The day has been a whirlwind of media frenzy… just imagine it, a race that has been on the calendar for several years suddenly is transformed by Skyrunning with an invitation to the worlds best ultra runners. The race is literally a who is who of ultra running and funnily enough, even some runners are out in the Canaries and are not racing; Anton Krupicka being one of them!

This morning, Marcus Warner from Ultra168 and myself went out for an hours run. This was after just literally a few hours sleep and long long days of travelling, meetings, press conferences and photo shoots.

At 0900 we returned back to the hotel to meet up for a group run. As planned, the run assembled… Kilian Jornet, Sebastien Chaigneau, Andy Symonds, Anna Frost and the list goes on. What an opportunity. Run with the best and luckily they had an 80k the next day, so, the pace was manageable. Everybody had a camera, film crews everywhere, cars following us and then you had people like myself sprinting up the road to take photos and then sprinting to catch up.

What impresses me is the media personality that is Kilian. So generous of his time, so media savvy and a great ambassador. He is just coming off the ski season and I guess he may well not be run fit but nobody is discussing that. His talent is without question.

But the other impressive thing is the Salomon machine behind him, Greg Vollet team manager is a consummate professional. Understated, quiet, thoughtful but a great tactician. The support that the other Salomon staff bring is also incredible. It makes the other sponsored runners and teams seem almost like amateurs and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. Salomon are forging a new direction for the sport and are leading the way. The product development, constant tweaking to equipment and understanding the needs of each runner is inspiring to watch… you see hand grips being adjusted to fit by product development guy, Serge Chapuis. You also see new clothing being distributed to the runners for the race – featherweight windproof jackets that weigh 3oz’s. They get tested on the trail, the runners feedback, it gets tweaked and adjusted and then at some point it hits the shelves.

In comparison I bumped into Anton Krupicka, Geoff Roes, Joe Grant, Mike Wolfe and Dakota Jones in a group outside the press room at 11am. They have all just slept for 12 hours after long travelling days. They are relaxed and casual. On the suggestion of Bryon Powell from iRunFar we hold an impromptu round table with Bryon, Marcus and myself asking questions – you can listen to this here

This group of Americans are the established hierarchy of ultra running and they ‘just want to run’. They are very much free spirits who love each others company, who love running the trail and love running in new places. But they have no backing at the race… they are self sufficient and adapting to new surroundings. They are relaxed and unworried. We press them about the future of running and how it will change. They all acknowledge that change is coming and that the sport is getting bigger. Certainly they can see that Skyrunning are pushing a new frontier… they quite rightly say that although the Transvulcania La Palma is being pushed as the race of the decade, they also say; yep! this is one incredible field but so is Western States this year, then UTMB… however, the Transvulcania has the most stacked field I have seen for some time and the media frenzy reflects this!

A group photo taken at midday posted to Facebook took minutes and minutes to ‘tag’ it had so many ‘names’ in it.

An afternoon of relaxation by the runners was compensated for by the media room being a frantic place of editing, writing, Tweeting and Facebooking. This is the world we live in now. We can get the news and the stories out pretty much immediately, well, almost immediately! The wifi at the hotel is under serious stress and what should take 5 mins can take an hour. It’s frustrating but the patient and determined profit.

I actually managed to edit and put together a last minute podcast to give the listeners and the curious an opportunity to hear what the American contingent had to say pre race. Yes the audio may not be perfect but that isn’t the point… between us, and by us I mean Bryon Powell, Marcus Warner and James Hallett from GoTrail means that we have come together to cover the english speaking segment of the World – Marcus representing Australia, Bryon America, James South Africa and obviously myself for the UK. It’s a great step and one I have loved being involved in.

This collaboration will become even more important for tomorrow, race day! It turns out that it is impossible to cover the whole race as the course is so demanding. Apparently it can take 2-3 hours to reach the high point! Therefore we have split ourselves over the course to bring together our feeds and provide a feed of how the race unfolds.

Finally, in the early evening, Greg Vollet from Salomon assembled his runners and gave them a motivational talk with audio/ video demonstration. From the side lines the American runners looked on with mixed emotions. For them it is just running but I also think they also had some envy of what the Salomon runners received and the attention that they receive. Nikki Kimball certainly wouldn’t mind that level of attention.

I could go on and say how we had a good laugh at how Anton and Geoff took the mickey out of Anna Frost on how heavy her ‘fuel belt’ was… or I could try to explain how Anton gets 10 gels, a space blanket and 500ml bottle in those little shorts that he wears.

Enjoy the race!