www.arareko.net

I had a fun weekend with friends at Iztaccíhuatl. Saturday was about enjoying a short 14 km run from Paso de Cortes to La Joya, then doing reforestation work to complete the required trail work for the upcoming Wasatch Front 100 and Bear 100 ultras in September. It was a great time spent with a lot of people who attended the event, not only friends. We worked until a huge rainstorm arrived to La Joya and we had to get shelter for the rest of the afternoon.

On Sunday early morning we drove to San Rafael and ran up to Chalchoapan hut and back, which is the same course of El Doblete race. The weather during the day was somewhat good, cloudy but nothing really threatening. It was a great training and we managed to complete the 24.5 km loop with its 2,200 meters of climb and get back to the car 15 minutes before 7 hours. A massive rainstorm followed immediately thereafter. Lucky runners…

Rest of the photos are here or in the slideshow below:

Oh yeah, last night I attended Slayer‘s concert with Octavio and friends. This time, instead of 3 separate dates at a small venue, the band played a single concert at a big venue: Palacio de los Deportes. Our estimate is that around 10,000 people got together to headbang at the evil tunes of one of the most iconic metal bands in the world.

It was a very long gig, for Slayer’s standards, but brutally intense from start to end. We got immersed into a relentless mosh-pit that didn’t gave room for catching some breath. The band knows how to do their thing and they do it without any kind of pose, without kidding or fooling around.

The setlist was really great, with many of the classic songs as well as some from their latest album. No real “encore”, no rests for letting us ask for more. They played incessantly in one of the best big metal concerts I’ve ever been

Just returned from a short (and adventurous) trip to the USA. During the week I visited the Synacor office in Buffalo to do some work, plan future projects and hang around with friends. Always a great time with them. Also managed to log some good runs around downtown but also a great trail run with my good friend Dan at the muddy/rooty trails of Chestnut Ridge Park outside of the city, all of them in Vibram FiveFingers

For the weekend, I flew back to Charlotte to rent a car and drove up to Raleigh to visit Poli, Javier and the kids. On Sunday, I ran one lap (12.5 miles) of the Umstead 100 course at the William B. Umstead State Park, again in VFF’s. A beautiful place but definitely not my type of trail for running 100 miles (where are the mountains?!). The rest of the time was to hang around the city and its quiet suburbs with the family. It was a short but sweet time together

All photos can be seen here or in the slideshow below:

I was supposed to get another weekend of hard training after last week’s 100 miler, but instead I opted to pack a some quality sessions during the week and leave the weekend for some real resting: lots of sleep and hanging around with Mokka.

Today I had another great workout and I’m planning to continue the trend during the week, tapering a little bit before the weekend so I can get to do something bigger then. Overall, I’ve been feeling great with testing my recovery and with regards to my allergy. Hopefully the rainy season is just around the corner, so we’ll see how things go then…