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Skyrace Malinche is organized by our friends from the Solo Para Salvajes racing circuit. It consists of a very straightforward run from the base of the mountain to its summit and back, a total distance of 16 km with an elevation gain of almost 1,300 meters.

Luis, Nahila, Chalita and me got together once again to run the race, and the results were really good overall. Luis got 3rd place in his category while Nahila won 2nd place for women overall (amazing!). I finished 68 out of 221 runners with a good time of 3:03:05 and a couple of thrashed quadriceps. As always, we managed to have some great time together!

Race pictures are here.

• Conference: From Mexico to the End of the World on two wheels: Jose Espinosa narrated his adventures and misfortunes while traveling all the way down from Mexico to Ushuaia by motorcyle.
• Trial & Error: Excellent short film. Ryan Leech demonstrates his ability for acrobatics on a mountain bike while he reflexes about his training ground, a forest that is condemned to be cut down for comercial purposes.
• Climber: Good animated clip in which an ice climber fights against fear and inner demons while soloing a route.
• Ice Mines: Great adventure climbing film. Will Gadd and friends explore abandoned frozen mines in Sweden, climbing lots of spectacular ice formations underground.
• 20 Seconds of Joy: Excellent documentary film. Karina Hollekim is the only professional freeskier and BASE jumper from Norway. This film narrates her short but amazing career in the sport, from her first skydive to the first ever female ski-base jump to the accident that changed her life. A really inspiring and reflexive movie.

So this is how the festival ended, see you all at next year’s edition!

• It’s Fantastic: Great action film which documents speedflying, a new winter sport that involves a combination of paragliding and skiing. Really impressive stuff.
• Badgered: Short animation which narrates the story of a badger who tries to sleep despite the chaos taking place above his cave in the ground. A fun and reflexive story.
• King Lines: Es Pontas: Awesome short film. Chris Sharma rehearses and links the extremely difficult moves of Es Pontas, his ultimate deep water solo project in Mallorca. Breathtaking climbing and scenery.
• Inner Balance: Short action clip in which the best mono-cyclists of the world demonstrate what is possible to achieve on a single wheel.
• 24 Solo: Good documentary that narrates a 24-hour mountain bike race in which the winner would be the man completing the most laps/distance under the time limit. Think of it as a mountain bike ultramarathon, lots of pain involved.

Tomorrow is the last night of the festival, I hope the movies will be as good as those of today…

Just before the inaugural speech, our good friend Timmy O’Neill gave a conference about 5 trips he did during the year as well as a climb of El Capitan, which he did with his brother Sean (who is paraplegic) and other two friends, Ammon and Cedar. They climbed the hard aid route Space (VI 5.10 A4+) in a few days and proved us that limitations only exist in our minds. Timmy presented this in his very particular style, making jokes of everything and interacting with the audience.

After Timmy’s conference, the inaugural speech took place and we proceeded to watch the only movie for the rest of the night:

• Aerialist: A medium length film which showcases Dean Potter’s obsession for extreme slacklining, free soloing, hard crack climbing and BASE jumping on some spectacular locations.

Overall it was really good for the first day, I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s projections…

Total roundtrip distance was 9 km, going all the way up to the Chamapa-Lechería highway crossing and back. We logged a time of 1 hour 15 minutes and Mokka ran unleashed all the time.

She did well during the climbs, running by my side for most of the time; while on the descent I took a little bit of advantage because of my longer stride, but never losing sight of her.

It was a great 1st long trail run together, she’s such a great companion

During my night adventure on the dark wall, not only I had to avoid the possibility of taking a nasty fall into the irregular volcanic ground, but also to be careful of every hand/foothold that I used. It seemed like every little critter went out for a party along its circumference: scorpions, Jerusalem crickets, centipedes, millipedes, ants, spiders, crickets…

It was definitely scary, but immensely interesting (in some sort of masochistic scientific way).

While coming down I decided to run all the way back home so she could get used to run in the trail. She seemed to enjoy the 12 km outing

This is such bad news…

While most people would consider running for 50, 100, 150+ miles to be absurd, unnatural and extremely painful, science believes otherwise. Research argues that over time, homo sapiens evolved to become natural runners, and long-distance runners at that…

Team Montrail: Long Distance Running – A Natural Human Activity?