I was going to write about how nervous we were getting with the race countdown – reading others blogs and comparing our lack of preparation in comparison. I was going to write about how over the moon I was when my mother called me to tell me that she had bought a ticket to meet me at the finish line, a fact worthy of an entire blog because my parents are quite possibly the most wonderful people on the planet (this is not my biased opinion, it is a fact shared by those who have met them) and I haven’t seen my mother, who lives in Hong Kong, in over a year - our record for time spent apart. I was going to write about my wonderful new RTP friends - Sam, Daniel and Matt from Australia who I finally met in real life and confirmed for me that the most wonderful thing about this race is the friendships that we’ll make.

And then there was the earthquake, and I didn’t really know quite what to say.

I was lucky enough to have escaped to San Pedro a week before. Here we felt absolutely nothing.  We were fast asleep when at 5am we received a phone call from the hotel reception telling us to phone home as there had been a major earthquake. In a half asleep daze I couldn’t figure out if it was all a crazy dream. All the phone lines were dead. I thought about my grandparents, and my grandma who is terrified of earthquakes alone in their house. I thought about Nico in our apartment and whether or not these relatively new buildings would pass the test of their first quake. About his parents and all of my friends and relatives, and about my new Australian friends and how scared they must’ve been.

As the day progressed we frantically tried to get more information. Phone calls wouldn’t go through, desperate messages were posted on facebook looking for relatives, google searches made for towns and surnames, trying to evaluate the damage from a distance. News received on the whole was positive. Loved ones were alive, things were broken.

San Pedro was so quiet, and our days here so peaceful, that it was almost like watching a disaster on tv in a far off land. The only difference was that the ones affected were our friends and family. We were so disconnected that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it all. It was only with the passing of the following days that more news started to trickle in and it really started to hit home.

Family missing, family found, homes lost, walls crumbling, lack of water, electricity and food.

The race was really the farthest thing from my mind. And it was only today seeing fellow competitors walking around San Pedro that I really remembered why we were here.

The other day I was asked how I could be running when my country was falling apart. To be honest, it’s been a hard question to answer. I know that I have felt guilty being here instead of heading south to help. But pulling out and cancelling the race isn’t going to help us either. I think it’s positive to continue on and show the world that despite it all, Chile stood up incredibly well to the massive quake, that it is still a safe country to visit, and that we can still make a difference without being in the thick of the mess.

This week we can make an effort to draw more attention to the help we need on an international platform. We need people to keep coming, we need people to keep reading about us, we can do everything we can now to raise funds for those in need.  The hard work won’t all be done in a week. Houses and lives will take time to rebuild. The hard work will come in maintaining momentum after the initial shock has passed. Disasters tend to be forgotten quickly and we can’t afford to have short-term memory when it comes to charity. There will still be time to do hands on work in the weeks and months to come.

So, I am going to run. I am going to run thinking of my loved ones and my country and proudly representing Chile alongside my teammates.

When it rains it pours.

Weeks of poor running, work trips, injuries, I sadly admit that I´ve gone straight past the famed ´plateau´ to more of a constant downhill as far as training and mood is concerned, something that has worried those used to seeing smiley andie. But the final and hardest blow by far came a few weeks back when after months of consciously ignoring the fact that Caro probably wouldn´t be able to race due to several personal issues including a training-time consuming injury, she made the difficult decision to step down.

While in the back of our minds we all knew that this could possibly happen, it took a very long time to accept (hence the lack of blog writing) and in a subconscious rebellion of the fact we let the weeks pass without making a concerted effort to replace her. Boy was it hard when we did start the search.

Do you have any idea what it takes to find a female, CHILEAN, ultramarathoner who is friendly, team oriented, has the time and willingness to train for one of the hardest endurance event sin the world with only 3 months notice? Through work I happened to go to a motivational talk by an esteemed Chilean explorer and mountaineer and during his account of an Antarctic expedition he took part in he quoted the famous ad Shackleton placed in the paper when looking for crew for his expedition:

"MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS,CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."

I remembered having read it before and it struck me as equally suitable for trying to recruit team members for Racing the Planet events…

¨Chilean woman wanted for hazardous journey, no wages, extreme heat, bitter cold, long days of extreme hardship, returning home in one piece doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.¨

Well bizarrely enough, it turns out that there are other people who find this sort of thing appealing.

While we had many male friends offer to dress up as girls in order to join us on our crusade should the female recruitment process go awry, we thankfully came across a new teammate through the tight knit network that is ultramarathoners in Chile. Alejandra Hiriart, Team Andesgear´s newest member is a super athlete who we are hoping will volunteer to pull us along on bungee cords for extended periods of time as we make our way across Atacama. An experienced ultrarunner we are over the moon that she has willingly joined us on this epic journey contributing some much needed experience.

As for Caro, all I can say is that she is and will always be a part of this team and that she better be ready to join us as we cross the finish line in march.

WE LOVE YOU DEARLY and aren´t letting you off the hook. There are many other Racing The Planet events awaiting us in the months and years to come!

By far the most rewarding and challenging aspect of preparing for this race so far has been working as a team and so it is about time that I talk a little about who will be accompanying me on this tremendous journey. Coca Lyon, Caro Emhart and I will make up the first female Chilean team to compete in a Racing The Planet event (no pressure of course!), so how did this team come to be?

Coca and I met while working as hiking and horseriding guides in Torres del Paine, Patagonia. After the guiding gig ended, I eventually moved back to Santiago where the slow transformation into becoming a 'runner' began. To help me on this endeavor I built up a support network inviting anyone and everyone who showed even the slightest interest to join me on my training sessions. The little running group (which included Coca who by this point had also returned to Santiago) grew and flourished until one day I mentioned the idea of training for the Santiago Half Marathon after which attendance dwindled down to three - Coca, Dani Koch and I.

Happy to have found a small but reliable team of girls with similar goals and ability levels, the three of us trained religiously until one day I arrived at the park where we always met to start our runs and found Dani dressed in street clothes instead of the usual sweats. We were only weeks away from the race we had been training for, depending on each other for support and motivation. I felt a little uneasy seeing Dani in the wrong outfit. What could be wrong? Did she forget her workout gear? Was she planning to run in high heels and a dress just to switch it up a little? Was my dear running partner injured? Was this why had she been skipping training sessions lately? Was she sick of us? I walked closer and saw that she was glowing, smiling ear to ear, and that's when I realized. She was pregnant. While I was absolutely thrilled for her (we will be buying baby's first pair of running shoes!) I was also a little sad to lose such a good running partner, at least for a few months. 1 more down. Only 2 of us left.

Coca and I finished the 21km together and after a brief post race rest period accepted that we couldn't live without running and without our therapeutic team training sessions. At some point as we discussed setting the next race goal I brought up the idea of Racing the Planet thinking I would get shot down immediately, after all, the half marathon had been a big step for us. To my surprise, Coca agreed to join in without batting an eyelid. It was only later that I found out that she actually had no idea what it was all about when she initially agreed to the race. When she finally learnt about RTP and what she had gotten herself into she simply looked at me and asked - Can mere mortals do this? Can we do this? A simple yes was all she needed and with my monosyllabic answer ('Si!'), she shrugged her shoulders, smiled and bravely followed me into whatever insanity I proposed next. Coca is the perfect partner to have when testing your limits - I don't think there is any adventure that she would turn down no matter how outrageous.

Caro's husband Manuel Barros is a Racing the Planet alum having run as part of the Team Chile trio in 2007 along with my boyfriend Nicolas Gordon and their schoolmate Felipe Infante. Caro is a ball (a very fit, thin ball) of energy, an alpha type minus the arrogance. I nicknamed her superwoman when training began - I should mention that Caro, aside from taking on this massive challenge, is a mother of two (her second child was born only 3 months before we started training!), an experienced adventure racer and one of the managers of a very successful Chilean company. She is level headed and positive and exactly the sort of person you want by your side when you are struggling up sand dunes and across salt flats in the world's driest desert. I first met Caro in the same way that I met most of Nico's friends, at the dinner table at a wedding, as this was the only type of occasion that would merit an escape from Patagonia for us. I was immediately impressed by the strength and positivity she radiated and while we got along great, it wasn't until Racing the Planet 07, as we anxiously followed the progress made by our guys across the desert that we really became good friends. When the opportunity to form the Chilean women's team presented itself, Caro was an obvious choice and so, during a bachelorette weekend getaway party in Valparaiso, I mentioned the idea to her. Awesome! Definitely! Sign me up! Just like Coca, there was absolutely no hesitation in her reply. So that was it, Team Chile 2010 was set.

Luckily for me, the two girls hit it off straight away and by the second team training session it felt like we had been friends for years. I've found that sports has always been an incredible base upon which to build strong friendships. There is nothing like a 3 hour run to break the ice. Having hours to kill with mindless chatter leads to much soul baring and in the few months we have been a part of this team we have gotten to know eachother perhaps even better than we know those from much longer established friendships. We have lived through some tense moments and learnt how to get over ourselves and laugh it off and I love and respect these girls with all my heart. I am truly grateful that they were chemically imbalanced enough to agree to this great adventure. I'm sure that the week of the race will see us through our highest and lowest points yet but I can't imagine two greater people to have by my side when the going gets tough.

So, first things first, in case anyone noticed I did indeed steal the main title of my blog from the facebook group created by my friends from the Atacama Crossing 07. Quite frankly I couldn’t think of any other phrase to better describe all this nonsense, so thanks guys for the name!

Now onto other news. A mere week after writing the first blog I had my first official Racing The Planet nightmare, surely a rite of passage of sorts.

We were at the starting line on day one, all geared up and ready to go, RTP flags waving in the wind when suddenly I realize I don’t have my trekking poles with me and I completely freak out.  The countdown begins …3…2…1…everyone takes off running, and I take off running in the opposite direction desperately looking for an outdoor gear store of some sort.

Funnily enough (as tends to happen in dreams/nightmares) I did manage to find one conveniently located only a few kilometers from camp in the middle of the desert (they even had Luna bars!) but the brief feeling of relief upon finding this oasis was quickly replaced by utter disappointment when I realized that I had no money on me to pay for the poles.

Heartbreak.

I begged and cried and pleaded with the lady to give them to me (‘I swear! I will run back the whole 250km in a week to pay you!’) but the heartless (blank) was impervious to my pleas and I was left alone and trekking-poleless in the desert.

It was at this point that I woke up, shaking, sweating, tears and matted hair plastered on my face, mostly relieved that it was all just a dream and equally perplexed at discovering this bizarre subconscious fear…TREKKING POLES?!?! Is that really what I am most worried about? The funny thing is, I haven’t even reached the point of thinking about whether or not to take them (most likely not).

The weeks have passed and I’ve yet to decipher my dream. I’m pretty sure it’s not the poles. Could it reflect my slight obsession with gear? I admit I’m a little OCD when it comes to researching outdoor clothing and gadgets and such, but this early on, shouldn’t I be more worried about training? Finishing? Sinking in salt flats? Surviving perhaps?