Travesía Integral de los Montes Aquiianos

[Bierzo Baggie]

I’m now immersed in the world cup like everybody else but I still remember when I used to do a bit of running. Won’t be doing any more for at least a couple of months though.

I was walking at the time and I fell down a hole. Managed to hobble home though....

Oops, I’ve just re-read the above and it sounds like I fell down a well shaft or something. I didn’t. It actually happened on fairly flat terrain where I stepped into some sort on hole and twisted my ankle. I’d like to say that I injured myself spectacularly on a section of vertiginous descent. Nothing so glamorous. I wasn’t even running at the time. I was walking along, chatting to some fellow and feeling quite pleased with myself to tell the truth when… a misplaced foot, a sharp twist, a crunching of ligaments (don’t know if ligaments crunch…these ones did!) and a shot of pain through my central nervous system which seemed to scream “take that you tw…!” Ouch.

I’d just passed the abandoned village of Ferradillo. I’d always known the place was cursed. Or had the hole been left strategically by the cows that were watching me with bemusement from the shade of a huge walnut tree? Revenge perhaps for taking the mick out of their herdsmen.

So, I suspect it was punishment for something or other. I’d dared think that I could be a fell runner; that I could overtake people running downhill; that I’d miraculously fortified my ankles over the last few years so that they were now unbreakable; that I could get through this free of suffering…and be back for lunch! Poor deluded fool.
“Lunch” was actually an excuse. After reading Andy and Sweder’s marathon posts I’d decided that what I needed was to inject a bit of tension into my running and a spot of intensity into my writing about it. I picked up rather more intensity than I’d bargained for and three hours of mostly downhill hobbling followed in excruciating pain. My just returns for daring to laugh at the running gods?

Now, nearly two weeks later, I still can’t understand how I could have been stupid enough to carry on, but at the time I don’t think it actually sank in. Having flown down the rocky slopes of Truchillas, having ridden the biting tackles of Oscar the undertaker, having survived the descent from the mare’s saddle, it seemed like some sort of poetic justice that I could injure myself in such an innocuous manner. Finished, but it was all too painful to gleam any real satisfaction from.