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A friend once told me that 10Kers think marathoners are nuts, and that marathoners think ultra runners are nuts and that ultra runners think Barkley runners are nuts. There is a pattern here, I can just feel it.

Such Barkley runner is Brian Robinson, who this year set a course record of 55:42 and who also became the 7th runner in the history of the race to finish it (from about 650 runners who have attempted it since 1986). Big congratulations to him!

For more details about the Barkley, go here.

Snow conditions weren’t ideal because the Winter has almost gone, so there was a lot of ice on most the hills. Despite of that, we still enjoyed the day a lot and managed to slide down a fair amount of easy and moderate courses (with the respective amount of newbie falls of course…).

I’m already looking forward to the next Canadian Winter!

The runner’s high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.

Yes, some people reported that they felt so good when they exercised that it was as if they had taken mood-altering drugs. But was that feeling real or just a delusion? And even if it was real, what was the feeling supposed to be, and what caused it?

Some who said they had experienced a runner’s high said it was uncommon. They might feel relaxed or at peace after exercising, but only occasionally did they feel euphoric. Was the calmness itself a runner’s high?

Often, those who said they experienced an intense euphoria reported that it came after an endurance event…

The New York Times: Yes, Running Can Make You High

It covers 243km/151 miles (in sections similar to 25, 34, 38, 82, 42, 22 km) run over 6 days (7 for some) – equivalent to 5 1/2 regular marathons. That’s a speed of between 3 and 14 km an hour for competitors aged between 16 and 78). In addition to that, competitors have to carry everything they will need for the duration (apart from a tent) on their backs in a rucksack (food, clothes, medical kit, sleeping bag etc). Water is rationed and handed out at each checkpoint.

You will have to prepare all your own food throughout the race and I warn you that there is not a chain of Tesco stores or corner grocery shops dotted around the Sahara. You will experience mid-day temperatures of up to 120°F, of running or walking on uneven rocky, stony ground as well as 15 – 20% of the distance being in sand dunes.

The heat, distance and rubbing will trash your feet and may cause severe trauma if incorrect shoes and equipment are used. Mental stamina probably constitutes at least 50% of whether you will complete the distance or not. Physical fitness is important but don’t underestimate the mental stress that you will need to endure. Even if you have run dozens of 26 mile marathons, this does not mean that you will automatically find the MdS easy – either way you will be planning to do lots of training prior to the MdS.

On the 4th day, you will set off across the barren wilderness to complete a 45 – 50 mile stage. Few people complete this before dark that evening and some will not come in till after dark the next night. This is followed by the 42km Marathon stage!! Its tough, so don’t say that nobody warned you in the strongest terms.

I wish the best of lucks to my good friends!

More info about the race can be found here.

The date, the time, the rain, the street…
Some food, some wine, some talk, some laugh…
A hug, a gift, a smile, a kiss…
The walk, the path, the story, the cigar…
Your hands, your warmth, your breath, your smell… in my arms…
In this and every other place, the moon is still the same…
Now it enlightens me even when it is the day…

I’m happy today

We arrived to Toronto on Friday night and drove all the way up and East to Ottawa on Saturday morning (passing along Thousand Island), then stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, visiting old places (and memories) and eating at some nice restaurants.

Sunday was all about being in the snow. We went to Camp Fortune, where I experienced skiing for the first time in my life. An exciting but very scary adventure I must confess. As stubborn as always, I refused to pay a couple of extra bucks for some lessons, so I headed to the hills to let Nature and Physics teach me everything I needed to know about skiing. Just because I thought it couldn’t be that hard…

After a few tries without killing myself in the newbie courses, I managed to gather the guts to take the lift up the moderate courses so I could gave them a look from above. They seemed a lot steeper but, I thought that as long as I could make enough turns, everything should go well. It only worked for the first couple of times though… In short, the skiing was great and we celebrated survival with a very good lunch at our favorite restaurant in Wakefield

Today we had breakfast then drove back to Toronto to arrange some final details for this week’s meetings at the Yahoo! office. Will keep you posted on the rest of activities for this visit to Canada.

I started the climb around 5:30 a.m. so I could arrive to the “secret” passage from La Guglia to Cruz de Rosas at dawn time (being trapped there by clouds while dark is not a pleasant adventure, believe me). A couple of hours later I was clipping my crampons and enjoying the sunshine while climbing up Ayoloco glacier.

I could sadly witness how bad are the glacier’s conditions nowadays. From December till now I’ve climbed the mountain a couple of times and I’ve seen the glacier melting quite rapidly and shrinking up about 100 meters! My sad forecast is that it won’t last for many more years…

Got to the summit when the stopwatch ticked 4 hours 35 minutes. A new PR and a big grin was draw in my face. I spent some time up there giving thanks for many of the things that have happened recently in my life and praying for the best for those that I love. After my conversations with Nature and the Gods, I ran down the mountain via the normal route.

By noon, I was back in the car eating some quesadillas and enjoying the view, then I drove all the way back home. Now I feel so ready and full of energy!

Pictures can be seen here.

It was the perfect opportunity to meet some old faces that we haven’t seen since middle/high school (I’m talking about ~15 years ago). Very friendly faces, funny faces… The party was great and we spent a great time fooling around the place, talking, drinking and dancing (yes, sometimes I dance) like crazy for most of the evening.

My best wishes for the newly weds and a huge greet to old those friends who keep rocking!

Programmers have long recognized that separating code logic from presentation is good. The Perl community has produced many fine systems for doing just this. While there are many systems, they largely fall within two execution models, pipeline and callback (as noted by Perrin Harkins in Choosing a Templating System). HTML::Template and Template Toolkit are in the pipeline category. Their templates consist of simple presentation logic in the form of loops and conditionals and template variables. The Perl program does its work, then loads and renders the appropriate template, as if data were flowing through a pipeline. Mason and Embperl fall into the callback category. They mix code in with the template markup, and the template “calls back” to Perl when it encounters program logic…

Perl.com: Reverse Callback Templating