Integration into local sporting activities: 3 km ‘night’ run in Ushuaia.

Staying in a hostel makes you meet a lot of people from all over and sometimes they can become great friends who inspire you to do great things. In all this time living in Ushuaia I met a lot of people who helped me to discover things I like to do that I didn't know about. One of them was going for a run, something I did very rarely in the last time. After having my legs quite used to trekking, I decided to go further and sign up for a race in the city. Everything went well that day, but I can't say the same about the next day .

During my stay in El Bolsón, a fellow volunteer and I had signed up overnight for a small 3 km street race. This was totally impulsive and not at all premeditated, but we still went and managed to run without stopping for a bit. But in the following days, the muscle pain in my legs lasted for almost a week and it was horrible. Once in Ushuaia, I met Diana, a guest at the hostel who came with the idea of running a 3 km race similar to that one. I thought it would be a good idea to do it, but this time I took care to train a bit earlier .

This race was ‘easy’ in terms of Diana, who runs up to 12km in the mountains, so that also encouraged me to go. It was a free race organised by the municipality of Ushuaia, with a ‘night race’ theme because it was at 9 PM. However, in the spring at the end of the world at that time it's still daylight, so ‘night’ was just a figure of speech. But it was great that it's so late and everything is so clear in the sky, I loved that .

As for the race, there were two modalities: 3 km participative and 8 km competitive. The one we chose was the lower category and included a 30-block circuit along the main avenues of Ushuaia. Although I had trained a little, this was not enough to sign up for the longer section. I hike and walk up to 30km a day all the time, but I know that running takes a different kind of training, so it's best to take it one step at a time .

My run was smooth and it took me about 18 minutes to cover the 3 km of the race. It was very exciting to run all that way with the race people while the Ushuaia sky was just starting to get completely dark. When the whole event was over, with the 8 km course also finished, there was a prize giving and raffle. I'm not a very lucky person for these things so obviously I didn't win anything, but I stayed until the end to see if I could make it .

As this time my preparation before this race was different from El Bolsón, I thought I would come out of it with no muscle pain, but I was wrong. The muscle pain after this race also lasted a few days until I was able to recover properly. It is obvious that my trekking legs are not the same as my running legs, so I have to be careful. After this, running even a little bit per week became a habit for me: I don't know if I will ever run 12 km in the mountains like Diana, but at least I keep myself in shape in case the opportunity ever arises .

source