Well I survived! It was unbelievably tough but I got through it, so that’s a bonus.
Tom, Ian and Chris at the start line of the Atacama Crossing RacingThePlanet Ltd/Zandy Mangold
Well, I said I’d give it my best shot from the Get Go. Apparently I finished day 1 in 5th! Crikey! As I said to the girl at the finish – ‘I wish someone had told me that on the course as I may have slowed down a tad’.
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35km down, 215 to go.
Today was a good start, the route seemed to be quite tough – although “only” 35km it included a lot of ascending, some descents and a lot of flat running over uneven and rocky ground.
Waht a race! (RacingThePlanet Ltd/Zandy)
Miraculously I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama last night at midnight having experienced no major problems during my 43.5 hour, 4-flight journey. I left Singapore at 8pm on Tuesday on a BA flight to Sydney. The quality of the plane, entertainment and especially food showed why BA continues to slip down the airline rankings. In contrast, LAN (Chile´s national carrier) was pretty good.
Left London 4pm on 1st March and finally arrived in the desert at 3am (London time) on the 3rd. So 36 hours of travelling, 3 flights and a bus journey into the desert I´m finally here! Chris and I hooked up with Tom at Santiago airport who had just arrived from Singapore via Sydney and Auckland (a hellish journey for him – I think he was 48 hours of travel with a date line cross somewhere a long the way). Dont´feel terribly sharp as went down with a stinking cold 2 days before leaving home so missing 2 nights ish sleep hasn´t made it a whole lot better. Anyway, never mind, try to get some rest before Sunday am get go.
Had a wander around the village (San Pedro de Atacama) this am. It looks a lovely little place. It´s pretty darn hot and very dry! Stating the obvious I guess! Goodness knows how one is supposed to run in this!
We sorted our kit/food out this am and all our packs are roughly weighing in at just under 10 kg before water. We had a little competition to see who had the lightest pack and who could predict to the closest 100gramms how heavy each pack was – whata laugh hey, crazy! If we were consuming alcohol we could have turned it into a drinking game – may be next Saturday! I think I´m going to do a repack and try to be a little more ruthless and lose a few more gramms.
Well, that´s about it.
Ian
