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Yesterday was a horrible day for us. In an effort to continue with its major reorganization, Yahoo! performed a massive layoff and one of the targets was the product and engineering teams at Yahoo! Canada.

Yeah, you read it right, both teams were completely dissolved, around 50+ individuals. Only a few engineers (myself included) were selected to form a “transitioning” team to hand-off product development to the global platform teams. We’ll be in this role until September 30th (when our contract will expire), the rest of my colleagues had to leave the office during yesterday. Like most of the layoffs that I’ve witnessed before, it was an ugly experience. Obviously, in this occasion it was also painful

The time has come to think about future directions and to make new decisions. We’ll see how things move during the following 5 months…

Yesterday morning Beto and I went to Las Mesas for a bit of climbing action. The last time we went together to that area was about 5 years ago, things were much different back then, we were climbing a lot and were used to do a lot of crazy things… Nevertheless, it was very easy for us to get back into our usual fun & stupid mood

We climbed 5 routes, ranging from 5.8 to 5.10+, the hardest one being Viejas Locas one of my favorite crimping torture fests in the zone. We also hiked around the place and spotted a couple of new projects for aid & sport climbing. Not that we’re going to get back into the business, but you never know… Overall we had a great time together, chatting, yelling and laughing as always

Rest of the pictures are here.

Odina and I had a great climbing Sunday. I took her to Aculco Canyon early in the morning so she could know the place and get an idea of the kind of climbing done there. Of course, not without an obligated stop to buy some sweet bread from Aculco town. From there we headed to Peña Bernal, I wanted to do a bit of multi-pitch climbing and rappelling to teach her the basics of moving on larger routes.

It was a very hot day, with almost no clouds around. We climbed the Southeast ramp route (5.7 R) and spent a couple of hours resting and chatting at the balconies on its top. I must say that she did very well with the rope management, belaying and climbing. She has ability as well as good attitude, I’m sure that she’ll become very good with practice

In the afternoon, she did a bit of rappelling while I twice free-soloed the last pitch of the route. We hiked down the monolith and headed to Filo Sureste so I could show her the beautiful Filo Noroccidental route while the sun started to set.

We got back to the car at around 7:30 p.m. and went to Bernal’s downtown. We were very thirsty and wanted to enjoy some micheladas at the plaza. We made a toast for the great climbing day and chatted for a couple of hours until it was time to come back to the city.

By midnight we headed back to Aculco, I wanted her to eat the famous tacos by the plaza. We arrived a bit late and the tacos stand was closing, instead we discovered some amazing tortas at the next stand. After the extremely tasty breakfast-lunch-dinner meal we finally headed back to the city, enjoying every minute of the great long day together…

Rest of the pictures are here.

AFTER NINE YEARS of running marathons, Glenn Butcher hit a wall. The seasoned racer felt burnt out from endless miles and qualifiers, and the constant training for the speed required of competitive marathoners had left him with nagging injuries.

So, to get his groove back, Butcher decided—oddly enough—to take up ultramarathoning.

He ran his first 50-kilometre (31-mile) race, the Long Island Greenbelt Trail 50, in 2003. On the course, he allowed himself to slow down and enjoy the scenery. “Once I did that, I really fell in love with it,” says Butcher, 44. He’s run five ultras since, including the Viaduct Trail Ultramarathon in Pennsylvania last year, a 100-miler that lasted nearly 24 hours…

TheChronicleHerald.ca: Going the distance — and then some

I’ll try to keep this short…

After visiting the chiropractor on Monday and Wednesday, he told me that my waist was 100% recovered and finally let me start training again. That of course made me more than happy, I was starting to get depressed for not having any physical activity for a week (I’m an endorphin junkie). Also, having Mokka quiet for so many days allowed her to do a couple of bad things in the backyard garden. Despite of knowing the kind of insane person that I am, the doctor simply advised to “please take it easy” when going back to training…

I’ve been doing stretching exercises and the flexibility in my waist has been progressively coming back to normal. On Tuesday I went out for my morning trail run with Mokka. We only ran 9 km of our usual course, but we greatly enjoyed them. Being on the trails together was something we both really missed. This time I carried my handheld bottles instead of the waistpack so I didn’t irritate my nerves again

Mokka came back home exhausted but I felt really good. After doing some work stuff during the day, I decided to go out for a bit of endurance climbing at the University wall. I did a single 400m lap and was really careful of not doing any movements which could hurt my lower back again, it worked pretty well. I came back home, had a shower and went to the movies.

During the night I decided to go to Nevado de Toluca with Mokka on Saturday. We woke up early in the morning, had a light breakfast, grabbed our gear and headed to the mountain. I planned on doing the usual circumnavigation of the volcano along the crater’s rim.

It took us 2 hours 30 minutes to go from the car to the summit. I didn’t realize we had such a fast pace until we got there, I was feeling really well and Mokka was next to me for most of the trail. We had some quick lunch at the summit and came down directly into the crater, I wanted Mokka to take a well-deserved swim at Laguna del Sol

After 3 hours 30 minutes we were back to the car and happy for the nice hike we just had. I drove back home while Mokka slept by my side. Once at home I received a call from Luis Arturo. Two days before we arranged to go to Iztaccíhuatl on Saturday but he was calling me to inform that he was in Cuernavaca with some friends and without any plans to come back to the city that day. I opted to go to Iztaccíhuatl alone, I still felt really good and thought that it would be a good opportunity to attempt another fast climb since I’d have to wear a light backpack.

I sorted my gear and slept early. At 5:15 a.m. I put my stuff in the car and headed to the mountain. By 8 a.m. I started the climb. My pace was really fast, I was feeling well and passed some parties of climbers and hikers. Bringing a very light backpack and no poles allowed me to progress quickly. On the whole climb, I stopped only once to drink a lot of Gatorade and slurp an energy gel. I didn’t have to strap my crampons because the glacier was higher than usual due to its melting in these very hot days.

I stopped the chronometer at 3:33:26, I was on the summit. It took me about 5 minutes to catch my breath, the effort was really exhausting but worth it, I cut off a little more than 20 minutes from my previous record. I was happy, really happy and satisfied. I sat on the summit for almost 20 minutes, rehydrating, eating and enjoying the place, feeling myself. 3 hours later I was back at the base of the mountain, eating quesadillas and contemplating the view up the mountain, I definitely have a crush on Iztaccíhuatl

Today seems like a day for getting some rest, my lower back is feeling well. Nevertheless, I feel this little crave for some rock climbing… haha. I should better stop now and take things a little bit more “easy”…

Photos from Friday are here and from Saturday are here.

For 2nd year in a row, the Barkley ultramarathon has got a finisher. This time it was Andrew Thompson, who became the 8th man to complete the extremely tough race after some exhausting 57 hours and 37 minutes. Huge congratulations to him!!

It turns out that my great performance at Carrera de Resistencia en las Montañas a week ago brought me a serious consequence. The slight bouncing of the waistpack I used during the race irritated one of the nerves in my lower back.

The night after the race I had a bit of lumbar pain, but I thought it was usual post-race soreness and that it mostly had to do with stress from my body position while running the uphills. The day after, the pain started to cease so I kept doing my regular stuff: went to Opeth gigs for 2 nights in a row, climbed at the University wall on Tuesday and got back to running on Wednesday morning; once again I used the waistpack to carry water for Mokka and myself.

At night I went to the movies and had dinner with Odina and started to experience the same lumbar pain; this time it was stronger and got intensified with time. By 3 a.m. I was awake by a sudden strike of pain in the waist; I couldn’t move in the bed and got really scared. It didn’t take me a lot to figure out something really bad was happening, I decided I had to call the chiropractor as first thing in the morning.

He scheduled an appointment for me at noon; it took me around 30 minutes to get dressed, go downstairs and get into the car. After the examination he diagnosed what I just described before, a badly irritated nerve in my waist. He stretched, aligned and maintained my body at different positions in the bed so things went back to their place; that made me feel a lot better. Nevertheless, the pain while standing up or moving was still present so he advised to take things slowly and prescribed absolute rest as well as medicines.

I couldn’t work for 2 days, I wasn’t able to sit in front of the computer. I slept for most of the time, letting the medicines do their work and the body its self-healing process. By yesterday I was about 60% recovered, I was able to carefully stand up and walk (shuffle) very slowly. Today I’m feeling better, at a 75% of recovery I’d say. I’ve noticed I lost a lot of elasticity in the waist area, which means that I’ll need some rehab after recovery. Tomorrow I have another visit to the doctor, for which I hope to be even better and get good news. This has been painful