December; festive running.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Put the Christmas tree up tonight.

[El Gordo]

Is that an order?

[Sweder]

Bah, Humbug.

[Bierzo Baggie]

First run for 9 or 10 days. This year has been full of fits and starts which makes it difficult to call what I do “training”. Training suggests consistency, discipline and some sort of plan. I must get into “training” one day.

Sought a longish, flat route, mainly on quiet roads and ended up coming back through Toral de Merayo. Running through the village I glimpsed a familiar scene at this time of year, “la matanza,” the slaughtering of the pig. An entire family were hard at it dissecting a hefty porker strapped to a large wooden bench. Dad was merrily burning off hairs with some sort of blowtorch. There’ll be more of this to come….
Met someone to run with on leaving Toral which made the last 20 minutes pass relatively quickly. The guy said he’d just come down from Monte Pajariel but I reckoned he was fleeing the village.
La Martina-Villalibre-Toral route; running time 59 minutes.

[El Gordo]

Hmmm, hope the porker had expired before the old blowtorch treatment started.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Who said he was burning hairs off the pig?

[Sweder]

I had no idea SP was in Spain . . .

[Bierzo Baggie]

Did a bit of research and the bloke in the pub confirmed my suspicions. The blowtorch is used on the (deceased) pig to burn off the hairs and smoothen the skin. Another method is to lower the pig carcass into scalding water. In this way you don’t get those nasty hairs in yer pork scratchings.

Ran the usual Toral-Pajariel route. Did the road bit first and then enjoyed the slopes of the Monte Pajariel trail with a nice temperature, peace and quiet and then…. a rustle in the bushes and suddenly a small roe deer shot out just above me. A micro-second later a dog appeared in hot pursuit and finally the shouts of the hunter, rifle no doubt at the ready.
“Poor little bugger,” I thought.
Upped the pace to get off the hills as quickly as possible. If they skin teddies, blow-torch piglet and shoot Bambi, what would they do with an Englishman?
About 5 minutes later I became aware of a jingling sound behind me. I was being tracked by 3 diminutive hunting dogs with floppy ears and dinky little bells around their necks. They followed me almost right down to the river. Hopefully I took them off the scent. Hopped across the rocks and arrived home unscathed. Hope the cute little deer could say the same.
Running time; 45 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Bierzo is a pretty well defined region, a “one road in one road out” sort of scenario and I’ve been here long enough for any journey farther afield to feel like an adventure. Even Lugo. My only running event “abroad” this year will be tomorrow. Lugo isn’t quite as exotic as Bombay or Table Mountain and it’s only 100kms down the N6 but it’ll do for me. It’s the next decent sized town after Ponferrada on the way to La Coruña but once you cross the Piedrafita pass there’s a different climate, different colours, a different language even. Had to decipher an entry form that was only in Galician and although very similar to Castilian Spanish, Rosana had to help me with a couple of things (address, or “dirección” becomes “enderezo” for example). So, full of excitement and expectation, tomorrow morning I’ll be Lugo-bound looking forward to an excellent 10k race...or not?
In the last 3 years I’ve taken part in several 10k events and none of them has actually been 10kms. I thought I’d finally hit the mark in last year’s Lugo 10k but a post by Sampedro questioning the accuracy of the distance shattered my illusions. With even the illustrious Lugo 10k falling short, my running portfolio swells into a merry succession of 9.2s and 11.1s. No problem with that, just that it’d be nice to have a nice round number as a reference point somewhere along the line. I did try and run a 10k on a track once but got bored after about a few laps and headed for Monte Pajariel instead. Will tomorrow be the elusive 10k I’ve been searching for….?

[sampedro]

Hi BB, it will finally be 9.970 m. You'll have to run the 30 meters by yourself...

[Bierzo Baggie]

Hi Sampedro. The extra 30 metres took me over 10 minutes (in the queue for the T-shirts afterwards). Hope you had a good race…sorry we didn’t meet up.

The race reports are the ones I find most difficult to write. So many things happen that you don’t know what to leave out and running with 1000 others instead of on your tod makes for a pretty eventful morning. Bumped into the mighty Basurko and others from Ponferrada, met a little fellow who’d done the Toral de los Vados marathon 14 times, ran most of the way behind a Mick Hucknell look-alike and so on…..

Set out from Ponferrada in semi-darkness and with a chilly -2ºC on the thermometer. Arrived at Lugo an hour and a half later with a slightly warmer -1ºC. As I got out the car I noticed that the aerial had frozen.

Got my race number and met up with Riazor Blue, Mrs Riazor Blue and baby Blue who’s certainly a chip off the old block! We skipped the warm up routine and took refuge from the freezing fog in a nice warm café, a gentile sort of place where the waiters wore bow ties and carried silver trays. Nobody seemed to mind us using one corner as an impromptu changing room come kindergarden. I can think of a few places where we’d have been chucked out. Shared a few baby stories from the last few months before shooting out at the last possible moment in search of the start line.

Top notch circuit, firstly alongside the ancient Roman walls which enclose the old part of town and then magically on top of them for the final 2k. I can hardly imagine a finer finish for a 9.97k, eventually coming off the walls to finish the other side of the plaza mayor. An Ethiopian won in 29 minutes. I thought he looked like Bekele’s brother but then again he might have been Mick Hucknell for all I know. The first woman crossed the line in 32 minutes. I finished just behind the first over-60 and a sprightly old chap he was too.

And I’m beginning to like Lugo. I now see decadent old world charm instead of dilapidated old buildings. It’s a bit like Ponferrada before the cement mixers went haywire.

Total running time; 42 minutes. 3 minutes slower than last year but felt good and thoroughly enjoyed the communal running experience.

[sampedro]

Hi BB, a pitty we didn't meet, i saw Brian rushing from the city hall to the café with just time to say hi.
I am glad to hear you like Lugo, i have your same feeling it has really improved in the last 6-7 years.
I don't have much more to add to your report, my final time was 39:30 one minute faster than 2004 edition but not as good as expected. The worst of all the loooooooong queue for the Tshirts under that wet and cold fog.
See you in some other race and take your chances in galego at some other forum...

[Bierzo Baggie]

A chilly Saturday morning. Colder than Lugo even. Good weather to kill a pig. The white witch’s wand left a petrified landscape of frozen vegetation overnight but which the morning sun was busy transforming to sparkling dew. Enjoyed a pleasant run around the canal.
Running time; 30 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Woke up to another morning of freezing fog and Ponferrada is shrouded in a thick pea souper. There’s only one thing for it. Run up Monte Pajariel until the sun appears. It must be up there somewhere!

Followed the Toral de Merayo trail but took a left turn after about 5 minutes which would take me slowly upwards behind Pajariel. Consulting my runningcommentary.net training diary I see that this is one I last did back in February. Also remember coming this way a couple of years ago with Mrs Scouser and Julio the aerobics instructor (the only gay fell-runner I’ve ever met…he’d go down a storm in the Grasmere games). But we were all younger and fitter then. Now it’s a struggle. The trail is white and icy and slippery in places. It’s a very long gradual climb which follows the contours of the hillside on its eastern flank before spinning northwards just below the upper ridge to reach the antenna at the top. I convince myself that I’m better on the short, steep climbs as I press on spluttering.

Just before the summit the mist thinned and an almost biblical ascension followed through to the blue sky above. Only the very top of Monte Pajariel is clear and the temperature suddenly rises several degrees with the sunlight. I stop next to the antenna and enjoy a view which always takes my breath away. It can only be compared with looking through the window of an aeroplane, a sea of cloud and some 1000 feet below the distant hum of Ponferrada waking up. The smooth, creamy whiteness is only broken by the smoke from the power station cooling towers billowing above the fog line some 7 or 8 kms directly in front of me. Then, looking across to the hills on my right I can see the massive wind turbines erected in tidy lines fairly recently. Old and new, dirty and clean, past and future.

A sharp, wobbly descent follows down a firebreak. A recent post spoke about using your muscles as you run downhill. This assumes that you have these muscles in the first place. Mine need toning. The steep northern flank of Pajariel still smells of charcoal after last summer’s fire but with the mist thickening again I couldn’t exactly see much.

Back in civilization I glimpsed myself in a shop window. A grown man with leg-ins, an inside-out top (I’d changed it round at the summit as it was soaked in sweat inside) and a ridiculous woolly hat covered in frost. Who’d guess I’d just come down from the sunshine!
Total running time; 79 minutes. Longest run since June.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Friday morning.
Very cold but sunny and fog-free. Half an hour around the canal. Nobody about. Heavy frost.
Running time; 30 minutes.

And so to Christmas Day. Consulting my old notebooks I found only 2 previous references to Christmas Day runs.

“Dec 25th 2001. Up and down the river. 30 minutes.”

“Dec 25th 1997. Seaton. 45 minutes. Stoat on a rope.”

My route descriptions were concise in those days. No idea what the intriguing “stoat on a rope” refers to. Somebody taking a ferret for a walk maybe? If only I’d discovered the forum 8 years ago I’d probably have expanded on such peculiar observations. By amazing coincidence a ferret might have “popped up” in my Christmas Day run this morning. Mindblowing.
Crossed the rocks and makeshift bridge over the River Sil with extreme caution as everything was coated in ice. Then headed for Toral de Merayo along the trail which is trapped in Monte Pajariel’s frosty shadow and has been permanently frozen for over a week now. Against this background of whiteness a small black creature skipped across my path and for a moment I thought that it was of weaselly descent but its long bushy tail meant that it was probably a red squirrel. Even though it was black. Stopped a little later on to observe a descent sized buzzard perched amongst the poplar trees after Toral. Getting started again proved hard work but overall ran really well today. It’s probably the fastest I’ve done this route since March and account this to the cold sunny morning, for me the perfect conditions for running.
Running time 44 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

A couple of grey, rainy days with Pajariel covered by mist and low cloud somehow seeming larger and more imposing than ever. The Pogues version of “dirty old town” rang incessantly in my head and I felt nostalgia for the UK. So when the sun came out again this morning I grabbed my trainers as quick as you could say “Sally MacLennane”. Never listen to music when I’m running but the lines of “I can see clearly now the rain has gone” were on the soundtrack as I crossed the rickety bridge (can’t remember who sang that!). Turned left and ran up and down the steep hill to Otero and then back along the other side of the river. A shady, slow moving section of the River Boeza was still frozen solid.
Running time; 34 minutes.

[Sweder]

Jimmy Cliff & Johnny Nash recorded popular versions but I think Neil Diamond may have written it.

[El Gordo]

Hope you have a grand New Year, BB.

I always read and enjoy your stuff, even if I don't always stop to say so. It's the detail that does it. Excellent writing.

Thank you - I hope we will meet one day.

PS - I notice the Baggies turned over Spurs this evening.

[Bierzo Baggie]

And thanks for letting me use your excellent web-site Andy. I may well have packed it in this year otherwise....you've restored my faith in running!

[Bierzo Baggie]

The big freeze was predicted by all and sundry but the independent republic of El Bierzo dares to be different and this morning was pleasantly warm. Looking towards the Aquilianos range there are still some streaks of snow beneath the cloud line in the direction of the Morredero (“a place to die”) ski station but I suspect much of the white stuff has been washed away. The ski and snow board crew will have to seek alternative thrills this weekend…what a shame! (vindictive?….moi?)

Decided to attack Monte Pajariel for the last run of the year. This is a tough little circular route that I last did back in February. The first half hour is mostly eyes down, uphill toil and the view is restricted to muddy puddles and spent shotgun cartridges discarded by careless hunters. Then a short rapid descent into the valley behind Pajariel and back through Toral where I ran through a flock of sheep. Felt good and full of optimism for the New Year.
Otero-Pajariel-Toral de Merayo route: 69 minutes.