A Beginner Finds Her Footing at Chile's Biggest Trail Race
It's 3 a.m. in the Punucapa rainforest, the temperature sits at zero, and a light rain is falling. Eighty runners stand among moss-covered evergreens and giant ferns in Chile's southern Los Ríos region, waiting to start. An Indigenous Mapuche singer offers an ancestral welcome chant over land that belongs to his people, wishing the runners safe passage up the mountains ahead.
The UTMB Torrencial in Valdivia began a decade ago with 300 local runners. This year it drew 3,000 people from nearly 30 countries, making it the largest trail running event in Latin America. Organizer Marcela Escalona says winter in Valdivia is a good place to learn to love the rain, and that the off-peak season gives runners the freedom of the rainforest. Women new to the sport, running shorter 6km and 12km distances, are the fastest-growing group.
One writer signed up for the 6km race while feeling burned out and chair-bound, drawn by the promise of facing one of the darkest nights of the year. The night before, she cried on the phone to her girlfriend, worrying about falling, freezing, or being pulled from the course. She woke at 1 a.m. to a text from her mother: don't break anything.
She ran her fastest kilometer ever, then slowed as mud swallowed her poles six inches per stride on a 350-meter climb, more than double the elevation of her local hilly park. In the darkness, navigating roots and streams, she found what she called forced mindfulness, and paused to breathe the sweet balsamic of Mañío and peppery Canelo trees. She finished at 4:25 a.m., nearly last, and wished she could keep going.
Later, soaking in a hot tub across the Cruces River from the mountain she had climbed, she spoke with Carlos, a Santiago runner who cried at his first 14km race and now runs 100km. His next goal: Mont-Blanc. She then spent days at the Huilo Huilo reserve, a Unesco-protected area of 100,000 hectares, staying in a treehouse with a waterfall cascading down its side. With mountains, sub-zero temperatures and rain now in her running wheelhouse, she has her eye on Huilo Huilo's 20km volcano race in November.