Patagonia as Method

Why I started

I started running in 2013 looking for exactly that, a space to be in nature. I also discovered that the sport gave me two things I did not expect: an excuse to travel, and moments to meditate and reflect while moving.

My first event was a dunes race on beach sand. Soon after the road races came the first trail races, and since then the list has grown to adventure races through mountains, hills, lakes, rivers and sea; several half-Ironman events; a ten-kilometre swim from river to sea; and swims in lakes in the middle of winter with a group of cold-water swimmers.

Chosen cold

I choose winter on purpose. The cold makes the challenge bigger, and that is what I am looking for: to put myself in uncomfortable situations and go through them. It is the most honest way I know to train my head for the challenges one does not choose.

Two sports, two heads

Over the years I understood that I was practising two different sports, and that both were teaching me something I later used at work. Trail and open water are sports of collaboration: in a mountain race or in a ten-kilometre swim between river and sea, the one in front waits, the one with strength pulls the one without, and nobody finishes alone. Triathlon is the opposite: hyper-competitive, against the clock and against yourself.

I learned to move between the two and to know which one each moment asks for. When a team needs to give its maximum effort, I bring the triathlon head; when a complex situation is only solved if everyone pulls together, I bring the trail and cold-water head. These are analogies I have used with my teams for years, and they work because they are true: I lived them.

What really matters

I am not a professional runner and results were never the point. What stayed with me from each event is the experience: the months of preparation beforehand, the race strategy you put together and the mountain or the water takes apart, and above all the people. The friendships I built along the way, in stage races, in crossings and in winter swims, are the most valuable thing the sport has given me, and they are what keeps me signing up for the next one.

Many of these events I share with my family, so that the younger ones connect little by little with nature and sport while we travel together. I still train today: gym, running, swimming and strength, almost every day. Not to compete with anyone, but because it is what keeps me in balance.

The journey