Races and stuff.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Signed up for the marathon of Toral de los Vados. It’s on Sunday. The plan is to get to 25k in about 2 hours and then see what happens. The 25k drink station is my opt-out clause as it’s a stone’s throw away from where I live. If the final 17 kms are too dreadful to contemplate I’ll use my “get out of jail free” card. If not, it’ll be a run-walk the rest of the way to Toral.

My last road marathon was Toral de los Vados 2005. A great thing about keeping this diary is being able to look back at all the comments, facts and figures which I would have forgotten about otherwise. And seeing that I’d done significantly less preparation last time around reassures me a bit for Sunday.

Two years on and I still feel the same about the marathon. It is the mythical distance and the reference point for all the other long distance races. It’s also a nasty business and Toral is a particularly terrible piece of running-induced torture. It’s mostly flat with interminable, morale-sapping straight sections which can drive you crazy. By the second half of the race you’re likely to be running all alone and there’s very little in the way of spectator support. If it’s hot as well (and it generally is) you feel like some legionnaire staggering on through the desert in search of an oasis to break the monotony. At least here the oasis comes at 5km intervals.

I always look forward to the Aquilianos, to half marathons, 10ks, off road events, football matches or games of scrabble with my granny. The marathon however just fills me with fear. So why do I put myself through it? Well there aren’t many events to choose from in these parts and Toral’s a nicely organized, small scale “essence of running” sort of race which deserves to be supported. And I enjoy the feeling you get when you finish. Now that might sound a bit like saying I enjoy hitting myself on the head with a hammer for the sense of relief you get when the pain subsides. But such is the loneliness of the long distance runner, you end up doing strange things and I’ll be there at 8am on Sunday for the sixth time and hopefully I’ll be at the finish for the fifth time (the old opt-out clause came in handy one year).

For the record here’s the training since March. It includes 2 running events (Vigo and Truchillas) but I don’t include the Aquilianos as I walked it all.

Distance and number of runs.
2-4 kms 5
5-7 kms 13
8-10 kms 19
11-13 kms 6
14-16 kms 8
17-19 kms 2
20-25 kms 2
Just under 4 months and a total of 55 runs. My two “long” runs were the Vigo half marathon and a 24k run.