Seafront Plodder Wrote:Goes without saying BB, but you are an absolute bloody nutcase.
I wish you well.
Crónica de una muerte anunciada (part 1)
And so one Friday afternoon, with the words of the mythical Seafront Plodder echoing in my ears, I set off for Picos. Wife and child were safely tucked away on the Atlantic beaches of Galicia, blissfully ignorant of the true extent of the task ahead. In fact I was pretty blissful and very ignorant. Little did I know I was as likely to finish this race as Michael Ballack was to obtain a cup winners medal.
Faithful wingman Miguel Mushroom came for the ride. MM was eager to know Picos and was even tempted to take part. But the places being limited to 150 had filled up weeks ago.
A three hour drive took us from Ponferrada to the town of Cangas de Onis and here I picked up my race number. Time for a quick visit to a local cider house for a bite to eat and a sample of the local scrumpy. Then we took the long, winding road to the lakes of Covadonga where the race was due to start at 4am the following morning.
Covadonga is considered by many to be the birthplace of modern day Spain and it has become a place of Catholic pilgrimage. Here the relentless Muslim advance was finally repelled by the mighty Don Pelayo in 718 and the Moorish hordes never did conquer Asturias and its lofty mountains. But there was no stopping to admire the grandiose basilica which marks “the reconquest”. This weekend we have other business.
Dodging mighty hordes of the bovine variety we drove on upwards to the first lake, Lake Enol, which lies on the fringes of the Picos de Europa national park. The plan was to pitch the tent, grab a coffee in the nearby shepherd’s refuge which would be open all night and then retire for a few hours sleep. Race marshals were already heading out and many would spend the night on the mountains. In the shepherd’s refuge they were friendly and helpful and little tents were popping up all over the lakeside pastures. Too many little tents so it seemed. Just as I was getting into mine a land-rover belonging to the park authorities pulled up and a fat man got out. Camping was/is strictly prohibited in the vicinity of the lakes. We all knew this but as they had turned a blind eye the previous year and we’d all be gone by 3:30 nobody had expected any trouble. But the fat man was having none of it, he of course was right and all the little tents came back down again. I ended up kipping in the car.
Up at 3am after barely sleeping a couple of hours. Went to the shepherd’s refuge for another coffee. It was full of ultra-athletic types with shaved legs and head torches. I put my head torch on so as not to feel out of place. Decided that it was too late to shave my legs though.
The start line was in the middle of a meadow. The athletes and mountaineers gradually occupied the space generously vacated by the cows that gathered on the periphery and watched with that bemused expression all cows have. Only this time they had good reason to be bemused. One scratched its back against my car. Oii!
It was a clear, starry night and the conditions were near perfect. A brief talk informed us of cut off times and of sections where it was strictly forbidden to run and where anybody caught running would be disqualified. That sounded OK to me as my plan was to run as little as possible. However, once we’d been given the off and I’d slipped in to fast walk mode it dawned on me that the level of the athlete/mountaineers in my midst was rather high. I was soon last and at risk of being left alone in the darkness. Sod this!..I ran.
The first two hours in the mountains were strange and dreamlike. A faint thread of light snaked upwards from 150 head torches and there was total silence except for the click-click-click of the walking poles that most people seemed to be using. And once dawn rolled back the murky cloak of night it revealed a rugged, treeless landscape of incredible beauty and bleakness.
On this first 1000m ascent I had felt comfortable and was probably about halfway up the field. I ran when I could and the paths were well trodden but the part I was dreading most was soon to come into view with the encroaching daylight. It was every bit as bad as I’d expected.
“Mesones” is the name of a 1600m descent to the village of Caín, home of “El Cainejo”. The steepness of Mesones is legendary. The raw, rocky surface soon converts into a treacherous grassy wall which I zig-zagged my way down with great care. I was so careful that I didn’t fall once, but everybody and a dog overtook me and by the outskirts of Caín I was amongst the last half dozen backmarkers. We were just inside the first 8:30am cut off time but unknowingly we were already condemned not to finish.
