The big rule is that there’s no rule. It’s kind of the whole racebook of The Speed Project – the race MAFFs Team is undertaking right now. After a short talk with Pepe we figured it’s quite useful to describe the Team itself and its ideas.

MAFFs is a running collective from Chile we bumped into a few months ago and we absolutely fell in love with. Wondering why? Well, it’s an easy one. They might not be cyclists, but they share the same vision of the sport we have and they’re running for the same reasons we set out for.

They’re definitely not your typical running club: everybody’s free to their activity and they gather together for big challenges like The Speed Project. The rest of time is up to everybody to make the most out of the trails around their place and come up with crazy ideas to make trail running fun and interesting at all times.

Let’s hear directly from Pepe, member and co-founder of MAFFs, about it!

F_Tell us a bit about MAFFs! What is it? What is the philosophy behind it and why did you decide to found it in the first place?

P_MAFFs is a group of friends that share an unorthodox approach to running. Actually started when we had to put a “team name” at the TSPDIY application form (TSPDIY, is the 2020 edition of TSP that each team could run on their home trails).

We don’t consider ourselves a running club, just a group of friends who enjoy running sometimes together, sometimes not and more often than not, on the mountains.

We are a sort of spontaneous running collective; we gather a couple of times a year and do a good amount of running on trail and off trail self produced underground events. Definitely not your average 10k event, more crazy stuff for sure.

“We don’t consider ourselves a running club, just a group of friends who enjoy running sometimes together, sometimes not and more often than not, on the mountains.”

F_How many people are part of the team? Is there any key characteristic that is common among the members?

P_Right now for TSP LALV we are 8 runners and 3 crew/support.
The initial team started with just six of us: Max Keith, who’s for sure the “evil brain” with all the crazy ideas, Eduardo Labarca, Esteban Morales, Cristian Deppe, Santiago Margozzini and Pepe Sciaraffia. Then, for the TSPDIY we started adding more people. For this year team we’re also including 3 new runners: Cristian Lecaros, Paolo Pavez, and Sofi Kim (the only non Chilean part of the team)

F_You seem to have quite a modern and unconventional approach to running? What is the main motivation for you to do such an activity? What kind of events do you do?

P_We like to run and race on the trails mostly. We live in a really privileged city surrounded by mountains, so we like to make the most out of it year-round. During the pandemic and with all the restrictions in our country we had to be really creative for challenging ourselves.

That’s why we ended up doing some not-so-traditional kind of stuff in our own backyard. Like re-discovering what we had and trying to do some different approaches and taking in consideration the aesthetics of all. We like to run hard, but mostly, we like to have fun and be creatives.

F_Tell us about The Speed Project. What is it? How do you want to tackle it?

P_Ok, the TSP is a relay race that goes from The Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles to downtown Las Vegas – like 500 miles approx. It’s usually run in a team of 6 (4 male, 2 female) but there is also a “Freestyle” category which is the one we’re in. You’re allowed to do as many relays you want with your team and take whatever route you want following some very basic principles to get from point A to point B. Not much else, so basically the big rule is that there is no rule.

Last year we did the “Do it yourself” version with the MAFFs and ended up running 425 kilometers in our Atacama desert over the course of almost 30 hours. We had a pretty good understanding of the logistics involved and the running side of things, so this time we want to take the same approach to the “real race”. Meaning we want to run hard, try our best and have one of those surreal experiences that happens when you’re trying to push your body to go beyond what you believe was possible in a team collective environment.

Let’s see how this surreal experience at TSP will look like. We’re proud to be their friends. Not sure we will make them faster, but this time we’re not sure we’re gonna make them cooler. Because – seriously – can you find a cooler running collective then MAFFs?

— Federico Damiani