Races and stuff.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Don’t know how Sweder manages to churn out reports so quickly. I’ve been trying to write this one up for over two months. My race reports obviously take me a bit longer.

September’s race took a little longer too. In fact the 15 or so kilometres of the “carrera de montaña de Villamanín” took me nearly 3 and a half hours. But then again it was over a circuit that could only have been concocted in the twisted mind of a one eyed rock climber. Or a madman.

This one wasn’t about fell running or mountain running or any other kind of running if you like. It was about hauling your body 1500 metres upwards, sometimes with the help of your hands and then choosing the safest way down. Sometimes there was no safe way down.

The man responsible for the Villamanín race is definitely no madman. He’s an official mountain running official and he’s got the fluorescent yellow padded jacket to prove it. He’s also a rock climber. Oh, and he’s only got one eye.

I’d bumped into Cristino a few times over the last few years but only discovered his visual impairment whilst stumbling down the wobbly rocks of Truchillas in May. It was hard enough for me to stay upright with 2 eyes. Four, if you include my glasses. I made some flippant remark about us being equally crap descenders and he humbled me somewhat by revealing that being one-eyed he found it hard to judge the distance between boulders. Just try rock hopping with one eye closed and you’ll soon find out why. Anyway, Cristino is a fairly laid back geologist and an experienced climber who has been organizing this small-scale, “word of mouth” sort of race for several years. And any English fell runner who considers European mountain running to be a watered down version for “Johnny foreigners” should pay a visit to Villamanín. I’ve never run any Lakeland fell races so I can’t compare, but I can’t imagine any of them being worse than this one. Or better.

We filled the car again. Mad dog Jorge repeated and so did Oscar. Miguel Mushroom wisely decided to miss this one, so the quartet was completed by one of the Capello brothers from Molinaseca. Now “Capellín” ( the “ín” at the end is a Spanish diminutive which translates his name as “little Capello” is perhaps the hardest man I know. He’s even harder than Roy Keane, but with more of a sense of humour. Only his brother, the ex-legionnaire who blew off his own arm with a hand grenade is marginally harder. Capellín is probably the best suited of the brothers for this kind of event being less accident prone.

Villamanín is located in the north of the province of León not far from the Pajares mountain pass which leads to Asturias although the race actually starts in a village named Fontun about 2 kms further on. We stopped for breakfast on the way and only arrived about 15 minutes before the off.
“Bloody hell” said Capellín as we cruised up the village’s main street/only street looking for a place to park.
“Look at that bloke’s legs”.
And indeed the parade of legs is the first thing you notice. Legs which are barely human, stretching, bouncing, shimmering in the early morning light. Calf muscles sculpted from climbing impossible gradients and bulging quads cultivated from interminable descents.
The field was small with 30 or 40 runners but I recognized a few of the hardcore head-bangers of the mountain running fraternity. Recognized “the bald saviour,” (which is the literal translation of his name) the recent winner of the Great Wall of China Marathon and some other ultra distance race in the Gobi desert. Also recognized a guy with an unpronounceable Basque surname who has climbed a few of the 8000 metre peaks in the Himalayas including K2 and Everest.

We were the last ones to sign up and they seemed pleased to see us. We’d just boosted the field by 4. A bloke with a felt tip pen scrawled a race number on my hand and Cristino gave a briefing which I should have paid more attention to given what was to follow.

The Race
We set off and immediately headed upwards through a grassy meadow and then a path fringed by vicious little rose bushes that clawed at your arms and legs. The path petered out at an isolated church (or hermitage) and the first of two rocky peaks of craggy fossil-strewn limestone lay almost vertically ahead. I was soon working my way back down the field after having made a futile attempt to keep up with Capellín. Capallín was born on Mars. I was born in Dudley.

After a bit of laboured uphill walking we reached the first part of the route which could be considered dangerous and for about 5 minutes I only felt secure when using my hands. The occasional rock dislodged by the runners further on up and sent bouncing down towards my head provided incentive not to look back and admire the view. Got through this section as quickly as possible. The first control post was wedged between two colossal pillars of rock just below Pico Currillos at 1950m. Locally they call it “the oxen´s rock”. I certainly felt like a lumbering ox by this stage as the gazelles danced away into the distance. In fact I’d already lost sight of the next runner and I couldn’t see anybody else behind me either. There must have been at least 3 or 4 but perhaps they’d all turned back. Lucky sods.

It was a wonderful sunny day and I spent the rest of the race on my own and if it hadn’t been for the number scrawled on the back of my hand to remind me, I might have forgotten that I was in a race at all. After a long knee-jerkingly uncomfortable descent I crossed a road where there was a drinks station and an ambulance and another meadow of long grass as a prelude to the second big climb. This is where things got really tough.

I was up for one big climb, but not two. This one wasn’t quite so steep but all the strength had already been sapped from my legs. A bubbling mountain stream led out to a vast expanse of exposed mountainside and here I did have company. Lizards scuttled under stones as I approached and griffin vultures screeched somewhere overhead. I didn’t actually see them but I knew they were there.

Now there must be dozens of analogies to describe a wildly accelerated heart beat. I tried to compose a dance track to mine as I climbed. At some point I started to do zigzags, quadrupling the distance I’d have covered if I’d followed a straight line. At one point I considered whether this was the worst I’d ever felt during a race, but this moment was soon forgotten and it only exists now because I’m writing it down. I approached the absolute minimum of what could be considered as movement. From run to walk to sideways shuffle, any slower would be considered stationary to the human eye. But the great thing about these races is that you can’t pack it in half way up a mountain. You either go back the way you came or you carry on. I’d passed the point of no return long ago.
So on I went.

The climb finished at a tricky looking knife-edge of jagged limestone which separated me from the bloke perched on the top of Pico Fontún and the last control point. I suspect you were expected to walk the tightrope but with sheer drops and instant death lurking on either side I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I moved in a crab-like fashion a couple of metres below the ridge, embracing the mighty wall of rock as if my life depended on it; which of course it did. This was probably trickier than going over the top because I had to look for footholds as well as handholds but at least I didn’t have to look into the chasm. When I finally reached the hombre-vulture he was scouring the landscape with binoculars looking for other runners.
“Take care going down,” he called.