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San Martiño - Ourense
My running has continued to be a bit erratic. I am manageing to sneak in a couple of five milers and a 10k each week, with the hope of a longer run on Sundays, but due to time limitations, locality etc, everything has been on the road recently. Given this, I have been a little reluctant to up the kilometers.
Last Sunday I missed out on the long one due to an unexpected race. OK, I knew the race was happenning, but it wasn't my intention to run it. What happened was that many of my customers asked me if I was going to run, and in the end I said yes.
Ourense is 170km south-east of La Coruña, and given the state of the roads in this part of the world, we drove down there the night before, arriving at around 11.30pm to look for a hotel - my organization being terrible. We found a place in the city centre about a quarter mile from the start line, which wasn't bad. It was an oldish hostel, but was clean and had a terrace aswell, not bad for 30, although I wasnt too sure about the red satin bedspread and heart-shaped cushions.
In the morning I headed down to the start to pick up my race number and chip, the race started at 11.30 so I had time for breakfast with the girlfriend and a newspaper.
The San Martiño is an important race in Galicia, for many years some of the best Spanish and Porugese runners would be there, but recently there have been additions to the Spanish race calender and as an opener to the road racing season, it has lost out to races in Madrid and San Sebastian. The focus now seems to be to build on it's popularity with us more mortal runners. For the adult race there were about 3000 runners, the same for the youngsters race.
The start and finish centered around the main sports centre in the city, the start line being on the milennium bridge which spans the River Miño - the river which goes on to form the border with Portugal in these parts. The route then crosses the river again on a roman bridge before winding it's way through the more important parts of the city centre. The race finishes by crossing the roman bridge once more before the finish line in front of the sports centre.
After breakfast I started to warm up, I found a gate leading to a couple of football pitches behind the sports hall and started to warm up there. After a couple of minutes I was joined by the 'elite' african contingent of the race, I think the area was reserved for them, but when in doubt, look confident - and speak in English.
Once again I started the race badly, I was too far backand had to walk for the first minute. It was uphill for the first 1/2km so that slowed things up aswell. I didn't want to make the same mistake as in Santiago, so when spaces opened up I kept telling myself to take things easy for the first 5 km. The course undulated itself gently to 5km, where I arrived in 21 minutes or there abouts, encouraged by the quite volumous crowd of spectators, there were more in Ourense than in Santiago.
The weather was just about perfect for running, 12 degrees, sunshine and no wind. Perfect conditions for PB runnig. So why I didn't get uder 40 minutes I don't know. Perhaps it was because I was enjoying the run. I had found a comfortable pace and was enjoying the competition, trying to pick off runners up ahead, and not wanting to be overtaken. Although we were in the middle of the pack last Sunday, the race was more fun than getting the time.
By the side of my PC, I have a photo of the finish of last year's San sebastian marathon. In the frame are two runners - myself and just ahead, by a metre is a runner by the name of Isabel Sixto Tato. Although I didn't notice during the race, when I checked out the results on the web I noticed that I beat her by 5 seconds.
Revenge is sweeter than a PB.
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