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Well, Andy, you can have an orange juice or a milkshake instead of chocolate and churros although they are carbohydrates which will be useful the following day. I´m not used to drinking alcohol, so later I´d rather have an alcohol free bee with a tapa or a milkshake with a cake after pasta dinner if you all feel like going to a bar or a café.

As it will be difficult to take you all in my car, I´ll ask my brother or a friend to help me by driving another car.

If you could bring me an old running magazine, I´d be very grateful.

Regards

Antonio

I'm with you Andy. I tend to take it easy before a race and go to bed rather early. I know people in Spain are used to eating late and staying out much later than I am...so I'll probably have to sneak off at some point and call it a night. I will be looking forward to a frosty beer and maybe some wine after the race though!

Hi Antonio, sorry it's taken so long to get back to you.
Yes, please book a room for me as well. I am on the same flight as SP -
arriving Saturday 29th at 16:20 on Easyjet, leaving on Monday at 15:50.

Thanks for all your hard work in putting this together - it will be a pleasure to meet you and our fellow RC members.

One more question: do I need to enter the race online, or can we do that on the day of the race?

Thanks again

I´ll book your room later at a travel agency where I´ll buy all the vouchers for all of you, S.

You can enter online paying by credit card for only 6 euros but I had some problems to do that so I entered through a bank money order. You can enter on Saturday afternoon. It costs 9 euros instead of 6 euros. It includes a T-shirt and a ticket for the pasta dinner.

If you have problems entering online by credit card, I could enter you through a bank money order but I´d need to know a lot of data such as name, surname, date of birth, address, telephone number, etc.

Regards

Antonio

Antonio, do you need some money from us for the hotel now? If so, I am very happy to pay for the vouchers with a credit card and we can settle up between us later. If you would prefer to give the travel agency my card details, just send me a 'private message' or email me, and I'll send you the information. I don't want you to be out of pocket, even for a few weeks.

Thank you, Andy. Don´t worry about it. I can pay for the vouchers now. It´s a pleasure to be able to help you with the accomodation. By the way, have you decided what you are going to do after the weekend at Hotel Torreluz ****, Andy? If you want me to book you another hotel anywhere, don´t hesitate to tell me.

Regards

Antonio

Cheers mate.

Regarding the few days after the race, leave that with me for the moment. I'll do some research. We may just hire a car and take off. If you want me to come and meet your pupils at some point, that's fine.

One other question - are we absolutely certain to get into the race if we leave it till we get there to enter? It would be a bit unfortunate not to be able to take part.....

I´m sure there won´t be any problem to enter on Saturday. In fact, last year Thomas, the young German who was travelling around Europe on bike carrying a windsurf entered without any problem. It is 9 euros except if you´re a Runner´s World subscriber. Then, it is 6 euros. I don´t know if it is only the Spanish edition or any. You can even enter on Sunday but it is 12 euros instead of nine.

Anyway, if you have any difficulties to enter online by credit card, you can e-mail me and give me the following data and I can enter you through a bank money order for just 6 euros. You could do this yourselves, but it isn´t worth since the bank comission would be bigger than 3 euros.

The data are these:
Name
Surname
Passport number
Date of birth
Address
Town
Postcode
Club ( if any )


Regards

Antonio

Thank you for the hotel booking Antonio.
I think the best way to handle the money is that we buy you a wonderful dinner on Sunday night (as well as pay you what we owe you!)

Regarding the race entry, if we arrive on Easyjet at 16:20 will we have time to enter on Saturday night? If 'yes' I think that would be the best way - then we can each pay for our entry directly. This would mean a change in your itinerary to include a visit to the race offices, probably directly from the airport. Trying to register on the day could be difficult, and it would leave us no time to sort out any 'technicalities' that may arise.

If you guys think it best to pre-register I'll send you my details no problem.
Thanks again Antonio for making this happen.

The booking is already done, S. It´s a pleasure to help you. You needn´t buy me a dinner. I wanted to invite you to have a "merienda" on Saturday afternoon.

Regarding the race entry, we have to go to the stadium to pick up our race numbers but if you haven´t registered previously you can enter first and pick up the race number and bag of goodies afterwards. We can go directly from the airport if you like or after the "merienda" because at nine we can have the pasta dinner at the stadium since it is included in the race fee.

Anyway, I expect you all have a very good time here at my home town.

Regards

Antonio

[racial_stereotype_alert]
If someone called Jock offers to buy you dinner, Antonio, I would accept. It's a very rare phenomenon.
[/racial_stereotype_alert]

If you re-read the wee canny bagger's post, you'll notice he's offered to buy 1/5 of a dinner!

Ah, well spotted, SP. I thought it was too good to be true.

Sorry Antonio, you won't know what we're on about here. All will be explained later.....

Hoots mon - I dinae ken whit yar on aboot!
Actually, SP is spot on - it was the cunning deployment of the world 'we' that lets the old cat out of the bag. Shucks.

Sorry, Antonio. You may live to regret your kind offer of hospitality!
If we can't buy you dinner I suspect we'll manage to locate a suitable liquid substitute after the race, heh heh heh . . .

I´ve checked through another computer at school since from mine I wasn´t allowed to do that and I´ve seen that it is possible to enter the half marathon by paying with a credit card through a secure system. If you decide to follow this way instead of doing it on Saturday in Almería and have any difficulty in understanding what you have to fill in, just tell me. By doing it via internet, it is six euros instead of nine.

Greetings from Almería.

Antonio

How wonderful it is to be able to go for a run after a few days feeling badly. Last Saturday, went to a village whose name I don´t mind remembering – Alcudia de Guadix- in the Sierra de los Filabres to help a friend who has some land with vineyards. We had a good time there but when I arrived home, I felt I had a terrible cold and what is worse when I woke up on Sunday I had my left eyelid swollen. So, I had to go to the doctor and have some medicines along the week and unable to go for a run until today that I´ve felt much better.

So, this afternoon I crossed avenida Cabo de Gata – which is on the half marathon route- to go to the Almadrabillas esplanade. It was 6.15 pm. It was a sunny nice day. The temperature was around 16º Celsius. There were a lot of people strolling and children playing in the park. I decided to go to the lighthouse. I went along the port and got to the lighthouse. Along the pier, there were a few anglers fishing. From there, the view of the town with the Alcazaba in the background is beautiful, especially at night. It took me 26´30´´ to get there. It is around 4 kms long. Then, I went back but I decided to walk for one minute at minute 30 and 40 and got to my starting place in 54 minutes. I continued as far as where the sea front starts at San Miguel beach in 56 minutes.

After that, I went back walking to my starting place to complete one hour. On the way back there were a few youngsters practising skateboarding and some people in a car where playing an old song that reminded me of my last years at secondary school – Rivers of Babilon from Boney M. Then, I stretched a little and went home to have a few oranges and magazines before having a shower feeling great for being able to plod along after feeling that I might not be able to take part at Almería half marathon next week, which would have made me feel really miserable.

PS. I´m trying to attach a photo of mine so that you can recognise me at the airport in Almería.

In the first one, I´m at the sea front and in the second one I´m at the port with the Alcazaba castle in the background. Both pictures were taken on 6th December 2004.

I thought you might have been making excuses for not doing the race there for a minute, Antonio....

My preparation has got a bit better this week too. I had a decent 10 miler last Sunday, and have managed 3 x 4.5 (approx) midweek runs, two of them relatively fast by my normal standards. Tomorrow I'm planning on 12 or 13 miles, and with another 3 good runs next week, should be in a reasonable frame of mind for the race.

What sort of time did you say you were hoping for in the race, Antonio?

Not long to go now. We are finally starting to get excited about the trip. My wife has a friend staying up the coast at a place called Vera, so we might hire a car and try to get over there at some point.

Thanks for the pictures - it's good to put a face to the name at last.

Cheers

Andy

It would be terrible if I had to miss the race this year that the RC team is coming. I was very motivated to prepare it well but I´ve been quite unlucky with injuries and illness. My aim was to finish under two hours since last year I did it in 2 hours 3 minutes but taking into account all that has happened I´d be really glad if I finished without getting injured and under two hours five minutes. What is your goal, Andy?

Vera is a nice place with a beautiful beach. If you like I´d love to take you to Vera on Monday afternoon if you finally decide to stay there. It´s a nice place with a large beach. I worked at a secondary school there for one year long time ago.

A friend of mine and me wanted to do the half marathon last Sunday but we couldn´t do it because of illness. He also had a terrible cold. Probably on Sunday we´ll do the half marathon or the first lap and a half depending on how we feel. I´ll tell you what the course is like after suffering it a little. Anyway, the last three kilometres are a bit uphill - not too hard but after 18 kilometres it could be tough.

By the way, shall I book a restaurant for lunch after the half marathon? Would it be ok at 2.30 pm?

Regards

Antonio

Good point about the projected times, Andy.
2 hours-ish would be good for me at this stage.
I know SP had some vision of us all holding hands on the way round (or something like that) - sounds like we're fairly close so far

Well I should remind you that my half marathon PB is 2:19, but I've not done one for 10 months, so I can't say where I am at the moment. Sounds like you guys are definitely ahead of me. I'd be delighted to get in under 2:15, but I'm not sure how likely that is if the last 3km are uphill. Depends how we want to treat the race. If it's just a training run, I guess we could jog around together. If you're keen to go for a PB then it makes sense for all of us to run our own races. This might mean starting together to get warmed up, then moving off when it feels right.

I think we might hire a car, Antonio. I'm going to check some prices later. The Vera idea could work. How far is it from Almeria?