A blast from the past

Those of you who have been around for a while will remember our old website. We had a major upgrade at the beginning of this year and are very pleased with it but during the change over we lost a few articles and some of those were written by Oliver Johnston who provided insight into the road racing scene in Spain where he was a frequent visitor. We're very pleased to say that our administrators have had a good dig around and found some of the missing treasure. So, without further ado here is the first of a few of those entertainng articles!

Take a run on the Spanish side

 

When Oliver Johnston took a summer job at a local factory, little did he know that it would lead to a lifestyle change that involved him participating in races all around Europe. One of his colleagues encouraged him to enter a local road race with him and the rest, as they say is history.

On this morning's news we can see that market research and a Sport England study show a growing trend towards individual sports, especially running, and away from team sports. Oliver had been a keen footballer but after his summer in the factory he went to work in the City. This precluded pretty much any sport with a social or team aspect and he chose running as his primary sport. This culminating in running the 2004 Flora London Marathon after training with a colleague in the early evenings before staying in the office most of the night, in order to achieved reasonable mileage. Having decided to leave City law a couple of years ago, he decided among other things to do the Camino de Santiago and while working afterwards in a pilgrims hostel in Astorga met his current girlfriend. As Raquel is Spanish, they visit the country a couple of times each year and take the opportunity to participate in the blooming Iberian race scene. Raquel, for her part, has joined Beverley Athletic Club and can sometimes be coaxed out of the door to local races, although Oliver says "she really just likes having a UK athletics card that proves to all her friends how professional a runner she is!"

Last year they ran the Ruta Toreno-Pardamaza-Toreno Half Marathon - (wow! That's got more letters than kilometres!) Below is Oliver's race report.

 

Please, shoot me. NOW! It is the end of the inaugural Ruta Toreno-Pardamaza-Toreno half marathon race and I am having a Steve Redgrave moment. I would happily give anybody permission to shoot me if they ever see me near such a race again. Raquel Garcia, who also completed the event, has similar thoughts later as she crosses the finishing line. With customary running naivety and insouciance I ridicule descriptions of local races as "undulating" and wonder why the Bishop Wilton half marathon attracts such mythical veneration. I did likewise with this race, until, after already having registered my participation, from about 2,000 miles away our club chairman, Brian casually pointed out that as far as he could see, the race would involve some serious uphill running.

Toreno lies at 667m above sea level. Pardamaza, the turnaround point, lies at 1,080m above sea level. It is little wonder that only seven people are recorded as living there. To put some context to these altitudes, the highest point in England, Scafell Pike, is 978m above sea level and Snowdon is 5 metres higher than Pardamaza at 1,085m. The village of Llanberis at the bottom is around 200m above sea level.

Were it not for Brian, I would not so much have looked at Google's contour map, and I was rather regretting having now considered this folly. If this trip were raced on a bike, then there would be some serious polka dot jersey points available. Still, after a week or two in Spain I was scouting around for a bit of racing action and as I had been running pretty much exclusively over this distance, at the right altitude and over some hills since arriving, how bad could it be?

Before getting down to business, it was interesting to compare race organisation at home with abroad. Most races in the UK start by mid-morning, presumably to ensure that the race finishes well before there is any risk of the sun making a meaningful appearance. This race, on a westfacing mountainside, would start at 5p.m. so ensuring that come the gun sufficient heat had built up during a sunny day without a cloud in sight. The average recorded temperature in the province for the day was 25 degrees. Needless to say no competitors left the shade of the town hall building until the last minute. On the other hand, one might point out that the Spanish would only just about have woken up and finished breakfast by this time, so the starting time is comparable after all.

Also contrasting is the absence of race administration: no paperwork, no race permit numbers, no formal measurement of distance (the race was described as "about 22km"), little marshalling, no official timing that we have seen yet and, best of all, no race fee. This trick might be learned by next year. Indeed, I have yet to see an English race where the local police load up the panda car with boxes of bottled water and drive off along the route to drop it off. All of this contributed to a very friendly, individual, local race feel.

As with the Beaver Trail event and Smugglers Trod, both runners and walkers are welcome, although only runners were eligible for prizes. Sensibly, Raquel opted for the walking option, with running to be factored in when desirable, which allowed a much more picturesque and attractive appraisal of the course to be made. Accordingly, the walkers were off down the ramp half an hour before the runners. And a ramp it was. Raquel noted that a testing uphill finish would be no fun after 22km or so.

As the runners set off, there was an incredibly laid-back atmosphere, a neutralised zone feel, as competitors happily chatted with each other as they ambled along. If I understood and spoke more Spanish, then I might have enjoined in this activity. Instead, I turned my mind inwards: we had done 20m odd straight downhill in 300m from the start to the valley floor to cross the river. There was going to be at least 20m climbing right at the finish too? Was it not all downhill from the turnaround? It was not. The first couple of kilometres were what would pass for "undulating", in the Walkington 10km sense. So, there would also be some uphill coming back. And if we are not really getting down to climbing business from the outset, then this must mean that the main draw of 400m skywards would be visited on the participants over fewer kilometres, so meaning steeper gradients. Perhaps understandably, nobody seemed much interested in making too much pace. Run your own race, goes the advice, so rather than stop completely I tried a gentle not-blowing-too-much-yet jog. Eventually somebody decided to run, and I decided at least to try to keep him in sight. Maybe I was on the button today: after all, following a decent Major Stone half marathon and the local training, cake eating aside, I should be in reasonable condition.

All of this fantasy was swiftly rectified as the road began to turn uphill without undulating back downhill after the next bend and the more serious runners started to take off. After some 30minutes of this and the run beginning to simulate running through treacle, I wished the road would just drop off the mountainside. Spotting Raquel's fuchsia pink top somewhere up the mountainside was motivation at least to try to look good for the camera, but this was just grandstanding. Happily there was plenty of water along the route, fantastic views and varied nature to allow the mind to wander and time to pass without seeming more painful than necessary. What support there was was encouraging, and there were definitely more than seven people in Pardamaza. Maybe nobody can get there often enough to count the burgeoning population.

The turnaround was a relief and provided the opportunity now to stretch my legs, if they would allow it. The return was an individual zero sum game: while taking two places back on the way down, I was in turn overtaken by somebody with a passing resemblance to our club secretary and then somebody who looked both like he had absconded from selling Bob Marley motif hemp t-shirts at a New Age rave and as if he had only started running from the top of the hill.

As I approached the fuchsia beacon in the opposite direction, I was engaged in conversation by a Spanish runner, but it was not until the finish that he realised that my muteness had nothing to do with race concentration, just total incomprehension. Again, Raquel kindly took time out for some photos, but for the last time on the day as on the descent happily the only casualty of the race occurred as the camera failed to keep pace with Raquel and fell out of her rear pocket on to the road, so breaking the screen.

As Toreno re-emerged some three nanoseconds later (well, a bit longer than this perhaps, but there can hardly be a half marathon offering the opportunity of such negative splits), my ambition was sadly and ignobly reduced to keeping the lead female a place behind me, a feat which was managed with a few final uphill efforts. Raquel understandably ran more of the downhill than the uphill and finished her first half marathon in a small group of four. At the time of writing, there are no official finish times or positions available, but the winner finished in 1h 25m something and by his reckoning I was 1h 40m something and around tenth position.

Frankly, I don't much care about the time, and neither does Raquel. There were goody bags with tasteful caps, as well as personalised certificates for all finishers, which was a nice touch. After the presentation of prizes it was on to perhaps the best aspect of this wonderful community-feel event: a monstrous paella for all involved accompanied by seemingly endless bread and wine in the town square. The last finishers arrived in near darkness to vino-amplified cheers from those refuelling at the tables heaving with fragrant rice and seafood.

I am sure that having initiated the event, it will be staged again next year. There is much to commend the event with its small, community feel, picturesque setting, friendly organisation and post-event socialising. One hopes that it can maintain this without succumbing to commercial or bureaucratic pressures resulting in time limits, health checks and only tasteless cotton t-shirts and bus fare home to welcome the finishers.