“Tandilia” race and some other unsorted thoughts

Okay, despite my suboptimal shape and my increased weight, I survived the “Tandilia” race :P It was probably one of the toughest race I’ve ever participated to, but also one of the most beautiful ones. As I previously told, we had to run 11.111 km through the whole city from one end to the other, following a REALLY hilly track (at least ~250m altitude both up and downwards, with one steep ascent of 100m). Fortunately almost all the inhabitants were outside making an great atmosphere, which was very helpful to forget the pain and “enjoy” the sightseeing tour!

Out of 1500 participants I was able to finish 190th in the overall classification and 85th in my age-group with a time of 48:38 (4:25 per km). To give you a small idea of the extremely high level of this race: the winner needed 35:00 (3:10 per km) to accomplish the race, which is simply incredible regarding the difficulty of the track, and the first woman had a time of 41:15 (3:45 per km). But I was told that both of them were Olympic athletes in London ….

Apart from that everything is still going at the best. Until now I had really good results in my exams, and the very last one is on next Wednesday. However, I haven’t totally realized yet that my stay here in Tandil is almost over and I should start thinking about what to do and where to go next, but since I have always made good experiences with being spontaneous, why should I change that relaxing way of life? Continue reading

Tandil – lugar soñado

For everyone still living on the northern hemisphere and complaining about the cold winter arriving: I have to warn you that this post may cause some serious depression, because we had more than 25 degrees Celsius almost every day during this week. I have made use of those sunny days to take some photos while going out for running (much training since the “Tandilia” race is on Sunday 18th) and uploaded some of them at the end of this post. I hope you can at least get a small impression of how beautiful Tandil really is ….

This is true at least as long as there are no protests against the (in my point of view very arrogant, now that I understand Spanish much better) president Christina Kirchner and her government, for instance like yesterday. The so-called “8N” (the “N” stands for November) demonstration didn’t only fill Buenos Aires’ streets with up to one million persons, also here in Tandil the whole central place was incredibly full of people! Concerning the different political reasons for these protests I’ll just refer to some articles from British newspapers:

The Telegraph: Hundreds of thousands protest against Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner
The Guardian: Argentina protests: up to half a million rally against Fernández de Kirchner
Mirror News: Argentines take to the streets in biggest anti-government protest in a decade

Continue reading