Thurs 2.30am and still working!

1pm. Shattered and still in bed!  A  rest day has been declared as I also got some preparation work for the long road to Ushuaia.

I think this is the best way to plan any rest days, not just to say every Sunday or every other such day, just  let my circumstances or any problems encountered or what seems like a 24 hour pain decide my rest days.

Last night I got a puncture as I was wheeling Nirvana into my hotel room. It was a thick thorn the length of a comb bristle in the small front tyre. There are millions of these thorns on the roads and especially in the grass shoulders! Though I always use that puncture resistant gu in my inner tubes, there is only so much punishment a tyre can take! When I checked the tyre afterwards it had about six broken thorns pricks in it. Best to change such tyres as sometimes when thorns are broken short and stuck inside the rubber they are undetectable to the searching hand, often they only resurface when the inner tube is inflated and with the subsequent pressure of rolling along the highway.

Oscar doing his gu stuff

I remember I got several punctures from cluster  thorns in just a couple of days when I was running through similar geographical terrain in Nebraska. That time a man in a truck tyre repair shop suggested the gu. I am sure this is my first flat since.

 I got a new small front tyre, inner tube with the blue gu and the same for my spare front wheel. Think I will get new tyres and sealant for the 2 big wheels also even though there is still decent thread on them as I don’t want any problems on the side of the road in the desolate south, I still got 2,500km to run here. Preparation is one of my first rules. Some people say this sealant is heavy and slows you down,I say I am not a cycle racer and slowing me down would be stuck on the side of the road running in Patagonia! Hope to do some blogging too!

 Wed. 46km Finished in Santa Rosa. Total = 22,544km for 539 road days. It was a tougher day than expected as the traffic was very heavy pushing me into the long grass for much of the day. Also a strong headwind had to be battled, however I am ticking away nicely. About 100km short of halfway down Argentina now.The length of Argentina is about the same distance as from New York to LA.

Many thanks to my great Australian friend Phil Essam for sorting Darwin.

 Readers may wonder what that was all about, well as mentioned before Michael Gillan has very kindly offered to crew for me through the Australian Outback in his brand new car, so I gotta send Nirvana on ahead as I will need her for East Timor, Indonesia and south-east Asia, not to mention 5,000km China and the Gobi desert…. Then Kazakhistan and Russia.

Do you know that out of 10 Asian countries that only tiny East Timor and Singapore along with Malaysia are the only countries that don’t pose some kind of a visa or short time or other logistic problem! No worries, I have a plan for each of the other seven countries.

After reaching Ukraine from Russia, Europe all 3,000km of it will seem like a happy canter, like the glory leg of a 5 continent relay, at least I hope so! I plan on having a little time in reserve as it has always been a dream to finish off with a little run around Ireland, to drop in and say hi and thanks to many of my good friends for their support and especially for their friendship. It’s dreams like this that keep me going, usually I have a tear in my eye when I have these day dreams as I plod along the roads of the world. I just couldn’t imagine a mad dash 70 or 80km plus days for a month or two across Europe and having to catch a last minute ferry to Dublin and then the marathon the next day. I will be keeping a very close eye on my distance required and time remaining in the last year or two!

I will finish this world run with a 5 hour marathon where it all began, at the finish line of the  the Dublin Marathon October 27th 2014 at 2.05pm. Assuming it’s still a 9am start and the extra 5 minutes are so as not to interfere with the athletes trying to break their 5 hour target.

To be honest the total distance looks like being around 48,000km as I have managed to shave off about 5,000km off the route by running north through Australia and a more direct route across central Asia. So all I need to do is run 1,000km per month average. There are some places when I can catch, like here in Argentina, Australia with the support, China where 5,000km has to be run on a 3 month visa, however I am hopeful of an extra 1 months extension and possibly Kazakhistan where perhaps depending on my final route choice route up to 3,000km may have to be run on possibly 2 double entry 30 day visas. I told you right from the start about the Asian visa nightmare But it will be overcome! Russia will be key. My current plan is to minimise it by just running an 800km corner from Kazakhistan to the Ukraine and into easy peasy Europe  on their standard and relitively easy to get 30 day standard tourist visa. Currently both Russia and Kazakhistan expect you to apply for a visa in your home country (no Kazak embassy in Dublin) so perhaps a visa time out may have to be called.

Another possibility is that when my great friend Jesper Olsen visits Siberia at the end of the month that perhaps he will be able to garner some support from Russian ultra runners, one of which emailed me support before the run even began – and hopefully a 6 month visa or even a 3 month visa may ease the Kazakhistan problems. Running in central Asia in the winter seems like the easy part of all this! I really do believe that a support vehicle is the only way to go in these long  journey runs, contary to what I wrote over a year ago – now I am finding out the hard way!

Perhaps a 3 month Chinese visa can be obtained in Hong Kong (research has uncovered that this is one of the easiest places to apply for a Chinese visa) and a short $200 round trip may have to be made from Bangkok to get that. That would also solve a Thai problem as they only issue 15 day visas from road borders and I will be arriving from Malaysia however it’s 30 days when you arrive by air, so the Thai problem of needing 6 weeks for a tough 2,000km segment along with a hopefully a 3 month Chinese visa can be sorted together when I return to the route in Thailand, all  this along with demands for onward air tickets etc, etc, the list of requirements is a nightmare… And you know one or two naysayers criticised me in almost abusive emails for leaving my route! I wonder how they would plan their world run!! What they have to say I just shrug my shoulders, laugh, it’s like water off a ducks back!

But before I even get to Asia, more research has uncovered that New Zealand is littered with narrow roads where crossing dozens of bridges could be a hazard or even forbidden as there are no pedestrian paths. In some places there is literally a foot between passing trucks!

Perhaps alternative routes will have to be considered which may take me away from the main cities and towns where the runners live, running with other runners is something I have missed here in runner lonely South America.

That’s just to put you in the picture and give an insight of just one corner of the logistics I am bogged down with as we come to the second anniversary of the run on the 25th October, the dream lives on

After almost 24 months on the road I feel I am well warmed up now and ready and eager for the next 24 months. Just like in a 48 hour race my goal was always to get through the first 24 hours in decent shape and frame of mind was always very important. I worked a lot on my mind game during my competitive career and it payed off, still paying off in fact. However these days sometimes I feel I am starting the day at hour 40 in a 48 hour race, but I know this and fight it. The mind always has to win these battles against the body. In competetion there is no room for any mind loss as the competitor may as well pack his or her bags and go home. Here on the road I can take the odd days mind defeat as its not a competition, there will always be another day even still I don’t like this to happen. I know whats going on and am in control, that’s all that matters.

It is very Interesting how the body seems to have less conflict with these incredibly demanding feats than the mind. The mind fights with itself, and only a strong will and commitment can overcome in the end.

Last time I wrote about the mind game, John Geesler, my biggest competitive rival and great friend up in St. Johnsville, NY who is an avid reader to this blog wrote back… ” So when did you get a mind Mangan, that’s news to me! ”

  We got a lot of exciting times ahead. Hoping you will stay with me for the long run home.

Thanking you, Tony

Many thanks for Barbara Churchley for sponsoring my run through La Pampa province, anyone else that wants to sponsor a meal or hotel night please see the Paypal link on the sidebar. All sponsors will be acknowledged in this blog.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2012 at 6:12 pm and is filed under jogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.