8.5 months after I decided I would participate in the Gobi March I have achieved my goal, I completed the race!!!!!! I am extremely happy about that and can say that all the effort was worth it! It felt amazing when I crossed the finish line! Priceless moment!!!

My goal seemed very far away when I started, impossible to some. As of October 2015 my longest run so far had been a 12km, how would I run 250km in June 2016? I can count in less than one hand the number of people who supported and believed in me at the beginning, and I would need more than all the fingers in my hands and feet to count everyone who

Done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rocks, rocks, rocks and more rocks

3 days down!!! Halfway there!

Day 2 is in the books!!!

Day 1 is in the books!!!

Finally arrived at Hami!

I spent a couple days in Beijing after my arrival on Sunday, went to the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, and then took a plane to Urumqi on Wednesday.
The flight was supposed to arrive in Urumqi at 13:30, however, it delayed 1 hour for take off and when we arrived at Urumqi there was a lot of wind and we were not able to land in the airport so landed in a nearby city and waited 3.5hrs for the weather to improve and then got back on the plane to Urumqi. Arrived in my hotel only at 22:00.
On Thursday went to the Heavenly Lake, which is a 1.5hr drive away from Urumqi, very nice spot, beautiful scenery.
On Friday woke up and went to the train station for a 3hr trip to Hami.

Finished prepping my pack (very challenging

June 10th, 2016

On my way to the other side of the world!

The trip has begun. After 2 hours in traffic I arrived at the airport.

2016, May 23rd

2016, May

In May my training schedule was similar to March and April. However, in three Sundays of this month I added a long run in order to train for back-to-back runs that I will have to do during the event.

So my training schedule was:

2016, April 16th

In April, the external training took place in Serra Fina, where we went to participate in the Kailash Trail Run event.

It was a very tough race with very technical terrain, 24km, 1.500m of altitude gain and the weather was extremely hot!

The run as awesome, we passed through very beautiful places! Running in the nature is always great, it gets you away from everything and you don

2016, April 10th

On the beginning of April I ran the Sao Paulo Half Marathon with my friend Diogo. It was very fun to run alongside him.

The weather was extremely hot on that day! One guy even had to get away on the ambulance.

My performance was good, I had improved a lot since I started training and did my first half marathon. Finished the race in 1h42m, decreased 15m from my time from the first half marathon!

2016, April

April began and my training schedule remained the same as in March:

2016, March 12th

In the middle of March I went with my trail running group to Campos do Jordao, a city nearby Sao Paulo, for an external training.

We started of at 1.750m of altitude, ran 19km descending to 850m and then ran another 16km to get back to the same spot where we started. Total of 35km!

Training was very fun and it was good to run in the woods and away from the city.

2016, March

Having completed the half marathon and the full marathon, now it was time to begin specific training for the Gobi March!

I started training with Selva, a sports advisory firm that has a trail running group. It was very important to have started training with them since they have an extensive expertise in these type of races and they have been of great help!

After one week fully stopped to recover from the marathon and another one with moderate training in order to get back on track, February was done. As March started, training intensity picked up!

My training schedule would be:

2016, February 14th

I arrived in LA one week before the race, so I had plenty of time to do a lot of tourist activities and also reserved one day for buying gear for the Gobi March, since most of the good quality equipment are not sold in Brazil.

The Marathon was really nice, all the city cheering for you, several bands, and people offering water, food and everything else.

I started off well and did the first half in a good time, arrived in the 32km in a good time as well, but when I got to 35km I crashed, pace dropped significantly and stayed slow until the 40km when I was able to see the finish line and unexpectedly found strength to increase speed and finish the last 2km in a good pace. Finished without having to walk, ran the whole course in 4h14m.

It was very exciting to cross the finish line and in that moment you realize that all that time dedicated to the training and all the sacrifice you did was worth it.

First Marathon complete! The feeling was amazing!

Special thanks to:
Camila and Marcos, my coaches from Run & Fun, who helped me a lot during training.
Diogo, who supported me a lot during preparation, giving advice and talking about his experience in the NY Marathon, he also landed me his belt to carry the gels.

2016, January

On January my training schedule remained the same. However I ended up going less to the gym and skipped 1-2 spinning classes.
4 times running (1 being a long run in the weekend)
0-1 spinning class
1-4 gym sessions

Total kilometers ran on January: 219km
Longest run: 33.2km

2015, December

On December we added one more run on my training week schedule:

2015, November

With the half-marathon done, now the next goal was the full marathon.
According to my Gobi March training plan that I developed earlier, I needed to do a marathon in February. I looked around and found that on February there would be one in Sevilla and one in Los Angeles. That was an easy choice, LA!
Since things were getting more serious now I decided to hire a coach, what helped me a lot.

During November my training schedule remained the same:

2015, October 25th

As I felt good during the 18km one week before the half marathon, I decided to participate and on October 25th I completed my first half marathon in 1h57m!

What an incredible experience, crossing that finish line was amazing, the feeling of

2015, mid October

If I were to really do this I needed to have a plan and I thought it was a good idea to have some milestones to achieve, this would help me with morale.

I had 8.5 months before the race, what to do until the event? Based on my extensive expertise on the area (kkkk) I thought that I could do a half marathon in the beginning of November, a marathon in February and then have from March to June to do specific training for the race.

As I started to look for a half marathon I noticed that there weren

2015, October 12th

2015, beginning of October

Since I could not compete in Antarctica (need to have competed in at least two 4 Deserts events before) I had three options: Sahara (May 2016), Gobi (June 2016) and Atacama (October 2016).

Sahara is probably the hottest one and the one with more sand, so my first thought was to avoid it. Additionally it was the nearest one in terms of time, what meant less time for preparation. So I decided to pass on it.

My decision was now between Gobi and Atacama. Atacama is closer for me (I leave in Sao Paulo, Brazil) so it would be more practical, however I would have to face the altitude (~3,000m). Gobi was farther, but I preferred the date, since I was not sure I would have the willpower to maintain hard training for a whole year. I thought that if the race was closer that meant less chances of giving up.

It had been decided Gobi it would be!

2015, October 6th

2015, end of September

2015, September 14th