Update

[Bierzo Baggie]

One to watch then...

...and watch her I did. I watched her for the first 500m as she disappeared into the distance. This fragile-looking young lady can certainly run quickly and efficiently over rough, rocky terrain.

Anyway, the all-new Espino race took us through silent pine forests and over the scorched scrub summits of the surrounding hills, a zone which I’d never explored before. It was more trail running than mountain running and at 25k it was a little too long and a little too fast for me. But I got around.

These are the hills where my race companion (for the first 5k at least) puts in his 10 hour shifts from Monday to Friday in the logging industry (I’m told the word “lumberjack” isn’t used any more except by those with nostalgia for Monty Python). Things are grim. Pedro hasn’t been paid for nearly 2 months now and some workers are even 3 or 4 months in arrears. Half the country is bankrupt and there are difficult times ahead. But that was yesterday. Today the trails and the smell of pine resin..

Pedro had a few crafty fags before and after the race. He’s smoking rollies these days and a few of his anecdotes over those first, easy kilometres convinced me that he’s the long lost Spanish cousin of “iron” Joss Naylor. He’s got the right genes, his grandad lived (and worked his own allotment) until he was 102. And like farming, the demands of Pedro’s work certainly help tone mountain running prowess. With this sort of background you can permit yourself the odd indulgence and still finish in the prizes.

The gradient steepened as we left the sheltered river valley and I broke into a strategical walk. Pedro pushed on with a relentless run and reclaimed a few places. It was a training run around familiar territory for him today. Snapped a few photos of runners and walkers (there was a shorter walking event which sometimes coincided with the race). It helped ease my suffering and take my mind off it all. Above the pine woods the harsh baked landscape is as yet untorched, but with drought conditions becoming the norm rather than the exception, expect all this to go up in smoke sooner or later. It will be sadly spectacular and I’ll be able to see it from my kitchen window.

By the time we were descending back to Espino via the usual firebreaks of mashed up stone, the soles of my feet were cooked and my legs were too beaten up to respond. Linked up with a guy who jumped out the bushes having taken a short cut and I finished the race with him. No grudge to bear .... I’d probably have done the same if I’d known where I was going.

Our reward? A bottle of wine, a luminous yellow t-shirt and a bite to eat in the shadow of the rusty hulk of Espino’s old cattle market, whilst the kids grappled with a climbing wall and a bouncy castle. Gus the lottery seller and Rachel of the concave tum were the predictable winners. Another race completed and we’re walkin’ in a Bierzo wonderland...

25k: 2hours 35 minutes. Very very tired but still intact.

Photos here. https://picasaweb.google.com/bierzobaggie/ElEspino2012