Saturday Morning Links

Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash
1. I’ve never heard of Ubatuba, but it’s in Brazil and it looks like it could be in Europe, but it’s actually in the state of Sao Paulo and just west of Rio de Janeiro. The Tropic of Capricorn crosses the city and the bay is surrounded by the Serra do Mar mountains. Of all things, the Serra do Mar State park covers 780,000 acres. That’s not a typo and that’s a ton of acres.

2. There’s a new documentary that’s set to run on ESPN called The Infinite Race, which somewhat debunks the myth of the barefoot runners of Tarahumara. A handful of years ago, there was this movement that barefoot running was the the way that we should run and so you saw a lot of people running in these funning looking coverings for their feet. The Tarahumara were popularized by the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Youssouf would prefer to go barefoot spring, summer, fall, and winter. His feet are like those shoes described above. It’s amazing. I’ve run in Altra, which are zero drop running shoes (and as close to barefoot that I’ll get) and I enjoyed running in them, but have recently settled on a 4 mm drop, which seems negligible. Back to the point of this link, this whole movement of barefoot running may have been based on something that the Tarahumara really don’t even believe in. They probably ran barefoot because of lack of resources, but maybe if given the choice, they’d like some Saucony’s.

3. Sidetracked Magazine follows Matt and Clare through their tour of Norway, somewhat following the path of Matt’s grandfather, who had toured Norway decades earlier. They also use the term “freedom camp” which I guess is the idea that they are allowed to camp anywhere they can find a plot of land, which is terrific.

4. Via Outside Online, the man who found Forest Fenn’s treasure.

This past June, Fenn announced that the treasure had been found by a man from “back east” who wanted to remain anonymous—even, once we were in contact, to me. So despite exchanging dozens of emails with the finder, and discussing the details of the chest and what locating it meant to him, I never pressed him about who he was, and he never volunteered.

Last week, he told me the situation had changed. Fenn had been targeted by lawsuits both before and after the chest was found, by hunters claiming that the treasure was rightfully theirs. One of the lawsuits, filed immediately after Fenn announced the hunt was over, also targets the unknown finder as a defendant, claiming that he had stolen the plaintiff’s solve and used it to find the chest. That litigation had advanced to a procedural stage during which the finder expected his name would likely come out in court. So while he remained guarded about his solve and the location where he discovered the treasure, he now didn’t mind telling me who he really was.

And that’s when I learned that a 32-year-old Michigan native and medical student was the person who had finally solved Fenn’s poem. His name is Jack Stuef.

5. Do you know what swim run is? Via Men’s Heath a description of what swim run is, which it is basically a race that was started in Sweden where you run and swim with what you have on your body and typically consists of 75 kilometers, 10 swimming and 65running. But there’s no minimum or max, but I think the general idea is that the standard course is 13 total miles of swimming and running. This would be a great thing to try, but I can’t really swim for shit (I can swim but I’m not a good swimmer).