Runnig Wild in the Amazon part I

Hi everybody, this is Carlos posting on behalf of my younger sister Norma. In case you haven't heard of me It is not to late to start reading my musings in my blog powerpymes (It is in spanish but I have a handy translator in situ), anyway I will be feeding you the next weeks what Norma send me to post here because She is having so much fun running in the rain and developing blisters (ughhh¡) What causes a young woman of good looks to leave it all behind and expose yourself gratitously to anacondas and piranhas is beyond me but I think maybe Norma should start spiking her morning coffee with Ritalin just to be on the safe side on the future. Enough, down below is what she send us:

Only a few hours to the race and I am so nervous i am not sure where to begin. Brazil is a wonderful country, i was surprise of the infrastructure, the roads are in very good shape, at least the highway from the airport to Pocos de Caldas where is the start to the race.

I haven´t slept much, a bit jet lag and a bit nerves, i haven´t had much chance to think about the enormous challenge i am about to take on, that until i jumped on the plane, and it all came at once.

Someone once said that to be an ultrarunner you need short term memory, and it´s true, after the pain and the sleep deprivation all it remains are the memories of majestic trails, fantastic positive people ( you have to be positive to think "only 80K to go") but the best of all is the feeling of having accomplish something that makes you grow as a person, and ultra is a lifetime in a day.

I have had mixed feelings, I know I have trained hard and that I belong here, but since i have never done this race is hard to predict if I can finish it in under 51 hours to make my flight, that makes me a bit nervous.To make matter worse is raining hard and it will make the course unsteady and it will be impossible to avoid blisters, I will need every once of mental strength to tell my body to keep running under such pain. I could have reschedule this race and choose a different race in North America a bit later, not so close to Antarctica but I had committed to this race a few moths ago, and had a school for the blind waiting for me. I told them i will bring a donation of $1000 from Bolt Supply House, I know that i could have chosen to just mail the donation to AADV ( Associacao de Assistencia Aos Deficientes Visuales) but the main message would have been lost, i wanted to empower other races to be more involve on the places we visit, I wanted the representative of the school for the blind to stand proud in the auditorium, to know that we are a very small world.

I do promise everybody that I will run hard tomorrow, my plan is to finish in under 51 hours but as a back up plan, if I time out I will have to ask Matt Cordeu and Jasson Glass, the two Calgary kids who happen to be in Brazil on holidays who volunteer to crew me, if I time out i have to make my flight to Antarctica, in that case i can run in Argentina in 3 weeks a 250K, that way I am still keeping safe but still 100% commited to do in this, even if at the end I have to run 2000 kilometres.

I want to dedicate Brazil 135 Ultramarathon to a very special person in Calgary, nine month old Hayden who is legally blind due to optic Nerve Atrophy and CVI.