Ria de Ferrol Half Marathon

[Riazor Blue]

It was a strange sort of day in the end.

Everything was prepared on Saturday night. So I woke up nice and early, at 07:30. The race started at 11:00, so I had plenty of time. Breakfast of a bowl of fruit and fibre and a mug of coffee. Time to post the weather report on here and also to do something I’d been meaning to do all week: I suffer from hard skin on the inside edge of the balls of my feet and the week before a long race I usually reove as much of the dead stuff as possible. So Sunday morning I had a quick go with the corn file, to smooth off the rough edges, so to speak.

I left the flat at about 08:30 for the hour drive to Neda, where the start was to be this year. I wanted to arrive early because I had not registered to run this year. Races in this part of Spain are never overcrowded, and a I live outside of Ferrol, the race details said I could enter on the day. It was a chilly 6 degrees when I arrived in Neda and set about finding the start line and inscription desk. There was only a small queue for unregistered runners and soon I was handing over my DNI. More or less, this is the conversation that followed:

- are you a foreigner?
- Yes, British.
- Are you a federated runner?
- No, I want to run the ‘popular’.
- Non federated foreigners cannot run, I’m sorry.
- WHAT??? But I ran last year, I always run the ‘carreras populares’
- I’m sorry, if you’re not in the federation, you cannot run.
- Why not?
- They are the rules.
- But it doesn’t say anything about that on the Federation web-site.
- Go and speak to the man with the red coat.


So I went to talk to the man with the red coat from the Galician Athletics Federation.

- Hello, the man on the desk said that I cannot run because I’m a foreigner.
- That’s right.
- But why not? I always run in the ‘carreras populares’.
- They are the rules. It’s not fair that the federated athletes, who pay their subscriptions, cannot win the prizes because foreign athletes win.
- Pardon???
- Our athletes pay their subscriptions, and it’s not right that other atletes win the prize money.
- Hang on a minute. In that case, why can Spaniards run who are not federated? They are not paying subscriptions either.
- Those are the rules, this is a race in the RFEA calender. It’s the same in all RFEA races, they are IAAF rules. It’s the same everywhere.
- Then how come I could run here last year, in Santiago and Orense, they were RFEA aswell? In any case this is a ‘carrera popular’ not a championship race.
- I’m sorry. Foreigners cannot compete. We phoned all the foreigners on Friday to inform them.
- But the rules and regulations for this race, on the FGA website, say that I can register on the day.
- Not if you are a foreigner.
- But I’m a resident here.


I could see that I was wasting my time. I walked back to the car. I met a few guys I know through the shop, who all thought it ridiculous. The general feeling was that the FGA are clueless and only help the elite athletes – and after all, they are civil servants.

When I got back to the car I thought, hang on, let’s find out what RFEA rule says that I cannot run, and also get the guys name so that I can speak to the FGA on Monday. So I walked back down to the start area with pen and paper.

When I arrived back at the start, the FGA man was surrounded by a group of Portugese runners and a Korean student. The FGA guy was on the ropes, the Portugese runners had travelled 300km to be there, and pointed out that their club welcomes over 200 Spanish runners to the ½ marathon they organize. They also pointed out that with their fastest runner having a PB of 1:20 or so, they had no hope of winning anything anyway. As the North of Portugal is seen by Galicians to be closer to Galicia than Spain is, we were allowed to run on the condition that we did not win anything.

So I registered, promising sincerely that I would not win, or if I did, I would not accept the prize money.

Luckily, as I had left home early, I still had time for a coffee and a crap before changing into race gear, slapping on the horse linament or whatever it is and jogging back to the start. I even had time to double back because I had forgotten to put the HRM transmitter on. After all that though, I didn’t have time for my usual warm up, but apart from a few stretches, with all the to-ing and fro-ing I was fairly well warmed up (if not overheated).