The evening after day 2, I took off my shoes to discover that the reason why my feet were hurting so bad was that I had no skin on either of the balls of my feet! The pictures are here (the squeamish should take caution), but it looks pretty sweet if I do say so myself. I had Dr. Grant patch me up that evening, and it was impressive enough that he took a picture to use in a paper and talk he's doing in the future. I'll be waiting to rake in the royalties soon.

Anyway, I woke up on the morning of day 3 only able to walk about as fast as a 90 year old grandmother. Who knew you needed the balls of your feet to get anywhere?

And that was that. I had to withdraw because there was no way I could do 26 more miles with my feet in that condition, much less the remaining 100 we had over the next 3 days.

How did it come to this? Well, in hindsight, I really underestimated the challenge of staying healthy during one of these kinds of events. The endurance/aerobic part of it I was set for--while the days were challenging, they weren't anything I couldn't handle and I was ready to go each morning with plenty of energy and without soreness. But the challenge of keeping your body functioning otherwise over those 7 days is a real challenge. Well over half of the competitors had stomach problems in the first few days, which led to a lot of dehydration and unpleasantness. One of the top competitors had to drop out with a blood infection (!) on day  3 that required constant doctor supervision for 48 hours. While I was spared either of those fates, I basically ruined my feet early.

My instinct during a race is to press on through pain and minor injuries and deal with them after the finish, but that was clearly the big mistake here. On day 1, I got some rocks in my shoes during the "giant ashtray" portion. It wasn't very many--I've had more in my shoes during a normal run at Town Lake on lots of occasions--but as it turns out the rocky and uneven terrain in the desert combined with those pebbles gave me blisters very quickly. I needed to nip the problem in the bud immediately rather than ignore it and tough it out. By the time I did empty out my shoes during leg 3 of day 1, the damage was already done and I had some large blisters forming. The water crossings and sand on day 2 made that worse by opening those up completely, so there was nothing but raw meat on the bottom of my foot at that point. Game over.

What would I do differently? Well, 1) be OCD about protecting my feet. I was already that way about trying to avoid stomach problems--using purell after I touched anything around camp and being proactive with various GI medicines--but the same care needs to be done for feet. Next time I'd be ready to empty my shoes of anything foreign immediately, and have a "quick blister kit" at hand so I could do some proactive taping on the road quickly. 2) I'd also bring along gaiters. I didn't wear them this time because I read about how ineffective they were in previous competitions. It's true--almost everyone's gaiters were failing in some way (coming off the bottom of the shoe or similar), but even a bad gaiter is better than nothing at all. I'm convinced even a cheap POS gaiter would have saved me on day 1 and I'd still be going now.

Anyways, so that's that. The Atacama kicked my ass and I'm not afraid to admit it. Despite the (cool looking) foot injury, it was a great experience and I wish I was still able to compete. I was happy with my performance pre-injury (2nd place American on day 1 sounds impressive at least) and the scenery and experience was awesome. Racing The Planet also puts on an incredibly well run and organized race. But it's convinced me that I need to become an expert in foot care before my next event. I'll add that to my repertoire and get back in the saddle once I can walk like a normal human again.

But for now, I'm going to spend the next few days hobbling around Santiago and enjoying sleeping in a bed and showering again.

Woke up much better rested this morning since I discovered the trick of shoving my dirty clothes into my sleeping bag stuff sack to make a pillow. Kind of smelly, but it did the trick. The blisters I mentioned yesterday were bothering me in the morning, but no big deal yet.

Today's stage called for 26 miles in 4 legs. The first two were described as "difficult", which turned out to be somewhat of an understatement.

Leg 1 went downhill from camp and followed a creek into a valley. The scenery here was quite a bit different than the rest of the desert which has looked like the surface of mars--here it was green and we passed a few small farms or ranches that abutted the waterfront. It was all great until the canyon we were in started to narrow. At first we had to do some water crossings to hop from side to side as one shoreline disappeared into a canyon wall. I was able to hop across the first few, but after that it was time to wade through thigh deep water to cross. As we continued, it eventually got to the point where both shores were gone, and we had to just wade through the water. All told, I'd guess we spent about 1 km just in the water on this leg. Eventually we exited the canyon and got to finish up the leg with some nice running through sand. Which is wonderful on blisters with a shoe full of water. More on that later.

The theme of leg 2 was, "are you f'ing kidding me?!". Those rock walls I mentioned in leg 1? Well, it was time to climb up one of those. It started with a steep ascent up a winding road which I could only guess was used for mining vehicles at some point. We covered probably about 1,000 feet of vertical distance there before we came to a sketchy tunnel in the mountainside, which was probably big enough for two donkeys to go through at the same time. Save for the fact that there was a boulder in the middle of the tunnel reducing clearance to maybe 3 feet in width. Surprised that I wasn't killed by a cave in, I was rewarded with, what else, but more climbing on the other side of the tunnel. This was even more cruel, because it was a series of blind turns. There'd be a steep 100 foot climb, then you'd think, "this thing can't possibly get any higher", and then you'd turn the corner and there was another. After 4 or 5 of those, we finally did reach the top of this thing. Have you ever looked at one of those plateaus in the middle of the Grand Canyon and wondered what it'd be like to be on top of one? Well, let me tell you--it's sandy and rocky just like the ground at the bottom, and you'll just about kill yourself getting up there. The view was amazing, though, as you could see straight down into the green expanse (now a speck) that we had been in during leg 1. We followed the ridgeline for 4 km or so next, and at one point I nearly wandered off the edge of the cliff while thinking of something else (I think I was trying to remember all the lyrics, in order, to OK Computer at that point, which is hard to do at 10,000+ feet with a pack on your back). The side of the cliff was mostly sand at that point, and I thought "whoa, that could have been bad. Don't know how they would have even gotten to me if I survived that fall." Well, as it turns out, the course actually took us down the side of the cliff that way at the end of the ridgeline! This was probably the most fun piece of the course to this point--imagine a maybe 1,000 foot tall cliff, with a sand dune that had blown up against it and declined at about a 75 degree angle. The angle was amazingly steep, but given that it was sand, you could bound down it maybe 5 feet at a time as long as you kept your weight back so you didn't start rolling face first down the thing. A ton of fun, save for the fact that I had to dump out literally about 3 lbs of sand from each shoe afterwards.

If legs 1 and 2 were technical and featured varying terrain, legs 3 and 4 were the complete opposite. Leg 3 was almost completely unremarkable--10k across the desert, broken up only by crossing the main highway that led back to Calama. Leg 4 required more mental toughness than anything, as it was our first foray into the salt flats. The main landmark on was a lone tree--leafy and green, straight out of Shawshank Redemption--in the middle of the flat. You could see it at the start of the stage, maybe 7k away. You hit the tree, then took a right for another 4k into camp. The hard part here was just not losing your mind at this point--you're tired, you can see something that you think is near your goal, but it never seems to get any closer. Plus, those blisters I mentioned earlier were absolutely killing me at this point, and with the sun and it being about 7 hours into the day, this was no fun. Eventually I got into camp a little after 5.

Overall, it was a fun day, but it I can say without shame that it kicked my ass. The water+sand combination on leg 1 did a number on my feet, so the pain hurt my pace quite a bit for the day. But hey, I finished.

So the empanadas last night gave many of my competitors some problems this morning. Little did they know that they should have included eating the migas at La Tapatia as part of their training routine like I did. Sleeping on the ground was no fun, as a new rock found a way to put a new part of body to sleep every couple of hours or so. And as you might guess, it gets rediculously cold in the desert at night. It must have been 30 at 5:30 when everyone got up. I was contemplating wearing my sleeping bag and doing a 22 mile potato sack race, but it warmed up to about 70 by 7:30 and it was a beautiful day with a nice breeze for most of the time.
 
The race started at 8 am, and the first leg put everyone in the deep water right away. Camp was at 11,000 ft, and we had a climb up a 500 ft hill almost immediately. And when I say climb, I mean climb with your hands and feet, one step removed from the rock wall at REI. Long limbs saved me on that one and the biggest problem I had was my water bottles falling out of my pack. Right after that was a equally steep decline down the other side of the hill which left me thinking, "a thinking man would have just gone around this shit." The theme of the day was that the elevation combined with the unevenness of the terrain really limited opportunities for actual running. Either the thin air was making your lungs want to explode or the everpresent 6 inch in diameter rocks were trying to snap your ankles.
 
Leg number two was a few hills followed by a nearly 2,000 foot plummet straight down. Not too bad, and the change in elevation helped quite a bit.
 
Leg three was hideous. Imagine running through a gigantic ashtray, with all that nasty gravel. And those godawful 6 inch rocks. Awesome. Awesome to the max. It was only broken up by running into a Chilean family that had stopped to look at some petroglyphs nearby. Unfortunately my community college failed me as I don't quite have the vocabulary to say that I'm on a seven day, 250km stage race that ends up in San Pedro.
 
The last leg was a 3 km jaunt to camp, though it felt like it was by far the longest. First, it was just after midday, so the sun was beating down on me. Second, you could see the camp almost immediately on the horizon as the leg started, but you had to follow a soul crushing, meandering 4x4 track the whole way there.
 
When all was said and done, I finished right around 2:25 in the afternoon. I kept up a decent pace the whole way, walking almost the whole way. Being freakishly tall and having a stride length that's probably 20% longer than most of the other competitors helped quite a bit, as I was able to finish ahead of quite a few people that were running. All in all a pretty good day.
 
On the injury front, nothing too bad. Both balls of my feet are one large blister since I didn't wear gaiters nor did I clean out my shoes once all the ashtray rocks got in them--that's just not how I roll. I also sunburned my legs pretty nicely, since I was too lazy to put sunscreen on them in the morning. You'd think since they never burn outside of the desert you could assume that you'd be fine walking around the Atacama for 6+ hours. But I guess not.
 
Day two is 26 miles and gives us our first water crossings and salt flats. Part of the course is described as "500m in water", which should be interesting. I'm not sure I'm down with swimming with a 20+ lb pack on my back, but I'd guess it's not quite that bad.
 
Food wise, everything is working great. Though now I'll be dreaming of bone marrow flavored gels tomorrow on the run.

So it's dusk at the first camp site. We just finished our last "real" meal--empanadas and chicken--which I wolfed down at a record pace after missing lunch.

Camp is at about 11,000 feet in a flat space between some hills. It's pretty windy and getting very chilly as the sun goes down. The tents are pretty spacious all things considered, but the ground is more or less crushed gravel. Plenty of lumbar support.

Earlier today we had final equipment and medical checks. Luckily I didn't forget anything, though my pack is definitely on the heavy side at 23.0 lbs after I added my camera and some other random junk. Most of that is still food. As it turns out, most other competitors are taking the bare minimum 2,000 calories per day and are planning on losing a bunch of weight. We'll see who's right on that one--I'm too much of a wimp to be starving to death for a week.

The race starts at 8 am tomorrow morning. It will be a comparatively easy day at 22 miles, the hard part all being at the beginning with a fairly decent climb. More than anything, it feels good that the waiting around of the past couple days is over and we're almost ready to go. I feel like I'm five years old on Christmas Eve at the moment.

Well, I'm on my 7 hour layover in Santiago. Had to pay $22 to get into the lounge in the domestic connection terminal, but what are you gonna do. It's got wifi and it's better than a tent with 9 other dudes.

Luckily, everything got through customs and security just fine. I had to empty out my backpack at every security check, but luckily no one got too suspicious of the tiny ziplock bags stuff with white powder.

Speaking of the backpack, it's weighing in at 21 lbs even. It's not too bad when you consider about 15 lbs of that is food. A typical day's supply looks like:

• 1.5 servings of dehydrated oatmeal/soymilk concoction
• 5 servings of Perpetuem drink mix (I was able to find some more at Jack and Adam's on Wednesday night)
  
• 5 Hammer energy bars
• 2 Hammer gels
• 2 servings of a dehydrated meal for dinner

Which works out to approximately 3,500 calories a day. Add breakfast on day 7 to that and I'm carrying 21,865 calories for the entire trip. At 15 lbs for that, I could have probably chosen more calorie dense foods in hindsight. But then again, a gallon and a half of olive oil might not be such a great idea even though it'd be lighter.

Just about to head for the connecting flight to Calama. I've got an hour's ride to San Pedro after that, a night in the hotel there, and then a bus ride to the desert the following morning. The actual race doesn't start until Sunday morning, but I'm pretty pumped right now.

Here's how it will work: the race starts at 8 am each day. At the end of each stage, there will be a tent set up with netbooks where I get to correspond with you guys. There's no internet access out in the desert, so it sounds like we write our notes in Word and the organizers post them online when they get back in town sometime later. So I'm not sure how long of a delay there will be there... but the nice thing is that they'll print out all the comments to the posts for me, so feel free to write. I just hope there's something higher quality there than what the three guys in the peanut gallery have written so far!

Just under two days to go before I leave for Chile. Luckily I got off my dead ass this evening to do a little packing--I found out I bought less than half as much Perpetuem as I thought, so I had to call an audible on food. Instead I'm going with one extra delicious freeze dried meal for dinner and a couple extra gels for the run for each day.

Right now I'm carrying about 3400 calories per day, which is about all the weight I want to carry and probably all the dehydrated chemical garbage I can stomach. Hopefully that will be enough... though in the worst case I'm sure there will be some tasty Atacameños roaming around.