December; festive running.

[Bierzo Baggie]

First run for 9 or 10 days. This year has been full of fits and starts which makes it difficult to call what I do “training”. Training suggests consistency, discipline and some sort of plan. I must get into “training” one day.

Sought a longish, flat route, mainly on quiet roads and ended up coming back through Toral de Merayo. Running through the village I glimpsed a familiar scene at this time of year, “la matanza,” the slaughtering of the pig. An entire family were hard at it dissecting a hefty porker strapped to a large wooden bench. Dad was merrily burning off hairs with some sort of blowtorch. There’ll be more of this to come….
Met someone to run with on leaving Toral which made the last 20 minutes pass relatively quickly. The guy said he’d just come down from Monte Pajariel but I reckoned he was fleeing the village.
La Martina-Villalibre-Toral route; running time 59 minutes.