I’ve recently spent some time reflecting on what I consider my favourite trail race to be and come up with a pile of options. Most are contenders from the perspective of how much they have had a lasting impact on my life but without any doubt, the one which rises high above the rest is the 2013 Caballo Blanco Ultramarathon since its story started years before I ran it and its echo is louder today than ever before.
Back in the late 1990s, I used to watch the Marathon des Sables on Transworld Sport each year and was amazed at the idea that runners ran approximately 246Km across the Sahara Desert over six stages. It took until 2006 for me to post my own entry and 2008 saw me cross the finish line exhausted and emotional but above all very proud.
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| Marathon des Sables 2008 |
During that race, I ran three stages with an insane Irishman called Des and in 2010, I headed over to Australia to meet up with him and run the Blue Mountains 100km North Face event. It was there I got chatting to a runner wearing Vibram Five Fingers and the subject of Christopher MacDougal’s book “Born to Run” came up. Back in Sydney, I bought myself a pair of Five Fingers and the shop assistant pointed me in the direction of “Born to Run” again. With already full bags and a plane to catch, I made note to read it at a later date.
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| Down under at The North Face 100km in the Blue Mountains |
A year or so later, I finally picked up a copy and immediately became captivated by the story. Shortly after that, I exchanged some messages with Micah True (Caballo Blanco) on Facebook and the next bit was clear – a journey to run in the Copper Canyons alongside the Raramuri was in the works. Initially, I had hoped to go there in 2012 but ended up on a ski mountaineering trip out in the French Alps instead.
Sadly, on my return to Scotland I read the news that Micah had not returned from a run in the Gila Wilderness and tragically a few days later I found out that his body had been found whilst I was running deep in the Cairngorm mountains. A year later, in late February 2013, I did make the trip down to run in Urique. The trip started in El Paso, Texas where a group of adventurous trail runners whose homes were scattered all across the world met up for a two-day road trip down into the canyons on the ‘Diego Express.’ On the first morning of the trip, we were meeting for breakfast in a small diner and one of the first people I met was an excitable Canadian lass called Sally whose enthusiasm was infectious. Over the next few days, she and I ate together and spent a fair bit of the hike down into the canyon discussing our lives and our ideas of a perfect day, which for both of us involved trail time, pizza and beers. Approaching Urique on foot was a hugely important part of the trip since it mirrored the approach by the original Mas Loco runners who made the journey down into the Canyons plus the local Raramuri runners all approach by foot. As we started on our 25 mile journey, we stopped at a bridge before crossing a river and Luis Escobar recounted the story of when Micah told them that if they were happy with their lives, not to cross the bridge since their lives would never be the same. A few of us gently laughed to which Luis commented, “yeah…that’s what we did as well”. Before we set foot on the bridge, we also took the Mas Loco pledge: “If I get hurt, lost or die, it’s my own damn fault.” In the days leading up to the main race, folks met for a range of activities which included a sweat lodge ceremony, kids race, mass cookout and the most poignant - an emotional run and ceremony to spread Micah’s ashes in Los Alizos. The whole experience was about far much more than just a trail race.
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| Ultra Marathon Caballo Blanco 2013 |
This year, after a road trip in a dinosaur van through Death Valley and Yosemite along with Sally, I spent a weekend at the Born to Run Ultra Marathon, a Mas Loco reunion hosted each May by Luis Escobar at a cattle ranch in California. Seeing folks for the first time since Mexico was initially a bit daunting – what if everything had changed and the connection was as real as I remembered it being? Would the magic of the canyons transfer to a ranch in California? Immediately after the Mexican run, I had made some pretty bad choices in life with a disastrous move from Glasgow to London and taking on a job I couldn’t do both of which ended with a rapid return to Scotland with my tail between my legs and a huge loss in confidence. In a way, reconnecting with folks whose lives I admired and respected was helping to finally move on from those mistakes which had been haunted me on a daily basis for ten months.
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| Mas Loco - heading to Urique in 2013 and at Born to Run 2014 |
Within minutes of arriving at the ranch, all doubts fell into the dirt and we hugged, chatted, danced, drank, ran (in my case a beer mile, a Mexican ball race and a 50km trail race) and celebrated what it meant to be a Mas Loco. The result was an experience so good that I signed up for the 2015 Born to Run as soon as registration opened and have planned to go back to Urique, Mexico for the Ultra Marathon Caballo Blanco again in 2016.
So why was the 2013 Caballo Blanco Ultra Marathon my most memorable trail race? The run was everything I could have possibly imagined but what made it memorable was the people, the connections which have subsequently been maintained and since then ...it's the shared experience that counts the most.
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| Post beer mile celebrations with Sally and Mas Loco Mike Miller |
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| Sally and myself coming into the finish of the 2014 Born to Run 50km Ultra |
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