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This has been a tough but great year for me. Here’s a brief summary of it:

• January: I got back into serious running after a long hiatus due to taking care of young Mokka. I climbed Iztaccíhuatl a couple of times too. The much awaited 1.6.0 version of BioPerl was finally released.
• February: I got 31 years young, bought a beautiful 5-string bass guitar and continued the hard training. Odi and I started hanging out.
• March: Had an epic weekend while climbing Iztaccíhuatl with friends. Introduced Octavio and Sergio to the world of trail running and shaved minutes to my speed solo time for climbing Iztaccíhuatl. Mokka got 1 year old and we celebrated with longer runs in the forest. By the end of the month I ran my first “short” ultra of the year and enjoyed 2 nights of Opeth’s progressive death metal. Oh, and I was also accepted to run the Leadville Trail 100!
• April: Odi and I had our first kiss! Got a serious injury in my lower back which put me into bed for a week. A week later I was “taking it easy” with recovery by trail running, rock climbing and breaking speed climbing records at Nevado de Toluca and Iztaccíhuatl. Odi and I had our first multi-pitch climbing adventure in Bernal. I also had some nice sport climbing with Beto. At the end of the month Yahoo! announced another major reorganization and I was laid-off along with my colleagues from the Canadian Engineering and Product teams.
• May: Had a great weekend camping at Morelia with Odi and my friends. Enjoyed for a 2nd time a night of Amon Amarth’s viking death metal and Anathema’s doom & alternative metal.
• June: Ran a beautiful 3-day stage ultra and attended one of Metallica’s gigs with Odi. I also enjoyed the beginning of summer by climbing Iztaccíhuatl.
• July: Odi and I became a couple after an intense weekend of climbing and attempting a self-supported single-push run of the 3-day stage ultra from the previous month. Ran a trail race and climbed Bernal in a single day. Made another speed solo climb of Iztaccíhuatl and logged my best time to date.
• August: Enjoyed a week-long trip to the Huasteca and the illness I got while at it. Ran, enjoyed and finished the Leadville Trail 100, my 2nd 100 miler to date.
• September: Finished reading my signed copy of Beyond The Mountain by Steve House. Had laughter and suffering at the Mexico City marathon and said goodbye to my job at Yahoo!
• October: Had fun while running Largo y Sinuoso Camino and attended the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Also wished luck to Beto at his new adventure in Morelia.
• November: Burned my quadriceps while running up La Malinche. Odi and I rocked hard at AC/DC’s gig.
• December: Took Odi to her first experience with snow & ice at an unbelievably frozen Iztaccíhuatl. Ran 70 km at the 1st 12-hour Trailsport Ultramarathon. Celebrated the end of the year’s racing circuit with the always-tough skymarathon at Iztaccíhuatl.

Yeah, you could say that I was very busy during 2009. 2010 looks very exciting; with a new job to start, new people to meet, projects to plan, goals to achieve and unexpected things to solve along the way. My best wishes to all of you for the new year!

Yesterday I managed to increase 17 minutes to my previous time for the Skymarathon Iztaccíhuatl. Seems like running a 12-hour ultramarathon a week ago and a 10K night race on Saturday weren’t the best recipe for a great performance at the mountain race…

I did well for most of the race, passing Omar, Sergio and Octavio by the turnaround point and racing down the mountain as I’m used to do. But once I got back to La Joya my legs stopped working, they felt extremely tired and unable to continue. I had to shuffle between power-walking 500 meters and jogging other 500, the same routine over and over until getting to the finish line. Of course, Octavio and Sergio were able to reach me at barely 2 km from the finish line, passing me with a little bit of amazement.

I arrived to the finish line after 4:40:06, feeling completely wasted but happy to have finished the 2009 Solo Para Salvajes racing circuit. We celebrated with some beers and a bunch of quesadillas before coming back to the city. Now it’s time to give the legs a short break for recovering before attempting Valenciana 100 at the beginning of 2010

The 1st edition of the Trailsport 12-hour Ultramarathon took place yesterday morning. Luis had the idea of organizing this race since a little more than a month ago. For this edition, the plan was to invite his closest running friends to endure 12 hours of running along the 2km course of El Sope in Chapultepec.

The race began at 12 a.m. and we enjoyed a beautiful night sky with a bright moon. I ran a conservative amount of kilometers by completing 35 laps (70 km) in 9 hours 58 minutes, taking 2 hours 2 minutes to stretch, eat and rest. Other crazy people ran a lot more, with Luis finishing at the 1st place with 54 laps (108 km) under his feet.

All I can say is that the event was amazing. It was really great to run this unique kind of (mental-torture-fest) ultra with the good friends

All race pictures can be seen here.

Odi, Mokka and I had an amazing time yesterday hiking at Iztaccíhuatl. During the week we were able to see the volcanoes covered with snow so it was a good opportunity for Odi to see it for the 1st time.

My original plan was to hike towards Ayoloco hut but it was so cloudy that it would have been be impossible to see the glacier. Instead we followed the normal route to República de Chile hut and endured some fierce winds (80+ km/hr) on the West sides of the mountain. We found a decent amount of snow and were impressed by all the ice-covered rocks due to the strong chilly winds.

Total time for the hike, car to car, was: 5 hours, 31 minutes. We had a blast!

The rest of the pictures can be seen here.