The Del Mar a la Cima 80k
A Glimpse into South American Trail Running
Last week I wrote about DNFs. A race I should have dropped out of but didn’t was the Del Mar a la Cima 80k in December of 2016. Following is a description of the worst race performance I have ever had (maybe) but one that produced the best stories and the most exotic experience.
After graduating college in 2016 I went to live in Quito, Ecuador for 4 months with Adrienne. What a time to be alive: I got to climb numerous gigantic volcanoes, explore the Amazon, swim in raging rivers pouring out of the Andes, hang out on paradisical beaches, eat delicious food, snorkel in the Galapagos, and get lost in the Ecuadorian culture. Because I have a drive to continue improving in running forever and rarely take a break until I’m injured, I was still training pretty hard throughout all my travels.
In Quito (9,350’ above sea level), running quality was quite varied. The center of the city was Parque Carolina and Parque Metropolitana, two “Central Park”ish parks where the majority of people exercised. Parque Carolina had an outdoor track and some paved paths that people ran endless loops on, while Metropolitana had some nice singletrack and hills through the woods. I learned pretty quickly that both locations should only be visited during the day lest you want to be stabbed and/or robbed. Rucu Pinchincha towered above the city, soaring to 15,696 feet. Trails ran everywhere on its slopes and were assisted by a cable car that went mostly all the way to the summit. The other two places I ran a million times were a mountain bike system called Lumbisi, a big mountain called Ilalo, and a gravel rails-to-trails path called El Chaquinan.
One of the biggest problems with running places other than America is that public land is nonexistent. We really are amazingly lucky. The first few months of running around Quito I learned pretty quickly that I should only run in established parks, because I was chased by colossal hordes of ravenous and angry dogs, I was yelled at by people that decided to build a farm across a trail that I thought was public, I inhaled death-inducing amounts of exhaust in the poor air quality when I arrived at the end of a trail and ran through the streets, and I bonked a thousand times in the heat and altitude in places I shouldn’t have been. I even passed out in the line for extending my travel visa after running up Pichincha without water. I found a good system of running from one point to another and finding bus stops that I paid ten cents for to bring me back to the start. But mostly, I just ran out and back on El Chaquinan.
I ran the first-year SkyRunning Ecuador 32k on October 1st, because my friends directed it. It had 8,000 feet of climbing, took place way up in the sky, and I bonked very hard but still won. I always thought I was decent at dealing with altitude, but the Andes felt different-higher than the Rockies, hotter than the Rockies, and I seemed to always be malnourished and dehydrated. The prize for winning the race was an entry to Del Mar a la Cima 80k in Santa Marta, Colombia in December. So now we arrive at the race story.
Santa Marta is a party town on the northeastern coast of Colombia, and is hot as Hades. I arrived a few days before the race with Adrienne, who was running the 42k. We flew into the airport directly on the beach and just walked into town and found a hostel on the beach. Through our halting Spanish, we found out how to get to the race and I somehow ended up at the start line at 2 a.m. somewhere in the city. Here is a comparison to European races like UTMB to this race: Both have thousands of spectators partying at 2 a.m. The difference is that in Santa Marta, those thousands of people party at 2 a.m. every night, and they had no idea that there was going to be a running race through the streets of their town. This made the hype even more real, until we plunged into the jungle and out of the lights and music.
The trails out of Santa Marta are largely trails made by farmers, dogs, people walking around, or just paths macheted out of the jungle by the race director. Flagging was mixed with logging tape or private property signs. I immediately fell pretty far behind the leaders, excusing my poor fitness and heat adaptation as “pacing myself.” After stumbling around in the jungle for a few hours, me and another runner found ourselves suddenly at a gigantic raging river crossing with a log barely extending over its tumultuous waters. It was still quite dark, and the seething froth beneath us struck fear into our hearts. Was this the course? There was some tape that resembled the color of the race tape…so we decided to cross the log. Soon enough my intrepid partner fell off the log into the churning waterway, swept downstream through rocks and logs, no doubt destined to become a snack for a jaguar or a ragged pile of bones in the ocean. I watched his headlamp mark his progress, and he miraculously dragged himself out of the river about 50 feet from his unfortunate entrance. I smashed through the bushes to pull him out and witnessed quite a lot of blood pouring from his head and from several places on his legs. It was now obvious that we weren’t on course, so we returned back from whence we came, regaining the marked course about half a mile down the trail.
My amigo was obviously concussed and delirious, although the dunk in the river was probably refreshing in the already-way-too-hot jungle. I escorted him to the next aid station about 5 miles ahead, where I filled up on water and “agua de canela” (sugar water), the only things they had at this aid station. The sun began to rise over the stupendous mountains and forests around me, birds coming alive and the town of Minca waking up to greet us. I had been running for 4 hours or so and only accomplished about 20 miles, the constant uphill on technical trails destroying me slowly. Not far after the aid station I suddenly became accompanied by three dogs, this time in a non-threatening manner. One short-legged Dachshund-type hound, one Black Lab-Terrier kind of thing, and one big skinny Dalmation chose the whitest of all the participants to shepherd through the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Not long after this I completely blew up, due to the heat, my lack of fitness, and the fact that I ate about 100 calories in an uphill marathon. I walk/jogged up the interminable steepness of Cerro Kennedy, the race high point of 10,170 feet. If you don’t remember, we began at the beach. Beaches are at 0 feet. So this was a gigantic climb. In the distance I saw Pico Colon, a sacred mountain and Colombia’s highest peak at 18,700 feet. The ocean and the entire jungled slopes I had ascended spread before me like an AI-generated postcard. Even delirious me could appreciate where I was at.
The next 20 miles were almost entirely downhill, back another 10,000 feet to the beach. Every foot I lost, the air temperature rose along with the humidity. I walked downhill even more than I walked uphill, seemingly, relying on sugar water and the power of the human mind to continue moving. I came to an aid station in a small town about halfway down the mountain, the three dogs still running along with me. In search of a life in America, maybe? Couches and televisions and pampering? It seemed a spiritual experience, like these canines were my guiding angels that ignored all the other racers, villagers, volunteers. The aid station had the usual sugar water and water, and an accompanying table with…freshly cooked empanadas?? I was starving to the point of calling the police for assistance. I went to grab some empanadas and the lady providing them said “necesitas pagar.” For the layman, “you have to pay.” This was quite insane. If I had money with me I would have paid a thousand dollars for one empanada, and maybe I should have offered to clean her house in exchange for one, but instead I just took some boiling sugar water and continued my unending bumble downhill.
We now arrive at the beach, the three dogs 24 miles into their journey with me. All that lay between me and the finish line was 6 miles of sand in the blazing Caribbean sun. This took me about 2 hours; I walked slower than I would have on a long romantic walk with a lover, the time proving too much for two of my canine friends. The Dachshund and the Black Lab gave up and took shelter in the shade of the palm trees, doomed to a continued life of begging for food scraps. Who knows if they ever made it back to their farm in the mountains. I was accosted by several vendors of cocaine and marijuana, which I maybe should have partaken in to give me energy to plod along the beach. In addition, I was passed by my concussed friend, somehow smiling and running in the sun to the finish line.
Me and one of my dog friends descending the upper slopes of Cerro Kennedy
Somehow my Dalmation spirit guide and I made it to the finish line. I don’t remember much, but Adrienne was smiling in the sun as always, the cab driver didn’t let us take our new pet back to our hostel, and air conditioning and fried fish saved my life. This race was one of my worst performances but best stories, a cultural and spiritual experience in a wild wild place. South Americans are tougher than North Americans, and can subsist on sugar water and mountain energy alone. Our nice maintained trails are a privilege, our lack of humidity a blessing.
