Intense run today. After waking up in the hostel I checked Intellicast for weather and watched the Central American radar for a few minutes. I was a bit worried about temperatures at altitude and what to wear. Summit temps showed 3C so I felt it would be fairly warm. All in all, it was a perfect day to do this! Had a great breakfast with a lot of Costa Rican hikers. They were all hiking to base camp at 11,200 feet and staying overnight to summit the next day. If you live at sea level a hike to 12,500 is something to think about. I was most worried mosst about my fitness since I'd ran a marathon three days ago, getting lost, and what to wear. I had about 8,000 feet to climb in 12 miles, and then back down.
The run up was awesome. Costa Ricans are by far the fittest people in Central or South America, certainly Mexico. On the trail they were fast and very well equiped. I saw no Europeans or Americans at all today. I really got my butt kicked today the entire time above 10,000 feet. That's not that high! I was dying and it took a lot of work especially above 11,000. It may have been a combination of legs and altitude. I ran through base camp about 2.5 hours and headed up. The sun was blazing on top. I could write so much about a trail run like this. It's incredible. But I'm so tired tonight. This took me just over 6 hours to complete and I killed myself to even do that. I ran out of water with 6k left. A 60 ounce camelback is just not enough for six hours of running.
    
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