Guadarun Raid Adventure

After an amazing week on Basse-Terre - race starts tomorrow!

Jacqueline Windh / 30.03.2013

Dave and I have spent a great nine days on Basse-Terre. It was everything we had hoped it to be: a tropical hiking holiday (with great Creole food and the nicest people you will ever find anywhere!), as well as a chance for some acclimatization to the heat and to the terrain.

Day 6 of our race will be on this island. This is the big, rugged, jungly island. Most of it is Guadelope National Park - there is just one main road that circles around Basse-Terre’s coast, where are the villages are, and a single road that crosses the centre, passing through the middle of the park. The hiking trails consist of a main north-south route atop the drainage divide, and various trails that go up ridges or river valleys from the coast to join with that main route.

This has been a tough year for me in terms of running. I have a better running base than when I ran Guadarun before (in 2010), but I have not been able to train much, with injuries or illnesses that seem to have been hitting me back-to-back for the past 15 months: achilles tendinitis, a 6-month bour of sinusitis, a knee injury - and then, this week, as everything seemed to be coming together, I got hit by a really nasty throat infection that has moved into my lungs and nose. I am over the worst of it now, but it is still sapping my energy, even in this heat.