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Toral De Los Vados
Toral is a village of about 2000 people. It's got a river, it's got (or had) a coal mine, there's wine, 'botillo' and it's got a marathon. The marathon was celebrating it's 20 anniversary this year. Here in Spain Toral de los Vados has a reputation as 'a runners event'. I've probably not worded that very well, but what I mean is that it's organized perfectly from a competitors point of view. True enough it's a super event, only spoiled by 42.2km of running.
We drove the 200km from La Coruña to Toral de los Vados late on the Saturday afternoon. The week previous to the race (4th July) Spain had been suffering some of it's hottest temperatures for ages. OK, it was not so bad in the North, and La Coruña wasn´t affected by this heatwave, but as we drove over the frontier into Castilla y Leon at 8.30pm, the temperature showed 33 degrees.
After picking up my race number and goodie bag we went in search of a hotel. Toral was full. Not only was there the marathon (with 530 runners) it was also fiesta weekend, so we ended up outside the village in a quiet motel on the old Coruña-Madrid highway.
We dined in the town of Ponferrada at about 11.30 (temp 22 degrees) then it was time to try and sleep (with the heat, no air-con, and fiestas). Oh, i forgot to mention, as it gets hot in this area of Spain in July, the race started at 8.00 in the morning. So, I managed to doze off at around 4.00am only for the alarm to go off at 5.30. Noisey buggers these fiestas.
After breakfast of 2 powerbars and a coffee, we drove into the village ready for the start. it was 6.45, three-quarters of the people up and about were runners (or associated with runners), but 25% were still celebrating the previous night. More coffee followed, then a gentle warm up.
There was a minute's silence at the start in remembrance of a local runner killed in a car accident a few days previous. We set off at 8.10 more or less, with the temperature at 13 degrees, which wasn't too bad.
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