Saturday 28th January 2006
It was a rainy weekend. It started raining on Friday afternoon and stopped on Sunday although it wasn´t raining all the time. It was great since we have a drought and we need water but it is a pity that it hadn´t been one week before or the next week. As a taxi driver told a few runners from Alicante on Saturday afternoon, In Almería it rains three times a year, one was yesterday, the other one is today and the third one will be tomorrow. Therefore, when Andy RC, Andy SP and Ashley ( Sweder ) arrived on Saturday at 10:30 it was raining. It was great to meet them after ten months when I met them in March at Reading half marathon. We went to their hotel in Almería Tryp Indalo and after a few minutes, we walked to café Hernández where we had breakfast : a drink and some slices of toast. Then, we drove to my building where I left my car in the car park and walked to a bar in the city centre, El Quinto Toro, where we met Carmen, a colleague of English at my school and Juan Pedro, another teacher of English and an experienced runner. We had some beers and tapas although AndyRC preferred water since he hadn´t drunk any alcohol since New Year. After that, we went to another bar where we had some more beer and tapas: paella, meat, etc.
At 8 pm, my brother Jose and I picked them up at their hotel after a little nap since they were very tired because they had slept very little to catch the plane that left at 6 am. We went to the stadium where they picked up their race number, chip and bag of goodies: a T-shirt, a pack of tomatoes, some leaflets with information on Almería, etc. There were some stands where you could buy some running equipment such as Verdegay shop, which is owned by one of the best local runners José Antonio García Verdegay, or
http://WWW.todofondo.com stand where Sergio, who is its webmaster and the official photographer, also had some running equipment for sale. I met some other runners from Almería who I often see in other races or training along the sea front such as Jorge, Alejandro, AntonioL, etc. We had pasta dinner at the VIP hall with a fantastic view of the stadium. There, we met Carmen, with her six-year-old little son and Encarna, a friend of Carmen, who took part at El Ejido race on 31st December and she wants to run Almería half next year. The meal was quite good. It consisted of pasta salad, chicken and chips and for dessert crème caramel. Afterwards, my brother and I took our English forumites to their hotel so that they could rest well for next day´s race wishing that it didn´t rain again. Actually, it had already stopped raining.
IX Medio maratón de Almería. 29 - I - 2006
