November 28th El Dragoman.
Which were the greatest world records of all time?
Bob Beamon’s mighty Mexico City leap?
Sebastian Coe’s 800m? (nearly 30 years later and still a UK record)
Paula Ratcliffe’s 2:15 marathon?
Usain Bolt’s 100m?
I’d certainly add Julian Bernal’s masters over 85s 3000m indoor record to the above list. He smashed the world record by over 3 minutes for fcuk’s sake.
I could also make a case for Bernal’s over 90s world mile record set in Burgos last year but this was technically a road race and isn’t officially listed @
http://www.world-masters-athletics.org/records . He still broke the record though and pretty convincingly.
The Dragoman this year paid tribute to the late, great Julian Bernal, drago-finisher in the last two editions. He also made occasional appearances in my running diary.
Extraordinary fellow.
The Race:
As last year, we started from the chilly castle courtyard. It took me nearly a minute to emerge through the castle door. Then we ran through the village of Villafranca where I overtook Bernal’s son who is appropriately named “Jesus”. I nodded my appreciation. He passed me his camera. Not one to foresake a man named Jesus I spent the next 500m jogging backwards trying to figure out how the thing worked. Ended up shooting a video.
A 3km detour took us to the start of the big, big climb, 5km with 500m ascent, a constant gradient of 10% . Chugged up at a conservative pace and for the first time I managed to run all the way. But over certain gradients a slow run is not necessarily faster than a swift walk and my time was certainly slower than the previous 2 years. It was nice to reach the village of Dragonte with some fuel in the tank though. Stretched the legs a bit and managed to reach my Aquilianos partner, cake-boy and once again we finished together.
Great event, it just gets better every year. There was even a mini-dragoman the day before where my daughter Lara took part in her first ever race.
Photos: Lara with her medal and one I took of Julian Bernal in the 2008 Dragoman. This year was considerably less snowy.
