Ides of March.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Sunday morning’s run wasn’t exactly heavenly. Met up with 4 other runners; Miguel the prof, Carlos the copper, Juan Carlos from Palencia (Juan Ca to his friends and to an English speaker’s ear this doesn’t sound entirely complimentary, think about it…) and Luis who like me is an occasional footballer. These guys are lean and they mean business. Don’t normally run with them because 1) my work timetable doesn’t permit the week-day 8pm meet-up time and 2) I can’t keep up with them.

Yesterday was supposedly “one and a half hours at a jovial rhythm”. I must have lost something in the translation. Managed to keep up with them only on the hilly bits but on the long, flat stretches they slowly but surely became clouds of dust on the horizon. Running in this way demands such concentration (just to keep going) that I wouldn’t have noticed a heron had it been perched on my shoulder. I suppose that nearly all running involves a dose of suffering but like pre-dawn runs I’ll avoid it if I can. On Sunday I suffered. We regrouped at a couple of points but I must admit that when they were finally out of sight I walked the last 10 minutes home.

Route: Otero-Monte Pajariel-followed by random hallucinogenic landscapes culminating in the crossing of the pink, wobbly bridge and a short walk home.
TRT: 1hour 30 minutes.

Post-script. One of the lads has congratulated me on completing what he called a “quality session”. Ta mate!

It certainly bumped up my mileage for this week.
Week 4. Runs 5 (over 50kms in all. Haven’t run this much since last June. Could this actually be “the forum effect”).