Ricardo Mejia, Mexico’s reputed King of the Mountain, turned out to be the man of the day at Ajijic’s 16th annual Chupinaya Mountain Race, capturing first place in the main contest and also standing in the limelight as the event’s athlete-of-honor.
Still recovering from a recent back injury, Mejia hadn’t arrived with intentions of taking on the arduous 13.8 kilometer run for the hills, but rather to appear for a special homage acknowledging his life-long accomplishments as a mountain runner. “I got wrapped up in the excitement once I got here,” he remarked in explaining his last-minute change of heart to enter the race for a fourth time.
The decision paid off. The scrappy athlete from the State of Mexico finished the savage contest in one hour, 28 minutes and 30 seconds, coming in more than four minutes ahead of his closest competitor.
The top female runner in the Chupinaya long race was Marcela Camarena Sanchez of Tonala, who clocked 2h03’03’’ to repeat the first place standing she earned in 2010.
The first man across the finish line in the competition’s easier 6.5 km. recreational race was Efren Cedeño Garcia, with a time of 33’35’’. The top female runner on the short course was Eva Ramirez Lomeli, booking 50’14’’.
Organized by the Club Ajijic athletic association under the tongue-in-cheek slogan “Savages Racing to the End of the World,” La Chupinaya 2012 attracted more runners than ever before. There were 340 men, women and youngsters registered to tackle the long course, and another 130 signed up for the shorter race.
Starting on the heels of a severe downpour that hit lakeside in the middle of the night, conditions on the rough and tumble track were especially brutal this time around.
“You climb your way up like a monkey and practically crawl your way back to the finish,” quipped one first time competitor. “It’s more like an adventure than a race. The view you catch when you manage to get to the top is incomparable,” commented another.
Runners were still trickling in towards the finish line and scores of the early finishers were occupied with refueling on hearty platters of pozole or caldo michi as the awards ceremony got underway at 1:30 p.m. Ceramic trophies were handed out for first through third place runners in the eight age and gender classes of the recreational race, while engraved glass trophies went to 19 top competitors in five categories for the main event.
Club Ajijic president Ricardo Gonzalez expressed gratitude to the huge team of Chupinaya volunteers who helped prepare the track, register competitors, clock the race and feed the runners. He also thanked the Lake Chapala Society for taking charge of supplying bottled water to all contestants.