The day before the race was almost as long and hectic as the day of the race. I chose to write the review of this day separate from the actual race report.
Paula and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and made some oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. Our plan was to drive the pickup to the El Porvenir entrance then to let Abigail drive on to Merida where she would meet with Simeon for the Merida ascent. Some of the runners decided to catch a ride with us to climb up to the waterfall in San Ramon (near Merida). We all piled into the pickup and headed out toward the Maderas side of the island.
Paula, Ebelio and I hopped off at El Porvenir and began marking the course up Maderas. It was fairly warm and humid on the first part of the climb, but as we got higher, the cloud forest became very chilly and rainy. Paula had never experienced a cloud forest and was entranced with the terrain vegetation. We made it into the crater and decided to climb out toward Merida to meet up with Abigail and Simeon. We made it through the jungle gym before meeting up with Abigail and Simeon. Simeon is one of the original guides on Volcan Maderas. He has blazed many of the trails on the volcano and has been part of several search and rescue operations in the past 25 years.
Because of the mud, it took us much longer to get down than I thought it would. At this point we were starving, seven hours of heavy hiking with only a Hammer Gel can really get to you. We ate at Hacienda Merida and waited for the runners to pick us up in the truck .
Once we arrived back to Moyogalpa, there was no time to rest, we took a shower and headed out to pick supplies up for the race. All of the fresh Aid Sation food (bananas, oranges, tamales) had arrived and we needed to sort that out for delivery that night. Paula and I headed up to pick up cookies for the kids race loaded the volunteer cell phones with prepaid minutes. By the time we got back to IBESA, the pre-race meeting had begun without us. I jumped into the pre-race meeting and briefed the runners on the course. The runners were anxious to get to bed but the pre-race dinner came late (nothing is on time in Nicaragua, especially on an island). After the runners left, we busied ourselves with loading up the water and organizing all of the aid station supplies into the truck. At midnight Paula, Ebelio, Josh Barnwell (a volunteer from USA) and I headed out toward the Maderas side of the island (again) to deliver supplies for the aid stations.
Josh and Ebelio were to spend the night near the El Porvenir trailhead so they could get up to the crater with supplies for the Maderas Crater aid station. At midnight we could not organize any lodging for them, so they ended up staying in hammocks. It was pretty cold that night and Ebelio was already tired for his climb up Maderas that morning. I cannot stress how amazingly dedicated the volunteers were for this years event, they overcame a lot of personal pain and discomfort to make sure the runners had what they needed.
Paula and I finished our aid station deliveries at almost 1:30 a.m. and headed back to IBESA for our 45 minutes of sleep. We had to be up by 3:00 a.m. to feed the runners breakfast and to start the race at 4:00 a.m. At this point we had accepted the fact we were delirious and we were ok with it.
I do not know if we had a shower, I do not know if I slept, but I was exhausted.
