Off to Peru

Tomorrow I have a huge opportunity to travel Peru as a part of Idaho Condor's annual Medical Expedition. I will be down there for two weeks, providing medical care to the incredible people who live in the mountainous villages of central Peru. This is a rare opportunity as a student to be part of this experience, the demands of most programs do not allow students to be gone for a number of days in a row, but I am lucky enough to be part of a very understanding program who sees this as the amazing learning opportunity that it will be. I am also very excited to be part of the Idaho Condor organization, it is one of few medical humanitarian groups focuses on being sustainable. They work very closely with local medical providers in order to actually make a long term impact on the health care status of the individuals we will be seeing. If you want more info on what Idaho Condor does and how you could become involved click here.

The trip to Peru gets even sweeter when I take into account the fact that I am going to get to run a fair amount while I am down there. I have been in touch with the good folks at inca runners that help organize running in and around Cusco, Peru as well as trips of the Inca trail. Unfortunately I found them a little late in the process of planning this trip and won't be able to run everything that I hoped, but none the less I hope to be able to get in some good runs with them in the small amount of free time that I have. I plan on posting more info about inca runners win I get back but in the meantime you can check them out here.

On the home front things have been going extremely well. I have running more than ever before, and seeing pretty much constant improvement. I have tried to be very cautious in how I have been training so that my body can adjust to the increased work load. It seems to be going better than expected at this point. I had a great opportunity to run with Ty Draney of the Patagonia Ultrarunning Team last weekend. It was awesome to get out for a long run, Ty came down to run on some of the newly dried out dirt, unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. It snowed the entire time we were out, we ran some dry dirt, some tacky clay, some sloppy mud, a lot of trails with a skiff of snow, and a section of mid-calf to knee deep snow. Even though the weather wasn't ideal it was still wonderful run. The next day my daughter Brynlee dressed up as a spring fairy to coax some warmer weather into the region. She must have been convincing enough because all this week I have been running in shorts and a tee shirt on lots of trails that have dried out since Ty was here. Below is a picture of the very convincing spring fairy.