Heartbreak Hills

Tim and I spent the majority of August traveling. It was great, but incredibly detrimental to my running in so many ways. The plan was to first spend several days in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecuador with several friends who were in town from the States. Cuenca is home to the best rock climbing in Ecuador and is a beautifully renovated colonial city. It's also home to the largest and best preserved Incan ruins in the country as well as the site of an enormous and beautiful national park: Cajas. So you could say there's some cool stuff to do around Cuenca. I'd been looking forward to it all year. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived in Cuenca and that night I was struck with the worst case of gringo-belly of my life. I spent 4 days in the hotel bed. The afternoon of the 4th day I walked a few blocks in town then had to go back to bed. But that night I could eat a little bit of food so at least the next day I got to do a short day-hike in Cajas National Park. Then the following day it was time to leave for Peru.

We were going to Peru for the purpose of climbing mountains in the Cordillera Blanca. I was justifiably worried about my level of strength after not eating for so long, and knew my conditioning was probably out the door as the short day hike gave me muscle cramps. But I was feeling good and thought that as long as I was feeling good, I would recover quickly.

The Cordillera Blanca is so incredible. I had never seen anything like it. I mean, southern New Zealand is beautiful, but the mountains are usually obscured by clouds. In Peru, everything was right there. We spent two days traveling to and through Peru to get to Huaraz where we spent a full day preparing to go into the backcountry. By the time we got out there, we were going to have 4 nights camping and three full days to do what we could in the mountains. We had perfect weather--warm, sunny and dry and NO WIND. At all. We went immediately to the Ishinca valley with our sights set on Ishinca and possibly a shorter peak, Urus. After a day of rest and acclimatization, we decided to just go ahead and try for Ishinca.

Perhaps because we knew it was a long approach, we kinda motored up without taking our time or consuming plenty of calories and water. We came to a fork in the trail a little after dawn. We knew the left hand trail went to the glacier and the "normal route" but looking up at the mountain, the "normal" looked pretty freakin' steep so we chose to keep to the right and go to the other side which was clearly less steep. Hours later we were still on the approach trail, low on water, and I knew I was going to bonk hard, soon. We sat for awhile with the glacier and our route in sight, but we decided to turn back. It was the right decision but it broke my heart. Right then and there it felt like I had lost everything because of my illness. I was exhausted and felt horrible and guilty and so sad that I didn't have the energy to keep going. I mentally counted the miles I put in this summer working on my base so I could soon begin my training plan and I felt the loss of all the acclimatization we did in Ecuador before this trip. Of course, altitude also makes me a bit emotional and maybe I was suffering that as well.

In the end, we turned back and committed to trying a mountain a tad shorter and a little more accessible. And we did it. And we had a great time. And I did it. And I didn't bonk or cry too much or give up. And now I even feel a little proud of the accomplishment. It's more like a big step back onto the path.

I started running again as soon as we got home. It's been hard. I'm fully starting over again which probably pushes real training to November. But I'm not ready to give up on my goal. I want to stick with it. It's just soooooooo hard to start all over when I was doing so well.