Zegama-Aizkorri 2011

[Bierzo Baggie]

We start with one lap of the village which gives me time to tie one kagool around my waist and dump the yellow rain poncho in the first wheelie bin.
Said goodbye to the worst 50p I’ve ever spent.

Then spent the next few kilometres still recovering from chubascero stress syndrome. It took me a while to get into my stride. Hills I remember running 8 years ago I now walked cautiously, matching my stride to the clickety-click of the shepherd’s sticks. He was like a txalapartari soloist (remember, tree trunk music..) marking a rhythm for the waves of strange, garishly-clad guests to his hillside, his ancestral workplace.



It was already too hot and the heat was the worst enemy for many of us. At some points the temperature topped 30º. The humidity in the woods made you sweat faster than your body could assimilate liquids and above the trees the sun blazed mercilessly. Passed at least 3 athletes who were throwing up and perhaps 20% of the field abandoned which is unusual. Normally the people who run here are well-prepared and the drop out rate in other years was minimal.

Another problem for me was the hard ground, especially the rutted turf where the cows had passed. It was easy to twist an ankle if you weren’t concentrating. I twisted both which put paid to making up time on the descents.

Passed another English guy on the way up Monte Aratz. If I was going slowly he was going backwards. And this was only the first climb of 3.

“This isn’t running, it’s hill walking” he said. I had to agree.

I was now 3rd Brit behind Tom Owens and Ricky Lightfoot. Err, a very long way behind them actually.

Started to struggle. Realized it was going to be a long morning. Descended over rocks and stones through a natural tunnel and to Santu Spiritu, the start of the climb up Aizkorri. This is where the race really begins.

Ask for the cut-off time at the checkpoint. 5 minutes away I’m told. Shit, that’s cutting it fine... and I shoot off just as the shepherd arrives to milk up more applause.

And the applause is just incredible. It’s like the Tour de bloody France at times.

Hundreds of people, thousands perhaps, perched on rocks, forming corridors, hollering and cheering,

AUPA AUPA EUTSI EUTSI

There were Basque flags and Catalan flags and kids with cowbells and airhorns.

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Here’s a link to the photos on the race web page. There’s a great photo of the shepherd as he came steaming past me. At no point did I see him run, but his pace was relentless.

http://www.zegama-aizkorri.net/web-es/Cu...afias.aspx

And it’s about here that I start to notice the man in black hovering just below, sweeping up the backmarkers, the stragglers and the heat stricken pukers. It’s here I suddenly remember a classic piece of RC writing, Andy’s Zurich marathon, the menacing presence of a bus and a quote from the rhyme of the ancient mariner.

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head.
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

The man in black was “the escobar,” the sweeper. He didn’t resemble a bus, more like the grim reaper.