Our running adventure guides and founders
Cristina and I, Pablo, we share our passion for our trail running adventures. We’ve built this whole thing, NomaTrails, from the ground up, fueled by a simple idea: running isn’t just about speed or medals. It’s about connection. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love to chat about this stuff.
Racing limits running: the true meaning of running
January 1, 2018 by Pablo Rodriguez and Laura Schwecherl
Chi Running, Costa Brava, Runner Testimonial
What is running really about? Beyond Racing Limits
We’re all missing the point sometimes, aren’t we? There’s a reason we run, and it’s not always to make a fool of ourselves in front of our buddies. For us, it’s about getting back to the roots, moving through the world the way our ancestors did.
I’m going to make a statement: wake up, runners! Don’t you feel like hamsters in a wheel sometimes?
I recognized that training for a long race wasn’t something I enjoyed doing. The stress of devoting so much time on a single race was too much for me to bear. I liked running for the majority of my adolescence, but marathon training ruined that love.
I’m not out on the road to prove anything to anyone, including myself. I simply do it because it is a part of who I am.
Is running equal to racing or is there something else? What makes runners “equal”? Often, it’s their excuses about why they didn’t get a better time in their last marathon. I’ve seen it countless times, and honestly, it breaks my heart a little. We’re so focused on the clock, we forget the journey.
There are a lot of people who train for a marathon and secretly despise it.
After years of complete sedentarism, I decided to start running again in 2005. My perspective on running at the time was similar to that of the majority of people. Running equals Racing, so I decided to start training for a half marathon in Budapest, and as part of my training, I competed in a mountain race, climbing up and down a mountain. It was okay, but it wasn’t *it* yet. I felt the pull of something more, something deeper than just beating a time.
The World is Waiting When Racing Limits Running Are Gone
We’re not about speed here. If you can run a marathon in under two hours, fantastic! But that’s not our focus. For us, running isn’t about speed, it’s about something far better: exploring the world. We use our bodies as a means of transportation, carrying us to incredible places. This philosophy is at the heart of NomaTrails. We don’t just run; we traverse territories, discovering new places every single day, just like our ancestors did. It’s an exploration, a way to truly connect with the earth beneath our feet. This is how we push past the idea that racing limits running, and find true freedom.
Take Sicily, for example. Our guide, Pasquale, he talks about it. We start by the sea, then we push inland, through the rural heart of the island. Imagine passing through these old mountain villages, not climbing the peaks directly, but weaving through the valleys, finding those “weak points” in the terrain, as Pasquale says. From there, we drop back down towards the sea, maybe sleeping in a place like Isnello, where you can practically see the water from your window. Then, another stretch takes us above Cefalù, a town that just drips with history. The coast there, it just plunges into the sea. Sometimes, the land is just too rugged, too wild, and we have to jump in a vehicle for a quick transfer. But even then, it’s just a short hop to Cefalù for a well-deserved swim in the Mediterranean. It’s not about the clock; it’s about the journey and the stories we collect.
Stop Making Excuses – Embrace the Journey
There is no point in comparing yourself to others, not even in comparing yourself to yourself. We all have our own path. We’ve seen people come on our trips, sometimes couples who were struggling, and they leave completely transformed. I remember one couple on a Costa Rica trip; they were married, but not to each other. By the next year, they were married to each other! It sounds wild, but these trips, they change you. They strip away the noise and bring you back to what’s real. That’s the power of leaving the racing limits running behind.
It’s about the Adventure, stupid!
It’s not about how fast you get there, but how. It’s about the feeling of the dust under your feet, the taste of a shared meal, the conversations that happen when you’re truly present. That’s what we chase.
At a certain point in our lives, we all become a little slower, but our resistance increases, and remains that way for many years. Running is the most human activity of all, and it has nothing to do with competing. It’s about being in the moment. I remember one morning in Morocco, waking up at 3 AM in the desert. We ran for two hours, just Abdu and me, through the sand, under a sky so full of stars it felt like you could touch every single one. Then, we stopped, just as the sun began to paint the horizon. That sunrise, after two hours of moving in the quiet darkness, it was a moment I’ll never forget. That’s the kind of moment we create for our small groups.
Using this ability to transport our body through running is a true gift, a blessing of nature. Denying ourselves the possibility of going out there and enjoying the world because we are obsessed with improving a mark in a competition that takes place on terrain where our body was not designed to work, that’s an immense nonsense. Especially considering that this obsession often leads to injuries that could end our ability to run altogether. We need to respect our bodies and the natural environment.
The world is calling you: nature, mountains, rivers, real people.
The world is a wonderful place, but it doesn’t reveal itself on a gym treadmill. It reveals itself when you step into the unknown. I remember one of the most extraordinary days of my life in Morocco. We were running in the middle of nowhere, heading towards a place I didn’t even know. We had to trust Abdu completely. We were traversing Toubkal, the second highest mountain in North Africa, and then suddenly, we stumbled upon this incredible, beautiful valley. It was five and a half hours in the *opposite* direction from where the tourist buses go from Marrakech. We were truly off the map, in a place where people live the way they did 500 years ago, speaking a language, Berber, that I’ve been trying to learn for nine years. You feel like you’re time traveling.
Then, after days of running with our backpacks, we came to this deep canyon. We saw a family there, a girl and her donkey, working by an irrigation channel. They invited us for tea. Our kids, they’re little monsters sometimes, but this girl, she just ran off, found some wood, and made a fire for us. We sat, shared tea, and connected with these incredible human beings. It wasn’t about the miles or the speed; it was about the shared humanity, the unexpected moments that truly change you. That’s what happens when you let go of racing limits running and embrace the journey.
Running has given me some of the happiest moments of my life, when I was alone on a mountain, connected with that moment, with that place, and with myself. It’s a feeling you just can’t get from a race bib.
What is the point of everything if we are not able to do what our body was designed for in the way it was designed? That is, to meet the need to transport ourselves long distances without knowing what would happen at the end of the day. This primal need, this exploration, it’s in our DNA. For more on the history of human running, you might check out Wikipedia’s entry on running. Or, for a deeper dive into how running connects us to our past, there’s a great book by Christopher McDougall, “Born to Run.” The iRunFar website also has some fantastic articles on trail running philosophy.
The need to know for sure every detail of everything that happens in our lives destroys ancient mechanisms that exist in our brain. Uncertainty is our natural state. That is when we really exist, in the fight against the disintegration of oneself. Running brings us closer to ourselves, to that animal that we are, Homo Sapiens Sapiens. This is the true freedom, far beyond any racing limits running could impose.
