September. Last of the summer wine.

[Bierzo Baggie]

After a long, hot, dry summer the fruit finally ripens and the leaves gather golden tints of autumn. I hate July and August. September, however, is a marvellous month.

On Sunday I ran the Toral de Merayo-Monte Pajariel route for the first time for over a month doing the road bit past the allotments first. The fruit picking season is just about to start and everything is ripe or nearly ripe. Apples, pears, figs, grapes and the occasional maize plantation with huge cobs of sweetcorn. Our neighbour gave us a tomato the other day from her vegetable patch which was bigger than baby Lara’s head! (the tomato, not the vegetable patch).

Met Eduardo “lord of the paths” on the Monte Pajariel stretch. Eduardo was my partner for the first mountain marathon I did back in 1999 which consisted of 21kms of climbing followed by 21kms of crazy descent up and down Mount Aneto in the Pyrenees. Despite being 20 years older than me Lord Ed had soon left me behind once we'd reached the steeper slopes and had finished, showered and was having a beer by the time I crossed the finish line. Today he’s out walking with his wife Amelia and from a distance they could well pass for twenty-somethings striding merrily up and down the hills. Stopped to chat for a couple of minutes and then finished the last section of trail. The contrast between the healthy unburned section on the western flank and the charred northern side is dramatic. Stripped of its outer garment of greenery the hillside becomes a large, unrecognizable lump of rather ugly rock. It’s been a long, hot summer.

Running time 45 minutes. Amazingly consistent. I’ve been running this route for over 10 years and I’m rarely more than a minute either side of ¾ of an hour.

Monday morning run around the river and up past the Templar's castle. Fresh. Weather changing. Mountain views hidden by cloud. Tired legs from yesterday.
Running time; 31 minutes.

[Antonio247]

It´s a pity that every year we lose vegetation and even human lives because of fires. What makes me feel worse is to learn that most of them are caused on purpose or because of human mistakes as the one that happened this summer in the province of Guadalajara : some people who didn´t put out the barbecue fire completely causing a huge fire and eleven people died when trying to smother it.

I´m glad you´re enjoying training again after the hot summer, Simon.

Regards

Antonio

[Bierzo Baggie]

Seem to spend more time talking about it than doing it these days. Know the feeling? I’m talking about running of course.

The folks came to visit last week and I did a bit of walking with my dad and whilst we strolled the mountain trails of the Montes Aquilianos the conversation naturally turned to running and to marathons and fell running and to Black Country running legend Jack Holden. This gave me the opportunity to quiz me old dad on something that happened just before I was born which might just explain a few things.

Why do we run? This is just the sort of existential question that I generally never ask myself. I am, therefore I run….simple. I’ve never done it for any health reasons. I’ve only partially done it for enjoyment (road running is a nasty business, yet I still do it) and I don’t really do it for the races (some years I don’t do any but I run all the same). For relaxation? Maybe, but if asked my instinctive answer would be, well, because I’ve always done it! Running has always been there in the background, from watching dad take part and from school cross country to just “going out for a run” 2 or 3 times a week (or a month !) like now. No real reason, I just do it. But why?

Maybe it started in the womb.

So while we were on the subject I asked dad about a marathon that he’d run in the days before “normal people” started running them. This was a marathon recorded only in the memories of its 6 participants who devised, measured and then ran the course, pounding the Black Country streets one midsummer morning just before I was born. In fact, I was there, in the womb of my mother who was helping man the only drink station on the way.

It actually started out as a sponsored walk organized by a local Methodist church but which was somehow converted to a full marathon by 6 of the more eager participants, dad, his brother (Trevor) plus two future brother-in-laws (John and Derek) included. The training? Several Sunday morning runs on the nearby Clent hills. The gear? Football shirts, baggy shorts and what dad calls “running pumps”. The route? 26.2 miles starting at the church and finishing in the Tipton Tavern.

According to dad they all finished in under 4 hours except for 15-year old John who shot off like a whippet only to fade badly in the second half. John learnt from the experience though and in the 80s when marathon fever swept the country he would proudly run with the green and white vest of the Tipton Harriers and even finished amongst the first hundred in the London marathon a couple of times. Remember watching him on the telly one year finishing behind Greta Weitz (top lady athlete). My uncle Trev and Derek would also run under 3 hours in later years although as far as I know my dad is the only one who still incorporates a few runs into his weekly routine. The hares are all arthritic or fed up of running and the tortoise plods on happily into his 60s!

So, that’s my first running experience albeit from the womb. Who knows if this somehow encouraged my genes to adopt subliminal running inclinations? However, the story doesn’t end (nor begin) there. What indeed inspired 6 Tipton lads to cover a distance which at that time was only for serious club runners? Maybe old Jack Holden had something to do with it. But that’s another story....

Saw the folks off at Valladolid airport. Dad took my copy of “Feet in the Clouds” to read on the plane. I returned to Ponferrada determined to scour the internet for more about the extraordinary life of Jack Holden. (To be continued….)

[Bierzo Baggie]

For me this was a vague name from the past, occasionally mentioned with a mixture of humorous disbelief and reverence and synonymous with the Black Country town of Tipton. A town whose favourite son is a 19th century bare-knuckle boxer called “The Tipton Slasher” certainly suggests a lack of politically correct role models but Jack Holden was one of them, a hard-working, decent athlete and a man of the people.

Other famous Tipton personalities include Wolves and England goal-machine Stevie Bull (“ooo-Bully-Bully!!”) who hailed from an estate that was known locally as “the lost city” (one road in and one road out..). Then more recently there were the Tipton taliban, 3 local lads picked up by the yanks in Afghanistan, giving Tipton the dubious honour of being the most represented town at the Guantanamo prison camp! I also recall Tipton cropping up a few times in Viz, most memorably under the “shroud of Turin really from Tipton” headline….oooo those Geordie funsters! Not a lot more to say about the place….

However, Tipton’s finest are surely the famous Tipton Harriers. Remember watching cross country on Grandstand and spotting the green and white hoops which were usually out in abundance. Dad says that the first Brit to finish in the men’s marathon at this year’s Europeans was a Tipton man. And so was Jack Holden. He’d invariably come up in the running conversations of my dad and uncle Trev and I remember my granddad mentioning him in affectionate terms as well. No idea what era they were talking about, it was probably between the wars when The Commonwealth games (where Jack won the marathon) were still called “the Empire Games”. Although he never won an Olympic medal, they say that at his best he was the best marathon runner in the world and he only retired from top class competition well into his 40s when he was beaten by arch rival Jim Peters. I also remember many years ago a fellow on a campsite in France buying me loads of beers just because I’d actually heard of the great man (this sounds dodgy I know, but Jack Holden had an aura and buckets-full of anecdotes).

Whilst out walking last week dad told me that old Jack had died earlier this year and I decided to find out more….more on Jack Holden to come.

Nearly forgot. Saturday morning. Ran around the canal. 30 minutes. Found out by accident that there’s a 10km in Ponferrada tomorrow morning. Will probably saunter along.

[Bierzo Baggie]

The Ponferrada 10k turned out to be closer to 9.2k. It was supposed to mark a week of pedestrian–friendly activities. Hundreds of “Ponferrada without my car” T-shirts were being given away although at the race start I noticed that everybody had turned up in their vehicles (me included). The circuit was an attractive urban one all around town, up the hill past the castle and through the old part. The first 6 kms were marked but then somebody had nicked the 7, 8 and 9km markers. Saw at least 3 naughty people taking short cuts. However, a good time was had by all, it was totally free and on finishing they gave me a smart, blue “Ponferrada without my car” t-shirt, an apple and a mini-first aid kit bag (!) . For the record, boss-man Chus Alonso won in 33 minutes and about 100 runners took part including a few 12 year olds, even fewer lady athletes and only one runner between the age of 20 and 30.
Total running time 40 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Jack Holden was the hero of my grandparents’ generation. He probably helped inspire my dad and the intrepid group of 6 to run their inaugural marathon 35 years ago. You could say that he forms part of our running heritage (in the beginning there was Jack…..) although I must admit that until a week ago I didn’t know anything about him. Now I feel as though there’s unfinished business to do, to put the story down on paper, to do the old man justice. Here goes…..

Jack Holden was born in the Black Country one of 9 children and started work in the same foundry as his father when he was 13. His first sport was boxing but he was not destined to emulate the local hero “the Tipton Slasher” and instead veered towards athletics. One day a local publican organized a 3-mile race and Jack won easily. His prize was a live pig.
“I took it home, we killed it and ate it. There were 9 of us. Times were hard”.

Jack soon became a Tipton Harrier, competing in the Birmingham League in the inter-war years. He excelled in cross country at club and later at international level. Meanwhile he continued working in the foundry and at dinner times would perform his own particular version of cross-training by smashing pig-iron with a sledgehammer.

Between 1933 and 39 he was 4 times international cross country champion (forerunner of today’s IAAF World Championships). His last cross country vest for England would come in 1946 but in the meantime his triumphs as an athlete were interrupted by the war and he served with the RAF. By the end of the war years he was now nearly 40 and at this late age he decided to have a go at the marathon.

[Bierzo Baggie]

After leaving the RAF Jack worked as a groundsman and after work he’d pound the Black Country streets, becoming one of the first runners to regularly churn out 100 miles a week. Most of those miles were run at night.

His only chance of Olympic glory came in The London games of 1948 and went horribly wrong. He was favourite to win the marathon but according to Jack himself, his fatal error had been “to bathe my feet in permanganate of potash. I over-pickled them. The skin was so hard it just blistered. It was impossible for me to keep running”. He dropped out and such was his disappointment that he announced his retirement, although his wife, Millie, soon coaxed him back into competition again.

Between 1946 and 1950 Jack won the AAA marathon championship 4 times and in 1950 he represented Britain in the Commonwealth Games marathon in New Zealand. With 8 miles to go his shoes fell apart. Determined not to repeat the Olympics debacle he carried on running and finished barefoot, bloody and blistered and 4 minutes ahead of his nearest rival. In the same year he also took the European title in Brussels and at 43 he remains the oldest athlete ever to win the European games marathon. There was still more to come. In 1953 he ran a world record for 30 miles. However, by this time arch rival Jim Peters had succeeded him as England’s foremost marathon runner and Jack Holden retired. Peters himself paid tribute to Holden describing him as “a ruthless runner, always starting with the absolute determination to kill the opposition right from the off”.

Jack died last March just days short of his 97th birthday disproving my dad’s theory that the intensity of elite level athletics knocks years off your life. At least it didn’t seem to be the case for Jack. And who knows how much he’d be worth as a world class runner in today’s professionalized era. The running track of Jack’s beloved Tipton Harriers bears his name and there are also “the Jack Holden gardens” nearby. Amusingly Jack rejected the proposal to erect a statue of him saying “no dog is going to pee on me while I’m alive”.
He lived his final days with his daughter and son-in-law in Cocklemouth in the Lake District (what a great fell runner he’d have made!). I’m sure he died a happy man.

[Bierzo Baggie]

The weekend’s sporting activities included 2 runs and a game of 5-a-side footie.

Saturday morning. Ran to Otero up above the vineyards. The “vendimia” (grape harvest) is now in full swing. Everywhere you look there are people crouching under vines filling up their black, plastic containers (which look like shopping bags) with big, juicy grapes.
Running time; 33 minutes.

Later on we resumed 5-a-side hostilities with the big lads from the power station. Most of them are in their 40s. One is 50. And they still gave us a good thrashing. The next day my legs felt like they’d been battered with a baseball bat and I didn’t make my usual Sunday morning run.

Got out for a rare early evening one though., just as it was getting dark. Followed the same route as Saturday extending it to run through the village of San Lorenzo and back along the road. Here, there were about 30 tractors with trailors and mountains of grapes (the dark ones, mencia and the light ones, godello) queueing patiently outside the local wine cooperative to weigh and unload the day’s toil. It’s intense, dawn to dusk work and the scene will be repeated for at least the next couple of weeks at dozens of locations across Bierzo. The relatively small landholders, usually relying on family and friends to bring in the grapes, sell their produce to the wine cooperative at a fixed price and make a bit of of welcomed extra cash, although not much from what I’m told. The price is actually lower than it was 10 years ago and many have given up the “vendimia” as a lost cause, some even tearing up their vines. I suppose that the ones who keep going are the ones with the biggest tractors, the most accessible vineyards, etc.. Out in the villages some families still use the green welly method of physically treading the grapes at the end of the day. I’ve even done it a couple of times and it’s more knackering than running. A bit like marching in glue....

By the time I got back to the river crossing it was dark and what is a nimble spot of rock hopping by daylight turns into a blind and desperate stumble across the river Sil. Decided I need to invest in a head torch.
Running time 52 minutes.

[El Gordo]

I really enjoy your writing, BB. Technically, it's really good, but what I like most is just the procession of characters and situations. I think you're quite a storyteller at heart.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Another story.
The sight of trailers piled high with luscious grapes and the smell of grape juice made me think of Pablo and his family, hidden away in a remote valley on the mountainous León-Lugo border. It was high time that I paid a visit.

Pablo is one of a handful of running partners I’ve had over the years. My dad, stumpy Steve (from my Devon days), Mrs Scouser and Pablo were four occasional companions in an otherwise solitary 20-year pursuit of running nirvana.

Pablo lived in Ponferrada before bidding farewell to the outside world and taking voluntary exile in his parents’ village. A few years ago we ran along, around, up and down Monte Pajariel from every possible angle, along every possible trail and once we got bored of the trails we steamed up and down the firebreaks. Pablo was always stronger than me, but it meant that I got used to running at a rhythm faster than had I been running alone. This no doubt helped me run a marathon in a time that I’ll probably never beat. We ran Madrid together in 97. Pablo finished in 2:58 despite wearing a pair of old trainers with holes in and getting pissed the night before. I came in 8 minutes later, sober and with carefully broken in Nike Pegasus and was thrilled to bits, but then again Pablo is from a different planet.

Pablo always preferred the local Toral de los Vados marathon though where I think he had a best of 2:45. All was so much friendlier and closer to home. At Madrid he was running in a group and tried to get chatting only to be met with a stony silence. Eventually somebody told him to shut up.
“They were frightened that I’d steal their place, or their breath or something!” Pablo said incredulously when we met up again at the finish.

The races ended when Pablo moved back to the village although the running didn’t. The mountain slopes of the Selmo valley are his pride and passion and he would cover the same route early each morning 6 kms uphill to the next village and 6 kms back again, sometimes longer. Combined with the physically strenuous farming tasks he never lost his fitness and would probably still run a sub 3-hour marathon. Until last year.

Every year I used to drive over for a day or two to help out with the “vendimia”. Pablo and family would mix dark and light grapes and make a rosé that I’m told was pretty dodgy. I’m not much of a wine drinker and it tasted OK to me. So when he rang towards the end of summer last year I expected it was to tell me that they’d be starting soon. But no, Pablo was in hospital and it didn’t sound too promising.

Went to visit and was ominously given a mask just before entering. Pablo was pale. He looked shit scared.
“They don’t know what it is,..the doctor said something about operating,...might have a lung removed...” These were big words and I could tell from the look on his mother’s face that we were all thinking the same thing.

Went back the next day and the atmosphere was altogether more relaxed. I was given the mask again but this time I didn’t put it on.
“They know what it is now,” said Pablo “it’s tuberculosis!” He looked relieved.
Didn’t know what to say, whether to clench a fist and shout “yesss,” uncork a bottle of champagne; OK, it’s not cancer, but TB still sounds pretty grim. I put my mask on quickly.

That was over a year ago. I haven’t seen Pablo since and last spoke to him on the phone in April before baby Lara was born. On Tuesday morning I decided to drive over. His one year convalescence period should be over and maybe I could lend a hand with the vendimia this year. Maybe we could even do some training again. It’ll be just like old times.

After nearly an hour’s drive from Ponferrada along a fairly tortuous, windy road I left the car by the river at the bottom of the village and walked up through the single street with mostly ramshackle houses either side; rural squallor, don’t let the travel guides kid you, authentic village life is hard and unromantic. That’s why there aren’t any young folk left. Except Pablo.

The steepness of the hill reminded me why Pablo was such a strong runner. Nobody was home so I carried on upwards to the vineyards and chestnut groves above the village. Imagine collecting grapes from the side of a mountain where you must anchor your basket firmly or risk seeing it roll down towards the river scattering your grapes like confetti. You must be blessed with strong legs and near perfect balance for the vendimia around here. The view over the valley however is breathtaking. And by the time I’d reached the lower part of the vineyard I was certainly out of breath.

The presence of Pablo senior’s 20-year old Land rover Santana complete with trailer full of grapes was a sure sign that they were all there, Pablo, his mum, his dad and a couple of other elderly relatives crouching amongst the vines which stretch up the mountainside. With the constant sunny weather the vendimia had started earlier than normal. I signalled my presence with a shout.

The first thing I noticed was that Pablo’s dad was carrying the baskets up and down from vineyard to trailer. Strange. This heavy work is usually Pablo’s job. Pablo senior is about 70, short, barrel chested, strong as an ox and as nimble as a roe deer. Like most village folk in these parts he’s as tough as you’ll get. As he came towards me I tried to help lower a basket but I lost balance, slipped and the grapes went everywhere. Everybody laughed. That was my vendimia for this year!

I waited by the henhouse for Pablo to come down. His movements were slow and cumbersome. We went to the village bar and chatted for a while. A relapse in June had set him back again and he was still struggling. The doctors couldn’t explain exactly how he’d ended up with the illness. Nobody else in the village suffered the symptoms. He’s permanently tired and couldn’t run 100 metres these days let alone a sub 3 hour marathon. Just picking grapes for a couple of hours that morning had left him exhausted. We talked about this and that, about running, about mountains. But it can be a lonely place in the valley and running was always an outlet. And suddenly it’s a bit like a bird that has inexplicably lost its ability to fly converting the same beloved village from playground to prison camp.

When I left I promised to come over to help collect chestnuts. They’ve got dozens of trees on the other side of the valley and the chestnuts are sold, sometimes to French chocolate manufacturers. Drove back to Ponferrada reflecting on the irony of it all that Pablo, the strongest of all my running partners was debilitated by an illness which I always thought, in this day and age, only affected the weak and elderly. The moral of the story could be “run while you can, when you can, be grateful ...and enjoy it. You never know what lies around the corner”.

Get well soon Pablo.

[suzieq]

BB - I have to tell you, this brought tears to my eyes. Why does something like this happen - and TB of all things in a developed country? But it does...
I wish Pablo a strong recovery and hopefully he'll be running with you again. Your statement of run while you can and be grateful really hit home.

Suzie

[Sweder]

That's a humbling tale, BB, and a powerful message to those of us who blather on about lack of motivation.
All good thoughts to Pablo.