I teach kids. I heard a comment from a 9-year old girl in class the other day.
I had a pony, she said to one of her chums, emphasizing the past tense, but the wolves ate it up.
Anywhere else and young miss would have been sent to the headmaster for telling fibs but in this case the grisly story was probably true. There are wolves in them there hills and a pack of the buggers can tear apart a calf, a foal or a 9-year olds precious pony in a matter of minutes.
The local government are supposed to compensate local farmers for loss of livestock but the problem is that usually its difficult to prove who did the dirty deed. A common excuse to avoid the payout will be; ahh.. but they were wild dogs, not wolves no wolves around here mate.
But there are. Lots of them. Their privileged status as a protected species and the fact that rural depopulation removes its most natural predator, man, means that the wolf population has risen steadily over the last 20 years. There is disagreement over whether that population is still rising today or has stabilized. Ive never seen one although I know a few people who think they have.
Sundays race is in wolf country. Oh, there are bears as well.
Mid Life Crisis Man Wrote:You have been drinking, haven't you?
Nope, not yet
From the organizers website.
Some 200 athletes will gather this Sunday in the tiny Bierzo village of Santa Cruz to take part in the I Carrera de Montaña Alto Sil. Some of the very best mountain runners from León, Asturias, Madrid and Catalunya will attend, including the great Salvador Calvo (the bald saviour) and local favourite and veteran athlete of a thousands battles, Chus Alonso.
The race will consist of 29 and a half kms and more than 1500m ascent with fast sections, technical sections, mud, snow and an overflowing river.
The local environment is a natural habitat for all sorts of birdlife, wolves and bears.
And from the same organizers on the top Spanish mountain running forum
There will be a succulent meal at the end of the race .we have bought many barrels of beer, litres of wine, 250 kilos of cow (!!) and dozens of kilos of chorizo and other spicy delicacies.
These guys certainly talk big. Lets see what happens
Bierzo Baggie Wrote:There will be a succulent meal at the end of the race .we have bought many barrels of beer, litres of wine, 250 kilos of cow (!!) and dozens of kilos of chorizo and other spicy delicacies.
I'm just trying to imagine any race organiser in the UK boasting of such a feast.... nah, the thought just won't materialise. Sounds great though.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
Sunday March 15th
Didn’t see any wolves. There was rather a lot of meat a-grilling afterwards though.
Overslept and was woken by Harry J. All Stars and “The Liquidator” which is my mobile phone ring tone. For a moment it was a sunny Saturday afternoon at The Hawthorns and the teams were warming up on a velvet green pitch. One quick reality check later and I realized it was 7:30 on a Sunday morning and that I’d arranged to meet somebody 15 minutes ago.
Jumped out of bed, grabbed everything that I thought I might need, tore downstairs and went to pick up my running friend in the car. 25 minutes later we were winding our way up an impossibly steep approach road to a village perched halfway up the Sil valley. Here was Santa Cruz del Sil, the amicable host to the first mountain race ever to be held along this grimy strip of decadent mining towns.
Manoeuvred the car into a meadow which was the only vaguely flat patch of land in the vicinity. Then we went in search of a race.
I was with Oscar. Oscar is totally normal, far too normal to be running up mountains on his day off. The rest of us are a bunch of oddballs. In the Plaza Mayor of Santa Cruz we bumped into an array of the usual suspects one of whom was Isaac the engine, who eventually teamed up with us for the race. Isaac sports a very unathletic pot belly and an affable, uncompetitive nature, but make no mistake, he takes his running seriously. As well as today’s extremely tough race he’s got the León half marathon lined up for next Sunday and the Vigo half the week after that. Isaac, as I may have mentioned before, drives a train between Bierzo and Galicia. Running must be a means of letting off steam..
Glancing around the square it was clear that the whole village had turned out for this one. Everybody seemed to be a volunteer of some sort or other, from race marshals and timekeepers to barbeque pokers and beer tent hands. They even served us breakfast. That was brilliant. I’d only had time to munch halfway through a chocolate croissant in the car, so I gratefully accepted the offer of a pre-race coffee and doughnut before pinning on my race number.
The race itself was rough, tough and spectacular but it wasn’t pretty. Much of the mountainside has been stripped clean of tree cover, presumably by generations of forest fires and what is left behind is mostly poor quality gorse and scrub. When in flower, the landscape is a riot of purples, yellows and white but at this time of year it’s just monotonous. The tracks we used were mostly fast, wide and stony highways which I found unpleasant to run on. The exception was the section along a tributary stream of the River Sil which we followed for a few kms after crossing the abandoned village of Primout. I say we followed it, but most of the time we were actually running through it. Here there were boggy sections, the muddiest I’ve tackled since I left the UK. It reminded me of cross country at school. I adopted the gung ho’ Sweder approach, a direct line through every puddle, torrent and swamp that crossed our path. Great fun!
I’d taken my camera but in the early morning chaos I’d forgotten to change the dud batteries and it only gave me a couple of photos. Luckily I met this guy called Cañorroto. Cañorroto is a larger than life character who travels the length and breadth of Spain and beyond competing in off-road and ultra events and taking photos of just about everybody. Amazingly he remembered me from a race several years ago and I’ve uploaded some of his most excellent photos from last Sunday.
The three big climbs of the day were followed by the final descent to Santa Cruz and 29.5 kms later it was a welcome sight to see the roofs of crudely cut slate below the snowy mountain backdrop. The good people of the village applauded from their balconies as in ones and twos we stuttered back into the square where it had all started. There was the smell of fiesta in the air… and barbequed beef. In fact the meat-fest was already underway with steaming slabs of meat and chorizos sizzling in the sunshine.
Muddy marvelous! Nice looking elevation there BB . . . you certainly have an enviable variety of racing conditons over there. And as ever a thoroughly entertaining review
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
So much for The All New All New Training Diary.
Nothing has changed. Im still churning out the same old twice a week runs and the occasional incursion into the hills.
Slower than last year:o
Tireder than last year
Hotter than last year
More people than last year
Took the tortuous winding road up to the miniscule medieval village of Peñalba with Oscar and Tommy Slate. Tommy Slate deserves an introduction.
Tommy (Tomás in Spanish) takes a similarly tortuous route to work in the slate quarries at some ungodly hour every morning. A generation ago hed have been earning his crust in a coal mine like most young men in Bierzo were, but today slate cutting on the Leon-Galicia border rules. For me (a teacher) and Oscar (a lawyer) Sunday morning in the hills is a bit of jolly respite from our weekly routines. For Tommy Slate the mountain is pants.
Hes running today though and hell get to the finish sooner than most.
There was a superb turnout. Everybody whos anybody in the Bierzo funny running scene showed up and strutted their stuff. Lots of top notch gear on display these days. Only mad dog Jorge let the side down with a scruffy cotton t-shirt. Even El Chepas the hunchback looked like he was making a fashion statement in his narrow cut 70s track-suit.
At 10 oclock a field of 200 set off through Peñalbas compact medieval alleys and out we ran past the cemetery to start the first of two climbs where walking was inevitable. We faced a semi-technical 19.5 km circuit, but not quite technical enough to give the mountaineers the upper hand over the roadrunners. I dont really fall into either category but I fared better on this occasion descending than on the climbs. The last 5 kms followed a narrow path along the lightly wooded northern slopes of the Oza valley. It was hard work in the heat and I struggled. Here I was witness to a tussle for first place in the ladies race. An athlete with the purple hoops of the pancake flat Valladolid province had led all the way but was flagging and making increasingly slow progress. The mighty Susana from Ponferrada, a seasoned mountain biker, patiently wound her rival in and stormed away up a terrible home straight incline back to Peñalba and the finish line. 4 of us crossed the line together not far behind.
The reward at the finish was a smart technical t-shirt, a bottle of red and a bollo preñado (chorizo sausage bun) ..yum yum.
My finishing time was 2 hours 7 minutes. Tommy Slate looked very relaxed at the finish line having arrived 10 minutes earlier. Not bad for somebody who doesnt like mountains,
I didnt take a camera this time so the photos come courtesy of a bloke called Kandpalleiro. Dont know him personally but he runs fast, shoots some wicked pictures and maintains a blog in the Galician language that I can hardly understand a word of.
Thanks BB. Looks like an amazing race -- not that you would consider entering a non-amazing race. Or perhaps they just don't exist over there. Great pics, whoever took them. And as always, splendid cast of characters.
More please!
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
To Truchillas tomorrow. It's breezy and overcast at the moment but it can't be as bad as last year. Sweder described the photos as like something from Extreme Prison Break
Once more we took the lonely road over the Morredero pass and descended into the the lost world of La Cabrera. Here there be mountains and Truchillas and another offbeat race full of wacky racers. We all piled into Isaac the engine’s Citreon, me, mad dog Jorge, Oscar and another fellow from the cement factory. After an hour and a half of twisting and turning, bouncing and bumping we all piled out again. I always prefer to do the driving if I’m taking this particular road, otherwise I get seasick. On this occasion I was very close to throwing up and still felt nauseous half way up Pico Vizcodillo.
The traditional straight up-straight down route had been modified and in a way that suited the roadrunners. The first part was the same, next there was a new section of ever so slightly rocky crest where the snow still lingered and the mist steamed up my glasses. Then we descended to a pass, crossed the road and took some very unattractive trails across the other side of the Truchillas valley. But the organizers had kept a surprise in store near the end and this redeemed the circuit in the eyes of some. We were suddenly directed off the edge of the trail, down a near vertical firebreak that was thankfully soft underfoot, along a swampy section of thick mud and then right through the River Truchillas to the finishing line.
21 kms (23k said the nice man with the GPS) and that was quite enough thank you very much.
This race marked the return of Pedro the lumberjack, a legend in his own back yard. Pedro works for the local mafioso, a coal mining entrepreneur who through shady dealings, euro-subsidies, ecological terrorism and all-round crookedness makes huge profits from apparently unprofitable businesses. I shan’t say more should I end up encased in concrete at the bottom of the reservoir. Anyway, Pedro plies his trade lumbering for the said empresario in the hills which surround his village and much of the timber is used to support the tunnels and galleries that pass underneath vast areas of upper Bierzo and Laciana. Pedro’s been out of action recently due to (work related) injury but at Truchillas our man showed up in a pair of red, cut off trackie bottoms which had all the appearance of being hacked down to size with a lumberjack’s axe. He claimed a lack of fitness but still finished a respectable 26th against some of the very best mountain runners and was even seen smoking a crafty fag to celebrate his comeback in the paella-fest afterwards.
The photos include the post-race paella at the back of ye olde village petrol station, Pedro the lumberjack attacking the fire-break and Bierzo Baggie running through the river.
Next race .. “the Aquilianos.” Please tell me if this is getting repetitive… (err, I like repetitive).
June 6th: Montes Aquilianos; walked the short route with my dad.
June 21st: For the Travesera de Picos I didnt even make the start line.
Family matters imposed and at the last moment there was a change of plan.
At exactly the same time as I should have been agonizing on one of those evil scree slopes I was making sandcastles on a beach in Galicia. Must admit my relief was tinged with ever so slight disappointment but it soon passed.
The danger of getting all worked up about one race is that if for some reason a more important priority emerges (like a sunny weekend on the beach) it becomes difficult to disentangle yourself from the scenario that you have meticulously plotted over the preceding weeks. For the Travesera de Picos 2009 Id thought about what I did wrong in the 2008 race. Id calculated times and hidden my camera. Id bought a pair of springy walking poles and enough gels to fuel me from here to Katmandu and then sod it, cant go, oh well
The beach was great though and any normal person would have strained to understand that a choice was involved.
Once back home I checked out the results. The Bald Saviour had won again which was no surprise. And in the ladies race the mighty Susana from Ponferrada won by a mere 5 minutes which in a mountain race with a 19 hour time limit is almost a dead heat.
Next target, to keep a training diary and not a race diary.
C'est la vie BB. Better to have the choice I'd say. And looking forward to more training exploits from your kneck-of-the-woods. As soon as I get a camera with a 'phone I'll start to post some pics too. Honest.
The all new all new training diary
