I am again accompanied by many fellow runners and in the evening I reach a hill from which I can guess the dimensions of Mexico City. I run down to the suburb of Nicolas Romero, where more and more runners join me.
On the run into the big city, Leonardo from Tijuana joins me again and accompanies me for another 4 days. The 16-lane road into the centre is well secured by several police cars and the cars of the media, but the noise and the stench are very exhausting. The closer I get to the centre, the more people join us. We go straight to the Zocalo, the central square with the cathedral, where exactly today the 500th anniversary of the founding of Mexico is being celebrated with a big festival. Running the 80 kilometres across this city with a police escort is a great experience, but the noise and stench is also something I don’t necessarily want to repeat.
Directly after the city limits comes a 23-kilometre climb to the highest point of my circumnavigation, the Passo Janogrande at 3200 metres. The road leads directly past the two snow-covered volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl, which can be seen from time to time through the fog.
Outside Puebla, the teams of my former partner Hoffmann Group and my sponsor ON are waiting, as well as some runners and cyclists. In town, a huge hustle and bustle with 5 TV channels, radio, newspapers. From Puebla, things get even crazier. Every day, 20-100 people walk behind me, accompanied by up to 6 police cars and motorbikes and a troop of media vehicles and private cars.
