Blisters are really gard to avoid.  Even if you run maybe 50 miles a week (I don't) you probably don't do it on the sort of surfaces you encounter in the bush.  So even though I partially pre-taped and use toe socks inside running socks you just start getting torn up day one.  A big annoyance is blisters under toenails which push the toenail up and you lose it.  If you catch it early you can insert a needle under nail or drill through to release the pressure.

I did not catch the problem early and had to manually remove a nail at the end of day two.  That means tear it off.

I wanted to mention a world class athlete in the race, Ryan Sandes from South Africa.  He ran the entire 150 mile race at an average speed of 10 minutes per mile.  That is an almost inhuman achievement given the heat and terrain.  We will see more of this guy.  He has not yet hit his competitive peak.

I'll write more and upload some pictures.  There were aome amazing parts of the race I could not report on as I got into camp too later to access the cyber-tent.  I am off to Salamos airport for a flight to Santiago/Dallas/SFO.

Okay, so here is what I worked out, I know everyone knows it already…  It is enormously important whether the experience matches the expectation.   When we started the last stage, called The Long March, I knew it would be hard.  It was 46 miles across several different types of terrains and, as usual, expected the temperature to be between 100 and 110. 

We started at 7:45 a.m.  The first stage was nine miles or so and rated “extremely difficult”.  It was across salt flats.  Now you might have seen salt flats when you have driven through Death Valley and it looks like a smooth white surface.  But this salt flat was anything but flat.  The surface was grey/white globs of salt and sand shaped like heads of broccoli.  You needed to jump from one to the next.  Sometime the heads were hard.  Sometimes they crumbled.  And, sometimes your foot went straight through and into salt water underneath – agony when you have blisters.  The latter did not happen to me.   By now the soles of everyone’s feet were pretty torn up.  Several of my toes were bleeding, I had lost one toenail, and the feet had swollen so much my toenails hit the end of the shoe every time I had to make a sharp movement with my feet.

After four hours of the salt flat you hit the first check point.  Second stage was rated moderate with one extremely difficult part, but the guy who wrote that lied like a dog.  First part of stage two was three miles on windswept gravel slopes.  The wind flung small pieces of sand and gravel at your face and by now the heat was well over 100.  Then you hit more salt flats for another three miles with its intense reflected sun and in the very far distance you could see an enormous sand dune, several hundred feet high.  You guessed it, as I got closer I could see the little pink flags that mark our course going straight up the dune.  Too steep to climb directly competitors had zig-zagged paths to the top.  Awfully difficult task.  There was a fellow competitor crying at the base of the dune.  She recovered and followed me up shortly after I reached the top.  The top though was a rocky saddle open to the oven heat wind which, like the gravel slopes, threw small sharp pieces of stone into your face.  Down a rocky path and into check point three.  By now it was 6pm, and I still had only completed three of the six stages.  I took a full hour at the checkpoint to try and fix my feet and to gather a few other competitors.  It was going to be dark before we hit CP4 and it is much better to travel in packs.  We were all carrying injuries, and Billy, one of the guys in the group was using a lidocane patch to numb the worst pain.  A cool idea for next time.

From CP 3 to CP 5 there was not much of interest.  We followed a dry river bed as it got dark and colder.  The trail was flat and firm but monotonous.

Passed two of my Chilean tent mates between CP 4 and CP 5.  One was injured too much to move fast and was being helped by the second.  Huge heart, but the injured guy dropped out of the race at CP5.  Finally got to CP5 at about 3 a.m. and that CP was designated as the hot meal and overnight stop CP.  We had some tea and freeze dried food and then continued on into camp arriving there just before dawn at around 5:30 a.m.

I got an hour’s sleep and lay like death in my tent until, at 1pm, they called us all back to the start line for the final six mile race to the finish in San Pedro de Atacama.  The entire race was finished around 3pm.