Continent 3 – 250k Atacama Desert 250k – Daily Recaps
Dear desert diary no. 3…
ha mmmm I have no idea how I thought that was so funny at race one… anyway I won’t be leading in with that anymore… way too cringe.
Well ten days in San Pedro flew by so quickly so I can imagine this week is going to go even faster. It’s nice to think I only need to amp myself up for essentially 5 big days so I am actually happy about the new layout of the race now (241k in 5 days) then a rest day and the final day.
So today began at 6am for me, I woke up at the hotel and was feeling pretty ehh so decided to jump into the pool outside my room to wakeup. All the volunteers were starting to flow into the hotel to get organised and I’ll paint the picture for you in regards to the weather… everyone had about 3 layers on haha yep it was prettttyyyyy chilly.
Tony the head of volunteers who has been at every race with me this year said he didn’t even need to look to see who the crazy person was swimming in the freezing pool haha he just knew it’d be me. My response to everyone’s comments was ‘wakey wakey’. I then packed my bags, went to breakfast, we had the briefing at 9am and then at 10am we had mandatory bag checks.
HAPPY DAYS!! My pack weight was only 7.5kg, this is a personal best for me! Haha lets just say I am glad it was the bag being weighed and not me haha… I have some burgers to run off this week! 😛
Ben, fellow aussie competitor and I then went into town to grab some pizzas for dinner at camp night 1 and at 230pm we were off. It was a 2 hour bus ride out to the camp and I was beside a 28 year old South African girl who I met last night, she is here with her mum. They are hilarious, they are doing the race together but are worried they will bicker and one of them will jet off so they have bought a rope to tie themselves together haha… they have given themselves 7metres in rope length. Can’t wait to see how this goes!
Camp is amazing the scenery is unreal, the biggest attraction is my shoes haha it is some light weight padded mat cut into the shape of my feet with some Velcro over the top haha they have been photographer about ten times already.
So it is 530pm here at camp 1 and it is nice and warm still but apparently the temp will drop to zero or more tonight.
Alright time to clock off, I am going for a walk with Alec to checkout the rainbow valley.. 1k walk.. better be amazing haha
Day 1 is just 36km’s through canyons I think and we kick off at 8am.
I am feeling really good and ready to go.
Thanks Fiona and Kim for the emails already I totally loved arriving at camp one to some messages.
Keep them coming Fiona haha.
My biggest worry is my lip is already slightly blistered… I will be overdosing on the zinc all week.
JB xx
