had never been that high before. To add to the fun of things, it also began to snow. And it was pretty serious snow. The winds whipped and the snow blew and somehow even in my oxygen deprived, shaky legged state, I made it to the top.

It was quite a summit. The clouds had moved which left an amazing view of Cotopaxi to one side. To the other side, you could see the other peaks of Rumiñahui. The coolest part about this, was that on one side of the mountain, it was perfectly clear, and on the other side, there was simply a pool of mist.


Needless to say, going back down was a lot easier. In fact, the ever so frustrating sand box part was actually kind of fun on the way down, as you kind of skiied through the sand. Woo hoo!

When we got back to the ridge, the weather had worsened and we found ourselves ¨en un nube¨(or in a cloud). You couldn´t see more than about 10 feet in any direction, which, for anyone afraid of heights, is probably a good thing!


Once we finally reached the bottom, I was tired but feelin confident. If I could do that sandbox part, how hard could Cotopaxi really be? Then I realized that it was another 1200 meters taller and I thought, maybe I´m getting in over my head. But then again, if you don´t get over your head, you´d never get your hair wet. And that´d just be gross.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening eating and resting. I met a big group of travelers who were all in their lower 20s I´d say. They were an interesting group of people. I believe they were American, Irish, and Australian. We played poker together until about 8:00 when we all decided to head back to our cabins.

I did not sleep very well that night. I don´t know if it was the altitude or my nerves, but somehow I found myself feeling really sick and not being able to sleep much. I was really hoping I would be able to get some rest the next day.

Well, I woke up feeling fine the next morning, so I was optimistic. We had breakfast and then drove to the front of the park to pick up the other mountain guide and the American couple who were supposed to accompany us on Rumiñahui. Luckily, the couple actually spoke very good Spanish (not common for Americans), since the woman had been working here in Ecuador and the man had been in the Peace Corps in El Salvador several years back. Though they did speak with terrible American accents.

They were in their late 20s and really quite nice. We sort of got to no each other a bit as we drove out to the base of Cotopaxi. Our guide explained to us that today we would be climbing up to the base camp and settling in and then learning to use all of the snow and ice gear. We would try to get to sleep sometime in the late afternoon, since we would have to get up around midnight to begin the summit.

We parked the car in a pretty large parking lot and looked up at a tiny yellow dot on the side of this enormous volcano. There´s the refuge!

The hike up to the refuge was the only hike that I really did not enjoy at all. Almost the entire trail was sandy (like the sand box section of Rumiñahui), and to make matters worse, we had to carry all of our gear and food that we would need for the next 24 hours, which added up to a lot of weight. It was not a whole lot of fun.


Eventually, though, we made it up to the refuge. The refuge is a small, two storey building, with the bottom being occupied by kitchens and tables and the top by the most efficiently used stacking of beds I have EVER seen.


We staked out a few beds and found a few closets which you simply occupy and then lock (you have to bring a lock). We sat around for a while, ate, and rested from the morning´s hike. Aroudn 3:00, we walked about 45 minutes out to the glacier to learn how to use the crampons and snow axes.

It was at this point that the man from the couple told us that he had broken his tibia a few months ago and didn´t think that he was going to be able to do this. To climb with crampons requires a lot of trust in the strength of your ankles and a lot of twisting in awkward directions. Needless to say, he wasn´t feeling up to putting his ankle and leg at that much of a risk.

We spent about half an hour just discussing this out in the cold, which kind of pissed me off because I was tired and we could have done the talking back in the warm lodge... but oh well.

When we got back to the refuge, we ate a quick dinner and then headed upstairs to sleep. It was around 6:00 by the time we got there, which would allow me about 4 and a half hours of sleep.


Sleep would not really be the correct term here. Rest, would be more like it. Wheb you are in a room with 30 or 40 other people all quite close to you, it´s pretty hard to sleep. People are constantly rolling, snoring, talking, grunting, getting up to pee. It´s basically impossible to really sleep.

Around 11:30, people started getting up. Most people would leave between 12:00 and 12:30, but since my guide said I had done really well on the acclimitization hike, we would leave at 1:30. So, with one theoretical hour of rest-sleep left, all of the freaking Germans got up and started stomping around in their heavy boots, shining their headlamps in my eyes.

After about 15 minutes of this, I decided it wasn´t worth it and just got up. I went down to the lower section where I found Henry and we had a pretty big meal. We just sat around and talked for a while before getting dressed. One last trip to the bathroom and we were on our way.

As we left the refuge, we could see Quito, glowing, in the distance. It was quite something.

The first 45 minutes I was antsy and the seemingly funeral march pace seemed insufferable. However, Henry insisted that we start off slow. We quickly caught up to the American-Irish-Australian contingent, and so we had to slow our pace even more. Eventually, the red rocks began to turn into red rocks and snow and then red rocks and ice, until eventually we stopped. Time to put on those crampons!

We strapped up our crampons and then Henry tied a rope to me and to himself. On the ice, everyone has to be tied together, in case of a fall or slip. To my great delight, we were able to set off before the others. We plunged forward, into the darkness.

Up ahead of us, we could see tiny flickering lights in the distance, other groups who had started earlier. Despite what seemed like a pretty slow (but still very tiring) pace to me, we caught up with most of these lights within an hour or so.

The climbing was not like any hiking I had ever done. It was physically and mentally demanding. We were climbing up a steep sheet of ice several miles up. A poor step and not imbedding all of my crampons in the ice could lead to a broken ankle or worse.

About an hour and a half into the glacial climb, I started to feel really bad stomache cramps. Now, as a distance runner, I´m pretty used to feeling wierd, painful things after you´ve been asking a lot of your body for a long time. But this was different. After maybe 15 minutes I was in really terrible pain. I was having to stop every few minutes not out of muscle tiredness or oxygen problems, but because of my stomache. I was afraid to drink the water, thinking that maybe that´s what had caused my problem, and so I continued to deteriorate.

All of my memories from the hour between 3 and 4 are hazy. I remember being in terrible agony and thinking ¨Why the fuck am I here?¨There were a few times when I very seriously thought about turning back. I really didn´t think I was going to make it to the summit. But, as Kanye says, ¨to me, giving up´s way harder than tryin´¨ I forged on.

Around 4:30, I was having to stop so often that Henry said, ¨Ok, we will take a break up on that ledge and decide if we want to continue.¨ I knew that I wanted to keep going, I just didn´t know if it was physically possible. I thought about having to tell all of the people who knew I was attempting this hike that I didn´t make it, that I had to go back. I hate that kind of thing.

When we got up to the ledge, I finally decided to just man up and try and deal with it. I asked Henry and he said it was ok, so I walked about 50 feet away from everyone, dug a little toilet, and went to the bathroom. Let me remind you, that we were now probably over 18,000 feet up, in the middle of the night, on the side of a glacier. It was COLD.

But it was absolutely the right descision. I immediately started to feel better. For anyone who knows anything about the Ideal Gas Laws (PV=nRT), when the pressure around you lowers, and the pressure inside you stays the same, any gas will feel like it´s at a much higher pressure. That was a poor explanation, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

To make things better, the sun was also beginning to brighten things up. I felt that things were really beginning to turn a corner. We continued up and up and up and it seemed like every horizon brought another vertical wall of ice. I was getting really tired of this.


At this point, my stomache was feeling fine but I was REALLY feeling the altitude. Luckily, we had caught up to another group in front of us, so we were going super slowly.

The last part of the climb is the steepest (wonderfuly, right?). I found myself trying to trick my feet into continuing. Telling them ¨Ok, a few more steps and then we´ll stop¨ over and over and over. I found myself in a rhythm of One, two, three, four, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, repeat.

About 100 meters below the summit, the sun had risen and the air was clear and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I could see the ocean, over 100 miles away. I could see Quito and the mountains around it. It was a truly breath taking moment (I was indeed taking a lot of breaths). Unfortunately, Henry told me not to stop long as we were almost there. I didn´t take any pictures.

Somehow, I made it. I didn´t even know I had gotten there until I saw a couple of other people
cheering and waving. Unfortunately, we were en un nube otra vez! We were in the middle of a snow cloud. The winds whipped at us and you couldn´t see too far. But it was still a feeling of accomplishment. Super dooper dooper high!

The climb back down was actually pretty stressful. Unlike the hikes I´d done before, here you really had to be careful or you could get quite hurt. We took our time, stopped a lot to take pictures and rest. The hardest part was over. I knew that for sure.

Eventually we made it to the rocks. We de-cramponed ourselves and began the last 30 minutes back to the refuge. It seemed almost impossible that it was only about 9:00am when we got there. To me, it seemed like it was still saturday. Like we had been awake for 40 hours (which we just about had...)

In the lodge I was greeted by the one group who had come down before us and the many who had turned back. All in all, out of the 20 or 30 people who attempted the summit that Sunday morning, 8 made it to the top (not including guides).

The one really bad thing that I didn´t plan for was what to wear after the climb. Between the snow and my sweat, all of my clothes were really wet and there was no fire in the furnace now. Oh no! I basically sat shivering in the refuge for I don´t even know how long until the couple came back from their morning hike and spotted me some clothes. Thank G-d for really nice people!

I realized eventually that we still had a multi hour hike back down to the parking lot and I was not happy about this. But with a warm pair of socks and some soup, I was ready for anything.

The way down really wasn´t as bad. It was a lot of skiing through the sand, and my pack was a lot lighter (no more food to carry!). I got to the car in one piece.

As we loaded up the car, I climbed in the front seat, took off my boots and socks, rubbed my feet, and promtly fell asleep. I don´t know how but somehow I managed to sleep most of the way back to Quito, despite the first hour or so on terrible, terrible roads.

Some documentary once said that people climb mountains because afterwards they feel like the have conquered them, that they have displayed their dominance over nature. I couldn´t feel more the opposite. After climbing Cotopaxi, I stand humbled in the face of nature. I have in no way conquered this mountain. If anything, this mountain has simply reinforced its massive dominance over me. I stand humbled in the face of nature.

The Emporer Strikes Back

While most of us were asleep this morning, history was being made in Berlin. Haile Gebrselassie became the first human being to run a marathon (26.2 miles) in under 2 hours and 4 minutes. Haile bested his previous world record of 2:04:26 to a truly spectacular 2:03:59. For those of you who don´t know the paces, that´s about 4:44 per mile. Wow!

Some people were giving Haile a hard time after he decided not to participate in the Olympic Marathon in Beijing. Haile cited the air quality as his reason for not participating, along with his asthma. However, some wondered whether Haile had been mistake when Kenya´s Samuel Wanjiru one the race in an awe-inspiring 2:06:32 despite terrible conditions

Haile, at 35, is, as he said after the race, ¨fighting against his age.¨ With London now 4 years away, I wonder if he´ll be able to truly be in contention in that race, at the age of 39.

However, after seeing today´s performance and that one more Haile-smile, if anyone can do it, Haile can.

Thank G-d for Asics

I almost got robbed today. I say almost because I´m a runner. This should be a warning to any potential robbers out there not to rob skinny looking guys (or girls) in asics.

I was walking through the Mariscal, the touristy section of Quito, which is known for being plauged with robberies, even during the day. I usually avoid this area on principal and on the aforementioned fact. However, I heard there was a good English bookstore in the center, so I decided to risk it.

Now, before you hear the story, you must understand that there are two types of people who try to rob you in Ecuador. There are ladrones, which most literally translates to the English word mugger. These are people who will come up to you at night with knives or guns. Then there are people who I don´t really know what the word is in spanish but are basically con-artists. These people don´t carry weapons but simply try and get you to give them your stuff willingly. This is what I had to deal with today.

So, the story begins as I was walking through the Mariscal and stopped to find out what street I was on. I set my bag down next to me and pulled out a map. This was my first mistake. A lot of people had told me that if you take out a map you will probably get robbed. I assumed that they were exagerating, but apparently not. As I´m looking at the map, a man walks by and spills some nasty cheese sauce all over my favorite shirt and one of my few pairs of pants (luckily, tomorrow is laundry day!).

I think, shit, today is not my day. I have cheese sauce all over my pants. This should have been a red flag but I was too flustered by the idea of having dirty pants to make the connection. The man apologized and handed me a pile of napkins. As I looked down to wipe off the mess, someone yelled at me in spanish and pointed at a taxi which was beginning to pull away. I immediately noticed that my bag was no logner next to me and made the connection. I took off.

I must have sprinted a few hundred meters to catch up with the taxi before I could smack its windows and make it stop. I pulled the door open and saw the man who had spilled his cheese sauce on me. He, of course, pointed in the opposite direction, trying to suggest that the man who had really robbed me was going the other way. After a few seconds, I realized, there had been another man in the taxi, who was now running off down the street in the opposite direction.

Having caught my breath from the chase of the taxi, I was ready for my second interval of the day. Again, I took off. The man must have had a 10 second lead on me. About a 60 second 440 later, I pulled up next to him, told him he was a whore in Spanish, and tripped him. As he went down, I pulled my knee up and smacked him clear in the nose. Triumph.

In perfect Spanish, I knelt down over his now bleeding face and said ¨Si trata robarme otra vez, va a matarte, putita.¨ (If you try to rob me again, I will kill you.) I picked up my bag and jogged back down the street where I found the bookstore I was looking for. Full of adrenaline.

Other than that, my day has actually been pretty good. I was able to get a bunch of interesting looking books and I had a great run (after the aforementioned mini interval workout). It was the longest run I´ve done since February, about 10.5 miles. It was super hot, so the pace was a little slow (7:15), but it was all right.

Also, I need to write an entry about the Cotopaxi hike from this past weekend, but right now I´ve had about enough excitment for today and I don´t have enough money to stay here much longer, so I´ll try and do it tomorrow or something.

All in all, I think the lesson learned today is don´t try to rob someone who looks faster than you if you´re not armed. I guess he couldn´t see my super jacked thighs through the cheese-sauce-stain on my jeans. Better luck next time.

Te Siento Cerca

I´m sitting in a cafe munching down a whole bag of these DELICIOUS cookies and drinking a big calorie-filled fanta. I just ran the longest I´ve run since my injury and, needless to say, I´m hungry!

I almost didn´t even run today because the last few runs have gone pretty poorly, but I´m pretty glad I did now. I ran about 10 miles in 67:42. The best part was that I had no idea how fast I was going (since my watch got jacked) and I had thought I was going a lot slower. I felt really comfortable basically the whole run. I made sure to eat a whole lot today and not walk too much so that I didn´t run out of gas like my run yesterday.

Anyways, I felt really comfy and then I even had room to push a bit on the last big uphill and straightaway toward our house. It was one of those good runs that makes you think maybe I will feel like an athlete again soon (knock knock knock).

I´m trying to get some mileage into the beginning of this week because this weekend I´m climbing Cotopaxi! I´m actually really excited. My plans have changed a bit (for the better, I think), where now I´m doing my acclimitization hike near Cotopaxi and then spending Friday night at a refuge at like 15,000 feet. So, that should make the climb a bit easier. The actual climb will take place starting aroudn midnight on Saturday night-sunday morning. The summit should take 7 or 8 hours with the hike down taking only 2 or 3.

In other news, work at the hospital is going pretty well. Today, there weren´t a whole lot of kids there, so we were sent up to the floor of kids who were too sick to come down to the play room. It was pretty intense; this a a really poor hospital and there are some kids who are in really bad shape. Some look like accident victims with lots of burns and such and others look like abuse victims, with broken noses and broken legs and arms. It´s quite sad.

Anywho, on a brighter note, it´s been really nice weather here today. Yesterday it POURED for hours (leaving me no choice than to become a drowned rat walking home from the bakery). But today it´s been sunny and not too hot all day. The weather here is nuts. It´s basically impossible to predict (which is probably why the weather.com forecast always just says ¨rain¨). It will be 50 and cloudy when you wake up, and by lunch time its 80 and sunny. It´s always dry, though, which can be nice, but is also means you have to drink about 4 liters a day (especially with the altitude as well).

I´m getting a bit of a tan! Even with SPF 30, that direct angle with the sun is pretty brutal.

Meanwhile, apparently Pandora (online radio) only works in the U.S. Bummer.

Once A Loper

I haven´t updated this in a while, so I guess I should have a good bit to say. I just finished my first (somehwhat) full week at the hospital, whiched ended up being a lot better than I expected. It was actually really nice to work on the Ellison 18 kind of floor because, even in a few days, you begin to get to know each kid. It´s pretty nice.

First of all, this is a picture of the kind of service I get here at my homestay (parents take notice). Not only is my laundry done and brought back to my room, it is even decoratively arranged.

I´ve been running pretty steadily for the last week or so. I´m running 6 days a week now, which so far feels okay. This week I´m putting in about 30 miles, so I´m pretty happy with where that is and how I feel. The pace is definitely getting easier to maintain the longer I stay up in the mountains. I´ve also added my PT and core back into my daily routines, which I didn´t do last week while I was getting adjusted. Other than plank, I´m already at about the same level I was before I left for my core and PT. Also, I find myself doing a TON of walking here. Benedicte and I walk to work each morning, which is about 90 minutes round trip, and then I usually also head to the park or internet afterwards. So, in general, I´m getting about 2-4 hours of nice walking every day. This can´t be bad for my legs OR my lungs, so I´m glad it works out well.

These past few days, I´ve been traveling a bit. On thursday after work, Benedicte and I took a bus to Baños de Agua Santa (literally baths of holy water), a town about 4 hours south of Quito which is a big tourist destination with lots of hiking, climbing, and several (hot and cold) natural volcanic baths.

The trip there was much more eventful than I had hoped for. Being relative n00bs to traveling in Ecuador, the bus system out of Quito was really overwhelming. Unfortunately, we got on the lesser quality bus to Baños, which stopped more frequently, and was generally less classy. The ncie thing about travel in South America is that it is ung-dly cheap. Our 4 hour trip to Baños cost us USD$3.00. At some point during the bus ride (around the town of Ambato, which I now have a permanant grudge against), my running watch fell down while I was sleeping and someone behind me walked off the bus with it. It bothers me that I have to be so distrusting of the locals here, and I was trying not to be, but this just reaffirms my distrust. Oh well.

Once we got to Baños, things were pretty nice. We arrived after dark on thursday night and took a cab to the Hostal de Eden (recommended by the Lonely Planet book, our traveler´s bible). The accomodations were actually really nice for a whopping $7.00 per night. We had comfortable beds, TV, a bathroom with hot water (though it wasn´t on the first day), and the location was pretty central. Though, everything in this small city was within a 10 minute walk of anything else.

When we got there, we were both hungry and decided to grab some dinner. We spent a few minutes wandering around looking for one of the restaurants recommened by the Lonely Planet, but eventually were hungry enough that we just walked into a pizza joint. The food was great and cheap: about $4.00 for a pretty big veggie pizza. The food didn´t taste like regular american pizza, but had a different sauce and much more spicing (I think it must have been cilantro).

Here is the big Cathedral in town all lit up at night:

We basically called it a night at that point and headed to bed after watching some Spanish TV. The next morning, we woke up pretty early since we wanted to do some hiking. We got breakfast, again, really cheap and good (<2.00>

And so, Benedicte and I set off on our hike. The trails around Baños are truly spectacular, but are SO poorly marked. It took us over an hour just to find the trailhead. In a town that is probably only one or two square miles, this should not happen.

Anyways, the first part of the hike was really beautiful. It was a pretty steep and narrow trail that led up to the Bella Vista, a point on top of a ridge where a large cross stood over the city. Along the trail, there were lots of little vistas where one could peak out and see the whole city tucked between the huge mountains on either side. The higher you go the more breathtaking it was.

Actually, though, the most amazing thing for me was what I assume was some sort of sports team that was doing repeats of this hill (running up and running back down). There must have been about 30 or so teenagers in uniforms that passed us going up and then again going down. Again, this was a steep trail which climbed probably 500 or 1000m.

From the spot with the cross, the view was specatacular. Not only could you see the whole city, but you could see mountains probably 100km away. After resting a bit at the top, we decided to hike along a trail which followed a ridge along the top of several mountains with views of the big Volcano towering over the city.

Again, this trail was pretty steep and at times very narrow and poorly maintained. We ended up climbing at a similar pace as a few Americans who were hiking the same trail. Eventually we came to a building in a clearing, which we realized was a Hotel! It looked really beautiful, with pools and jacuzzis on the roof overlooking the city some 1000 meters below. Too bad it was more than $7.00 per night!

We continued along the trail until we came to a small settlement of local people who lived up in the mountains. There arragements seemed very poor and basic, but they were very nice and greeted us and wished us well.

At some point near here, we (us and the American couple) took a wrong turn and somehow ended up in a cow pasture. For some reason, the American husband just kind of wandered off, so Benedicte and I ended up finding the trail with the American woman but then could not find her husband. We waited for a few minutes with her, but as it started to rain, we decided we ought to head down. As we were talking about how strange it was that the man had simply wandered off, the woman as well just kind of wandered off. How bizzare. We waited a few minutes and then just told one of the locals to tell them that we had headed down.

The descent trail was probably the steepest trail we encountered. It actually hurt the knees it was so steep. To add to the strangeness of this whole experience, about 200 meters down the trail, a cow stood, tethered to a tree, in the middle of the path. This was a narrow path with a barbed wire fence on one side and very dense jungle vegitation on the other. We waited about 10 minutes to see if it would move and eventually tried tugging on his rope. With sucess, the cow jumped over the fence and back into the pasture where he belonged and we continued our descent.

Overall, the hike took about 5 hours and was not easy. We had eaten lunch on the hike, so we spent the afternoon just relaxing and doing some shopping. I purchased a bootleg copy of Batman Dark Knight (El Caballero Oscuro) for all of $1.00. This is really a Jew´s paradise.

Also, one thing to note. Guinnea Pig (or Cuy, here) is considered a delicacy here in Ecuador. Personally, I´m a little turned off by the presentation:

Eventually, after my bad run that morning, I convinced myself to try to run again. I decided not to run in the city but instead take a trail leading out into the Andes, hoping it wouldn´t be too steep. The run was beautiful. One of the most beautiful I have ever been on. Really really jaw dropping. I´m hoping to write a more detailed report about this trail later when I have time, so stay tuned.

After that, we had some dinner at a local restaurant. We happened to run into two i-to-i people who were working in Tena (jungle) and just happened to be visiting Baños at the same time. Really wierd coincidence. They told us some funny stories about the jungle and then we headed back to bed.

Yesterday morning, we woke up early and headed to the famous baths, hoping to beat the crowds. Maybe it gets even more crowded, but by 8:00 there were already a lot of people there. The baths are really nice. They look super dirty, but it´s simply because there´s a lot of minerals in the water (which are said to have medicinal purposes). The hot water flows directly from the ground from the underground volcanic pools and is piped into pools. Also, the pools are right next to a 100 meter waterfall. It´s a really nice setting and a great way to start the day.

After this, I headed out to run again on the same trail. I continued farther than I had on the day before. This was one of the few runs I´ve had recently where I found myself saying ¨Oh, well I guess I can go a little bit longer than I had said I was going to.¨ It was that beautiful. There were some really steep climbs and some rocky parts and at one point I had to ford a small river, but all in all, it was amazing.

On the way back, I saw a man bungee jumpng off a bridge 100 meters above the rapids of the river before. Wow.

As I said before, the town is pretty touristy, so there are lots of nice spas and things. I found one right down the street offering Deep Sports Massages for next to nothing, so I decided to indulge myself before I headed back to Quito. It was really good to get some of the tension out of my muscles before what is probably going to be, a hard week, physically.

After this, I packed up my stuff and ran down to the bus station to catch a bus to Quito. I was sure, this time, not to take Transporte Amazonas (remember that!). Instead, I took Transporte Baños, which was a much nicer experience. The bus stopped many fewer times, had a bathroom, and just felt a lot nicer. The trip out of Baños was beautiful, since it was still light (the sun had set by the time we got here on the way), so there were a lot of beautiful views of the mountains and valleys and such.

On the way over, we got a great view of Cotopaxi, the mountain I am set to climb this weekend, but unfortunately, it was too cloudly to see it on the way back. Bummer.

Anyways, the return trip was uneventful and I got back to my house in time for dinner. All in all, it was a fun trip, despite the watch being stolen. Baños is a really nice town and the nicest part was that it felt a lot safer than Quito. I never felt like I was going to get mugged (Wow, what a novel concept!).

Ok, well I have to go eat lunch now as this has taken quite a while. I will try and update some more this week.

Also, one final note, I learned that the word for ¨runner¨in Norwegian is basically the English word Loper (one who lopes). I don´t know about you, but I think being a loper is a pretty sweet title.

Subir

Today was Benedicte and my first day at the hospital. Technically, it should have been yesterday, but due to some unforseen troubles with the organizer of our program, today was the day. We showed up at the Sol y Vida office and waited for the organizer (whose name I´m not sure of) to tell us what to do. I don´t think she likes us very much because she was talking in Spanish to another person there (I dont think she knew I could understand her) and was saying how she was annoyed that we were there and why did she need to show us around again... Uh oh.

Anyways, it turned out that the people we are working with are all very nice, so it´s ok. We don´t really ever have to talk to that woman... We started out in the big open waiting room area, where we will work on mondays and fridays. This was really intimidating and overwhelming for me. Basically, we had a table with a bunch of toys and books and things and kids and some mothers would come over to use it. It wasn´t that nice for us though, because the kids we usually with their parents, so they weren´t very social. It was kind of awkward to just sit and watch the kids play.

But after a few minutes, the same organizer woman came down and told us to go up to the fourth floor, where the long term patients were housed. We spent the rest of the day in a big play room with lots of children. This was actually a lot nicer. There were a lot of really nice nurses who introduced us to some of the kids and we basically spent the morning coloring and playing with blocks.

All in all, I think it´s going to be a good experience. I´m hoping that we can also do some more medically relivant things, but I guess we´ll see.

I also just paid my Cotopaxi guide, so I´m officially going to climb next weekend (9/20-21). I´m pretty pumped.

Super Dooper High

So, I have a while here again, so I´m going to upload some more pictures. I haven´t taken many other than today, when I took quite a few. So first, here are a few from a few days ago.

This is the view from our dining room. There´s a nice little balcony where there are often hummingbirds and a nice view of the Northern part of the city.

I´m not sure if you can see this well, but to show Ecuador´s technological status, here is a BETA cassette player that´s in my room. Very classy.

This morning was pretty exciting. Benedicte and I decided to head over to the TeleferiQo, the big tourist attraction in Quito. The TeleferiQo is a multimillion dollar cable car that goes up the side of part of Ruca Pinchicha, a pretty sizeable mountain on the North side of Quito.

We arrived pretty early, to unknowingly beat the crowd, so we got basically right on the cable car. It´s a pretty nervewracking ride if you don´t like heights or rickety machinary. The ride takes about ten minutes and leaves you at a plateau about 80% of the way up Ruca Pinchicha. The altitude here is about 4100 meters, or about 13400 feet. It´s actually quite a noticable difference from Quito, which is about 2900 meters, or 9500 feet.

This is a shot from the start of the TeleferiQo. As you can see, Quito is already pretty far down!

Once we got to the top of the TeleferiQo, we sort of explored the area up there. It was really pretty already, but I wanted to explore the mountains some more than just the few minutes worth of trails that were inside the official TeleferiQo zone. So, we walked over to a barbed wire fence (which everyone seemed to be ignoring), and past the sign which warned that we were no longer under TeleferiQo security, and headed into the Andes.

We walked past a place where you could rent horses and there were still a good amount of people around us, so we felt pretty safe. We had heard some people talk about robberies happening up in the hills, so we were a little cautious.

After about a kilometer, it was just us, but the area was very open, so we still felt pretty comfortable. The trail was well walked but very steep at points. The added bonus of being 14000 feet up took a pretty serious tole on our staminas. We stopped to rest every few minutes.

One thing that was really cool to see were the airplanes taking off from the Quito airport. Keep in mind that Quito is 2900 meters above sea level, and the planes coming into the city were a good ways BELOW us. It was quite something.

Here I about a kilometer before we turned around. This was one of the only times you could see the top of the Volcan as it is usually surrounded by clouds.

Eventually we came to the crest of a hill and saw a person just sort of sitting there and looking a bit sketchy, so we decided to head back. At this point, though, we were probably about 85% of the way up the trail to the summit of Guagua Pinchincha, so I would estimate that we climbed about 1000 meters.

Here is my flatmate, Benedicte, near the top of Guagua Pinchincha. It was pretty high up!

The walk back down was, needless to say, a lot easier. We took the TeleferiQo back to Quito and that was that. All in all, it was a very tiring experience.

Lunch and some relaxing and then I willed my legs to take me for a run. I ran the same loop I have run now for the past five days (down to the Parque Carolína and back). I felt surprisingly good (maybe all the time up at that higher altitude did me some good?), so I did a bit of fast running to test out my lungs and legs. I ran nice and easy down to the Park and then did two pretty quick miles around the park (around 6:20 and 6:10). Again, I think the rule of 60-90 seconds per mile slower than effor applies here because I felt like I was running more like 5:00 effort.

Now, I´m in the internet cafe down the street and I think I may go buy a whole loaf of bread to refuel from all of the calories I´ve burned today! Wahoo!

Picturas!

Greetings! I finally figured out how to upload pictures, so to start let me explain a few of these:

This is a shot from the first plane ride. I just thought it was cool.

Here is a picture that tries to capture the sunset over the Andes from my flight to Quito. I don´t know if you´ll be able to really see what it is, but I thought I would at least try.

Again, this looks really dark on this computer so I don´t know if it will work, but this is a shot of Quito from the air when we flew in. The city is laid out like a long, narrow rectangle because of the mountains on either side.

This is part of my room. As you can see, it´s very nice and quite well furnished.

Another shot of my room. My bed is HUGE!

This is the view from my window this morning. As you can see my house is pretty close to the mountains. In the mornings there are usually a lot of clouds that hover around the mountains. It can be quite stunning.

This is a shot from the roof of our house looking the long way down the city. It is quite sprawling and goes just about as far in the other direction!

Well, that´s all the pictures that I have the time and patience to upload right now. Things here are going pretty well. I´ve had some quite intense spanish classes, about six hours per day, which are really tiring me out. So far I have been pretty lame. I basically get up, eat breakfast, run, rest, eat lunch, go to spanish school, come home and eat dinner and go to sleep at like 9:00. I´m so cool...

I was able to run again yesterday, which went pretty well, around 7:20 pace for the same loop. Again, it went ok until the half mile relatively steep hill at the end of the loop. That is pretty killer. I doubt I was running much faster than 10 or 11 minute pace there.

Lo que bueno is that we have the whole weekend free, so Benedicte and I are going to get to know the city a bit. I think we might go out to a club or bar tonight and then go to the big shopping mall area tomorrow. I need to buy some warmer clothes!

Yesterday, we toured the hospital where we are going to be working. It is very, very poor and disorganized and clear that they could use some help. However, since they are pretty unorganized, it´s unclear exactly what we are going to be doing. We start on monday, so I guess we´ll see then.

I think that my spanish is actually improving quite a bit, even over just a few days. I can basically understand everyone, it´s just difficult for me to speak. Hopefully my speaking will get better so I can really start to communicate with people.

Ok, well I´m going to try and go run again. I will try and update again in the next few days.