2010 A running oddity

[Bierzo Baggie]

Part 3 of the Sergio Leone inspired jelly baby saga.

Must admit that I thought twice about going to this one. First there was that photo on the race web site. Truchillas-Vizcodillo with bad weather is dangerous. In 2008 I decided not to race for that very reason and I’d ventured only just above the lake and taken some photos which Sweder descibed as like something out of Extreme Prison Break. Here they are. Blokes scrambling over rocks in a gale.
http://www.runningcommentary.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=348&pid=13602#pid13602

The day before this year’s race it looked even worse. After a week of cold, damp weather the mountains were buried under a mantle of impenetrable mist.

Then I got up early on Sunday morning, looked out the kitchen window and, oh my God, this is it....

The sky was cloudless. The mountain tops were painted white like icing on a Christmas cake. The light was set to one thousand mega-pixels revealing a crisp new spectrum of amazing colours. This was too good to be true.

And once on my journey when I looked across towards Vizcodillo from the motorway the great sierra stetched out before me with a tidy line of snow above 1800m. Almost half of the 23km race would be above this height.

And I just kept on staring across at those mountains.

This was the tousled haired surfer boy staring up at The Big One.
This was the tornado hunter closing in upon the mother of all twisters.

This was the train spotter finding a pre-war Hornby box set in a jumble sale...

This may never happen again.

At the race start 200 or so pairs of eyes were also fixed on that range. Some runners put on gloves and jackets. I decided to do the opposite. It was already warm but my trackie bottoms would be essential. Running in deep snow cuts and chaffs exposed legs.

Spotted a few faces I knew. Pedro the lumberjack was smoking havanas. Isaac the engine was strapping on a mini-rucksack. The mighty Susana was warming up knowing that this was her best terrain.

A minute’s silence followed in honour of the fallen mountain runner. He was a member of the Teleno mountaineering club who organize this race and from this day onwards the race will always bear his name.

Truchillas-Vizcodillo 2010 began at 10:30 sharp. I got my walking in as early as possible. I wanted to enjoy this. The snow by the lake was already oozing into the turf and the rocky curtain beyond had sent forth a magical waterfall which I’d never seen here before. But as we got higher the snow deepened and hardened. In normal conditions the area above the lake was a vast open section of cross country with no discernible path or trail. Today, however, we runners followed a thin line of compressed snow stretching out in single file, slender threads against the whitescape, like spyrogyra under a microscope.

Overtaking meant breaking rank and sinking to your knees whilst performing an energy sapping high stepping motion. Once ahead of one of the threads of synchronized walkers I ducked down and took some photos.

Most passed with grim, contorted faces and some barely noticed me. Then I recognized a familiar double act. It was German and Angel (German’s no German and Angel’s definitely no angel). Amazingly they had both completed the 101km race the weekend before and these guys are well into their 50s. Angel was snapping photos too and German was diving around in the snow like a big kid. I took a photo of them both. They were the only ones smiling.

Reached the summit in an hour and a half, gulped down a bottle of icy water and a couple of jelly babies and then slid down the other side on my arse singing “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”. Even that didn’t provoke much reaction. Everybody was very focussed on the task ahead.

After some 10km of never to be forgotten snow running in an eerie, other worldy sort of atmosphere, we crossed a road and hit some wide forest trails where the snow turned to mud and the better runners stretched their legs. Then a firebreak took us back down to the valley and we crossed the river. Here Angel lost both his balance and all his photos as he sank up to his neck in the icy waters. I crossed more prudently. The water was deeper than last year and there was a strong current in places. Waded across to the other side and walked the last 50 metres to the finish line.

My finishing time was 3 hours 7 minutes, 20 minutes slower than last year which seems to be the standard fare for this year.

The post-race presentations took place behind Ye Olde Village Petrol Station where Stan the paella man toiled over a steaming pan (there’s a Stan every pueblo, I reckon they’re all cousins). A succulent paella was shared by all and the tall tales grew taller as the wine flowed in abundance.

And as I left, Pedro the lumberjack, the dog-end of yet another handmade Cuban cigar
clenched between his teeth, was trying to return his prize.
“It wasn’t me in third place,” he mumbled sheepishly. And do you know what? Anybody who didn’t know him would have believed him!

I was laughing all the way back to Ponferrada.

The Good: 10 kms of glorious snow running on May 16th. Bliss. A mid-winter wonderland set to a Spanish summer morn. Much of the snow had gone by the afternoon. As I said, this may never happen again.

The Bad and the Ugly: The badlands of northern Spain is a landscape increasingly scarred by man. Only the snow disguised the reality of mountains ravaged by decades of forest fires, criss-crossed by fire breaks and wide, ugly dirt-tracks and often crowned by the new generation of monster windmills, each one as high as Nelson’s column.

Oh, and Lee Van Cleef.... didn’t see him.

Link to the photos I took, I really wasn’t exaggerating...
http://picasaweb.google.com/bierzobaggie/Truchillas2010#