Going out for a run.

[Bierzo Baggie]

What's next?

4th race of the season: Truchillas, May 20th.
Then the Aquilianos long route.

Today.
Pajariel trails to Toral and back via the road.
12ºC, cool and cloudy.
Occasionally the sun peeped out.
The sunshine on my forehead sapped my strength.
Lots of runners and mountain bikers.
Most are deadly serious, I’m always the first to say hello.
Spring is brief and capricious.
Buttercups and daisies.
44 minutes 42 seconds.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

What's next?

4th race of the season: Truchillas, May 20th.

[Gulp] ... that elevation map suggests the first 8 kilometres are at an 11 - 12% gradient.

That's eight kilometres of trying not to fall off the planet!

[Sweder]

Not to mention K's 20 to 22. That's quad-mashing descending right there. Yikes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Not to mention K's 20 to 22. That's quad-mashing descending right there. Yikes.

That’ll be the firebreak. I’ll try and find a photo...

Last Sunday.
The Aquilianos long route is creeping up and I’ve not done any long mountain walks which have always provided the groundwork in previous years.

So at 7am I set off from home with the intention of doing the Aquilianos short route as a trial run for the big one. The temperature was Already a balmy 16ºC and I carried a bum bag and no water bottle. Calculated that gulping down as much water as possible at each spring or village fountain would be enough. In between I’d suck on the odd jelly baby and I optimistically stuck a banana in the bag too (should have listened more to marathondan’s training diary on that one).

Combined running and fast walking. Never ran for more than 15 minutes at a time. The first kms were accompanied by a full symphony of birdsong, a prelonged dawn chorus from which I distinguished the occasional cuckoo.

Monte Pajariel,
medieval bridge over the Oza,
Villanueva, Valdefrancos, San Clemente..

All pretty familiar so far. Felt OK.

Then I ran a short section of road. A car pulled up.

It was Mad Dog Jorge, the fittest HGV driver in the north west.
Mrs Mad Dog was in the passenger seat and Mad Dog dog was on her lap.
Mad Dog dog snarled and tried to bite me.

“Where are you going?” said Mad Dog Jorge.
“To Montes, and then to Ferradillo... maybe.”
“Are you going to Truchillas?”
“Yes, and you?”
“No,” said the all-original Mad Dog.
That wasn’t surprising. The last time Mad Dog went to Truchillas he got a free lift home in the ambulance.

“I’ll call you some time, we can train together.”
“No thanks,” I said “you’re a mad dog.”

But to be absolutely honest today I am the mad dog and so I trotted on up an old cart track which leads to the romantic ruin of the monastery of Montes.

I didn’t see anybody else for the rest of the morning.

After Montes the track widened into a stony, dusty highway and my running became increasingly sporadic and for no longer than a minute at a time.

Descended into the abandoned village of Ferradillo. The spring water here is the freshest and the tastiest of them all. Or was I just excessively thirsty?

From Ferradillo, across pastureland and to the final big descent which comes in two clearly defined sections. First a thin path snakes through the woods and across two rocky outcrops. Here I‘m able to run a bit. But only a bit. Then the path widens into another hard dusty trail. My legs were now too tired for anything that resembled even a trot and my knees were starting to ache worryingly.

The last hour and a half was spent walking despite it being mostly downhill or flat.

I learnt some things. There’s always something to learn no matter how many times you’ve done the same route.

1. It’s going to be better to walk more at the beginning and run more at the end.
2. Footwear. Wore some conventional trainers with cushioning. The Mizuno Wave Harriers win hands down. With the Mizunos I descend much better. My feet and toes are more sensitive to the terrain and it just feels better. But (and it’s a big but) when you haven’t got any strength left in your legs it doesn’t matter what you’ve got on your feet. You may as well be wearing clogs!
3. Did I feel more knackered than normal and did my knees ache because I didn’t drink enough water? Best to drink more just in case.
4. Don’t pack pieces of banana in a bum bag even if they are wrapped in cling film. They’ll just turn into sloshy mushy mess and make your jelly babies sticky. Right Dan?

Total route: 6 hours 38 minutes. (No more than 2 hours were spent running in total).

Sunday: Truchillas and then June 2nd the Aquilianos long route.

[Sweder]

Ah yes, the great Banana Squashathon. Was editing my Connemara notes last week and was reminded of how degraded a banana can get.

It was time to brave that last banana, see if I could stave off imminent limb seizure ... I thrust my hand into the dark recess of the bag, fingers scrabbling over all manner of icky nastiness, until I found the mangled fruit. This felt like some deadly right of passage, like the hysterical Treebeast scene in Flash Gordon, where Timothy Dalton’s ultra-camp Prince Barin oversees the unfortunate demise of erstwhile Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan in a bizarre macho pissing contest, featuring a lethal stinging claw hiding in an old tree trunk. I drew my arm out slowly to reveal my prize, a blackened, limp appendage that could barely have looked less appetising had it been covered in flies.

Back in the real world, finding a tiny blemish on an otherwise pristine banana induces shrieks of alarm and wide-eyed terror. Fifty kilometres into a hot, hard road race this ugly battered mush was manna from heaven, gulped down with all the relish of a Gastronaut sampling the rarest truffle.

Also, never wrap peanut butter & jam bagel segments in tissue paper when planning a long, hot run. Sticky.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I drew my arm out slowly to reveal my prize, a blackened, limp appendage that could barely have looked less appetising had it been covered in flies.

I think I can out-do that...

Never, ever, eat a damp, black sticky substance pulled from the darkest recesses of a bum bag on a hot, sweaty run which reveals itself to have been rolled in stale century-old oats, spearmint chewing gum and discarded (used) tissues, then chewed, spat out, sat upon and encrusted in navel lint before finally being sprayed with someone else's year-old cinnamon doughnut-dust and their teenage son's nasal discharge.

... and that was just a training run.

[Bierzo Baggie]

And that is why I always end up back in this unique little corner of cyberspace.

Nowhere else, I repeat, nowhere else will you find such hilarious, eloquent and..totally bizarre descriptions of a banana in bumbag. Or wait....

Nah,

I salute you Sweder and MLCM!

[Sweder]

totally bizarre descriptions of a banana in bumbag.

Whatever you do don't Google for any either

[Bierzo Baggie]

totally bizarre descriptions of a banana in bumbag.

Whatever you do don't Google for any either

Didn't make it to Truchillas. Backache!

Managed an early morning walk on Monte Pajariel though recceing for new routes.

[marathondan]

4. Don’t pack pieces of banana in a bum bag even if they are wrapped in cling film. They’ll just turn into sloshy mushy mess and make your jelly babies sticky. Right Dan?

Right, BB.

If you wrap them in cling film, you're effectively blending your own carb gel as you run. But Sweder is right - when you've got that many miles behind you, you'll take any nutrition you can get. MLCM, maybe you should try marketing that flavour.

6:38 is a monster session - I guess there's a limit to how many of those you can fit in to prepare for one event. Was the backache related to this session? (and dare I say it, the cushioned shoes?)

[Bierzo Baggie]

Was the backache related to this session? (and dare I say it, the cushioned shoes?)

Who knows? I was fine all week and then on Saturday I couldn't put my socks on. I reckon it's more to do with bad posture, being hunched up over the computer writing up this diary...

Prefer shoes with cushioning on the road, but for the rough stuff ... the less cushioning the better.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Prefer shoes with cushioning on the road, but for the rough stuff ... the less cushioning the better.

There's a lot of wisdom in that, BB. Makes sense to me.

[Sweder]

Prefer shoes with cushioning on the road, but for the rough stuff ... the less cushioning the better.

Agree 100%

[Bierzo Baggie]

Toral-Pajariel trail.
Quiet and fairly comfortable.
Only 3 runs so far this month.
45 minutes 47 seconds.

Will try to get another long route in tomorrow morning to get a bit of confidence for the big climbs more than anything else.
Aquilianos route only a week away

[Bierzo Baggie]

Last Sunday.
Left the car on the grassy col of Campo de las Danzas. Here, at 1450m above sea level, the road peters out in the middle of nowhere. So the story goes it was a road that was heading for somewhere until one day the money ran out. A metaphor for the Spanish economy perhaps?

This time I’ll take a small rucksack, obligitary when heading for the high peaks alone.
Inside, amongst other miscellaneous bits and bobs, there is a water bottle, a carton of fruit juice, 2 cereal bars, 1 banana and 8 jelly babies.

At 7am it’s a chilly 5º but the sun soon warms the landscape and paints it with fine colours from its springtime palette.

Trail to Montes. The village is in “fiestas” but only the tatty party bunting strung across the unpaved streets bore evidence to this.

Path to Peñalba. The silence of the valleys is broken only by the rumble of its untamed waters and the echo of the hunter’s gunshot.

From Peñalba looms the terrible, terrible climb up the Mare’s Saddle. The first section is relentless. Sometimes I slip backwards. As tiredness creeps in it becomes harder to stay upright. The dress reheasal is useful if only to remember what’s in store for Saturday, a vertical kilometre halfway through a 60km+ event. Take a few photos halfway up. Gorse and heather. Purples and yellows.

More photos from the summit next to the memorial to OPT, a simple shiny plaque next to a cairn of rock and slate. The tribute speaks of the mountain runner galloping across the skyline, pursued by the perfect storm. Only the eloquence of a mountain top poem could explain what happened that day.

A path dropped off the summit and after 4 hours of journey I met another human being. Javi P was running up the westerly flank of the Saddle, tiny dancer’s steps making painstaking progress up the impossible gradient. Javi P set a note of controversy in last year’s Aquilianos along this very high section. He worked for his friend Logie as a pacemaker and helped him register the incredible 6 hour 6 minute record. Some saw pacemaking as going against the spirit of the Aquilianos which was always non-competitive in its origins and considered as a personal challenge (rather like a Bob Graham round) more than as a race.

We both stopped to chat, about these mighty hills, about what a wonderful morning it was, about Zegama...

Las Berdiainas,
Pico Tuerto (the one-eye)
La Guiana,

Twisted an ankle slightly descending, I blame the clodhoppers, not the disintegrating Mizunos which I’m saving for their one last outing.

And back to Campo de las Danzas.

6 hours 28 minutes (no more than one hour’s running)
It was a day for photos. This is the landscape we must conquer this coming Saturday.

https://picasaweb.google.com/bierzobaggi...nosMay2012

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Gorgeous! To be frank, I think I'd forget all about running in such magnificent country and take my time enjoying the scenery. Just fabulous!

[Antonio247]

Very beautiful scenery.

Best of luck on Saturday, BB!

Saludos desde Almería.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Aquilianos 2012.

This race report is overdue. And it ain’t gonna be pretty.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
And then I nearly shat myself

Err, that was at the Montes 20k food and drink checkpoint. Had to find a quiet spot away from all the thirsty people and the only quiet spot was round the side of the monastery which seemed a bit sacreligious at the time but when you’ve gotta go you’ve gotta go..

And I wasn’t in the Lake District and I wasn’t even that lonely.

6am. About 500 people had gathered for the usual rendez-vous. I’d had a big breakfast. Perhaps too big.

The Aquilianos long route is a 60k+ mountain ultra with over 3000m of vertical ascent. But it’s also a gastronomical extravaganza, famous for its generously stocked food and drink stations which provide one of the few plausible reasons for putting yourself through the whole ordeal in the first place. That and the company.

Early kms in darkness. Swapped impressions with some of “los historicos”.. Domingo the mountain goat, the mighty Susana, Aurelio (3 times sub-8 hours, despite never running particularly fast, the guy just never stops!) Noted the stomach problems early on but still ate a bit of water melon and half a cereal bar at the first 10k checkpoint. For this sort of physical effort what you eat is at least as important as what you drink. But what do you do if you can’t eat anything?

Got to Montes with a churning, swirling whirlpool in my stomach and paid homage to the Visigoth monks in the only way I could.

The next stop was behind a bush between Montes and Peñalba and the definitive dump was at 1800m above sea-level behind a pile of rocks.

Got to the summit of the Mare’s Saddle with a bit of a dilemma. This was the 17th edition of the Aquilianos. I’d finished the previous 16 only missing out on the first one (didn’t live in Ponferrada at the time). It had crossed my mind to pack it in. Was it possible to get round on water and a couple of jelly babies?

This was not a day to enjoy the scenery either. It had been a good call to take the photos the previous Sunday. Today the breathtaking panoramic vistas were obscured by swirling mist. To carry on was madness. Madness prevailed.

Ran-trotted-walked the slatey spine of the Aquilianos range and its 4 principle peaks, all the while encased in gloom and uncertainty. Thankfully it was not excessively cold. Slowly my apetite returned. I needed food.

There was another checkpoint at the top of La Guiana, the prominent hermitage-capped pyramid which provides one final challenge before the long long descent. 4 years ago I had squatted behind the hermitage in a similar state of digestive discomfort. This time I tucked into large cream cake in a last desperate act of reckless defiance, a cheeky V-sign in the face of the demons in my stomach.

The cream cake settled in nicely and my confidence returned.

Six and a half hours into the race I started talking to people again. In Campo de las Danzas I caught up with Aurelio who was hobbling with a knee injury, suffering in silence, determined to finish.

Chorizo sandwich in Ferradillo. Lovely.

A bowl of cherries in Rimor. Ran sections I don’t normally run.

At the finish, a slice of tuna pie and a can of San Miguel.

Final time 10 hours 22 minutes. Probably spent between 2 and 3 hours actually running.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, no, ...sometimes.

Here’s a photo of the first section of the Mare’s Saddle, scrounged off somebody else’s picasa page. A truly terrible climb.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Despite putting me off my breakfast that's a very inspiring race report, BB. I'd love to do it one day - hey, maybe even next year. Who knows? What a brilliant part of the world.

The race itself looks fantastic, and the food! I'll never look at a energy gel in the same light again. To think a cream cake can simultaneously fix your stomach problem and get you going again in a 60km race... genius!

Love it! Fantastico.

[Sweder]

I doff my casp to thee, Sir. Tough it might be, but there are few amongst us who would ever consider taking on such a monster. I love that picture. It reminds me a bit of climbing the Hell of the West in Connemara (albeit on tarmac), moreso El Gordo's cruel flog up Croigh Patrick the following day.

Well done.