This season`s Copper Canyon run consisted of a marathon from the deep canyon town of Batopilas, up river on a beautiful rolling trail into Tarahumara country, and the Tarahumara settlement of Munerachi, located in a winding side canyon, then looping back to Batopilas. The cool morning temperature of around 50, warmed up to 75 degrees on this typical December day in the deep canyon country of La Sierra Madre.

One lone runner strapped on the sandals for this run.

While my time of 4:21 was nothing to brag or write home about, for me, this was a significant personal victory. Seven weeks earlier, I had sustained a nasty foot/ankle injury while adventure running with a pack from the train station located in la sierra above the west rim of the Urique canyon, down into the 6,200 foot deep canyon town of Urique, where the December race was scheduled to be, and the March 5, 2006 race will occur. Being in the middle of nowhere, and having no choice but to arrive in Urique, I hobbled the last 10 miles into town. Unable to lift my black-blue, elephant-like swollen foot/ankle, I had no idea if/when I would be healed enough to be able to walk the hundreds of miles with tens of thousands of feet of vertical climb and descent required to meet face to face with the people to organize the race. I could not give any specific details to interested stateside runners, who understandably, require concrete information; so, I canceled outside participation into the December run.

While running from Batopilas to Munerachi on this recent Sunday, December 4 run, I was acting as a messenger, fueled by the message that I was delivering. Thanks to the help of our friend and race sponsor, Michael French, I have recently purchased 4 1/4 tons of high quality maiz-corn, to be delivered to Tarahumara country this Wednesday, December 7, as korima-sharing, to the settlements of the runners of our last 4 races. The December run for the Tarahumara runners, will consist of an easy run into Batopilas, to the Conasupo market, to help me load the 85 costale-50 kilo sacks of corn into the trucks to deliver to Munerachi, where the Raramuri will load it onto burros to bring to their various settlements, to help sustain the people and celebrate the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, on December 12, as well as Christmas season. The word is that there will be a short 6-10 hour traditional ball race on a high mountain mesa, overlooking the various winding side canyons that make up the beautiful and vast Batopilas canyon, on Sunday, December 11--followed by all night dancing. This will be far from any political or profit based world strife and conflict. For this night, the Tarahumara, and I hope that all of us, will continue to run free.

Hope to see you March 5, 2006.

Caballo Blanco