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.