Update
2009 ended with a flurry of activity but with very little actual training. In fact over the whole of last year I clocked 700 or so kilometres which is possibly my lowest yearly total since the mid-90s.
Two events have contributed to altering my running patterns, probably forever. The first, as noted in these diaries was the death of my father. The second, as yet unreported, was the death of somebody I’d never met in my life.
Running has always been a straightforward enough pastime. It’s never really been an effort to get out there. One of the redeeming features of the insalubrious “barrio” where I live is that it lies in the shadow of Monte Pajariel and five minutes from our flat a rickety, makeshift bridge has always provided speedy access to unlimited forest trails. Those easy, carefree days are over.
The bridge crossed the mighty River Sil at its narrowest point and the white-water underneath would funnel through with unrelenting force. The accident was there waiting to happen and one day a blue and white police cordon confirmed what everybody had predicted but funnily enough nobody had expected.
Had to ask around to get a picture of what had actually happened. Somebody had fallen in, somebody had drowned, somebody had been found floating downstream to Toral de Merayo. That somebody turned out to be Rafael “el mudo” a retired cobbler who had worked for years in the little shoe repair shop I walk past almost every day. Apparently one of the workman’s pallets which had been placed upon the bridge’s metal base had given way as Rafael crossed. Somehow he had got his foot trapped inside and had lost balance, either at that very moment or as a result of trying to free himself. He ended up stuck upside down with his upper body underwater and with at least one foot still attached to the bridge. The force of the water probably prevented him from hauling himself up again. And if Rafael “el mudo” had managed to get his head above the water at any moment nobody would have heard his cry for help. “Mudo” in Spanish means mute; death had dealt a particularly cruel card to the unlucky shoemaker.
The accusations were not long in coming. The locals blamed the Town Hall for not building a bridge in conditions. The Town Hall blamed the water board as they were in charge of monitoring the river. The water board said that it wasn’t their fault that the workers from the chorizo factory had built an illegal bridge to get home quickly for their lunch break. And the workers of the chorizo factory of course denied all knowledge that the bridge had ever even existed.
But in reality we all shared a little bit of responsibility for the death of Rafael “el mudo”. We all used that bridge in its precarious state, the runners, the mountain-bikers, the pensioners with their transistor radios on their sunny afternoon strolls; each one of us contributed our collective grain of responsibility to this horrible, tragic, freak accident …and of course none of us did because it was just that; a tragic, freak accident.
It may seem frivolous to talk about running after this grim little story but the loss of easy access to the Pajariel trails has meant that running is no longer effortless. I can’t merrily zip off to the hills for half an hour as all my old routes now involve a time consuming detour only viable on Sunday mornings. Running from now on will involve effort, discipline and even dare I say it, planning. Or there will be no running at all.
