November novelties.

[Bierzo Baggie]

November 1st is All Saints Day which means a bank holiday over here and the first novelty of November was that I finally got back onto the Monte Pajariel-Toral trail, plodding gently up the hills and striding cautiously down them. The track was damp and muddy in places with empty chestnut husks littering the way. Plenty of autumn colours and below, the forest of poplar trees that follow the course of the River Sil forms a sea of of gold. Mist clung to Monte Pajariel and the temperature was perfect for running. Didn’t see anybody else except for a couple of mushroom pickers with their dinky little baskets. Stomach still sensitive but managed to get around without walking, squatting, keeling over....
50 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Thusday morning run along the canal/ irrigation ditch. Grey and cloudy but pleasantly warm. Struggled around in 33 minutes.

Friday morning run. A bit chillier than yesterday but the sun peeked out briefly. A smattering of snow on the Montes Aquilianos heralds the arrival of colder weather. The railway route. This is a short, fast circuit up and down a couple of lanes that run alongside either side of the León-Galicia line. The single railway track is slightly raised on an embankment and after a couple of kms there’s an unfenced level crossing where you can cross over and run back along the other side. There are no safety measures. You stop, you edge forward and look up and down the track and then you cross. Obviously it’s not a good place to get stuck as the Galician Express can appear alarmingly quickly. That’s precisely what happened to one old fellow on his way to the allotments in his tractor. Ever since I´ve run along here there are always some fresh flowers on the level crossing although the accident was several years ago. This invariably provides for a short moment of reflection before turning back for home on the fragility of our existence, of our inexplicable destiny and of the futility of picking a fight with an express train.
No trains to contend with today. Didn’t even see a car. 26 minutes. Struggled again.

Saturday morning. Don’t be silly, 2 in a row’s quite enough for me!

[Bierzo Baggie]

Sunday morning run around the River Sil. Mist swirled about above the river and it was cold enough for me to run with a top on over my t-shirt. Saw a couple of curious little birds which look like a cross between a wagtail and a canary. They must be migratory because they appear every year between autumn and early spring.
Running time 40 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Toral-Monte Pajariel route with the road bit first. Surprised the solitary heron that flew out from under the bridge over the River Sil. It always appears when the weather gets colder and I see it at various points along the river from now until spring. Strange that. The storks go (at least some of them) and the heron comes. Yet to my untrained eye they’re pretty similar looking beasties.
The running is still too much like hard work. Almost walked on the hills. 48 minutes.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Saturday morning. Ran the usual route around the canal. Grey and drizzling. Low cloud covered the Montes Aquilianos obscuring any snow that may have fallen overnight.
31 minutes.

Received a letter from the town hall about a week ago. Opened it tentatively fearing that it might refer to some new municipal tax or an old forgotten parking fine or something. But no, a slip of paper fell out advertising the second Ponferrada half marathon. November 13th. No publicity, no posters up in town, just an entry form from the town hall a mere week before the event. This has all the hallmarks of a Chus Alonso race.

Now I don’t want to sound too critical. If it wasn’t for Chus (short for “Jesus”) organizing them we wouldn't get any half marathons in the area. They are free and you always get a t-shirt when you finish. It’s just…I wouldn’t recommend them to my friends. They are races to put you off running for life.

Each of the the last 10 years there has normally been a half marathon in at least one town or village near Ponferrada. You normally find out about them by word of mouth and there’s always prize money on offer, I suppose put up by the local town hall. The race invariably involves 40 or 50 blokes, many of them friends of the organizer (who usually wins) running hell for leather two or more laps around a god-foresakenly ugly circuit. On finishing I generally vow “never again” but inevitably end up queuing for my race number at the next one. I find it difficult to explain such masochistic behaviour.

The half marathon of Camponaraya was a 6 or 7 lap affair. Each dismal lap passed through a local industrial estate. Here one rainy September day in the 1990s I recorded my fastest ever time, yet with 1 hour and 24 minutes on the clock I almost finished last. The Fuentesnuevas half was inhumanely run on a Saturday afternoon in August. Here I won a jar of red peppers and a dose of heat exhaustion. In Cacabelos the finish line was packed up and gone by the one hour 30 minutes point and several disorientated runners were sighted running through the town centre unaware that their torture was actually over. In Bembibre, bossman Chus didn’t actually win as some Kenyan guy who had no doubt found out about the prize money turned up at the last minute and the race was for second place. And now, Ponferrada. In fact, the inaugural Ponferrada half marathon last year wasn’t actually that bad with a pleasant 2 lap urban-rural circuit attracting over 100 runners. Mind you it was held during the fiestas.

The organizer of the worst half marathons I’ve ever run (sorry, but it’s true) is, however, a local legend. Last month they named a street after him. They say that if he hadn’t started running relatively late in life he could have been the best. But in an era when Spanish distance running has ruled the roost (Martin Fíz, Abel Anton, Diego García, Julio Rey, Alejandro Gomez) Chus Alonso has always been a second division athlete winning local and provincial races and more recently veteran’s championships, but never quite making the leap to international class.

I don’t know bossman Chus personally. I always see him at the marathon of Toral de los Vados (which he has won a couple of times I think) and at all the Bierzo races. He has a high, squeaky voice and an aggressive front running style which requires extremely large “cojones”. He also runs a gym and does an admirable job training local kids for cross country. He and Rodrigo Gavela (who ran in the Barcelona Olympics) are the two best marathon runners that Bierzo has ever produced.

So, tomorrow there’s a Chus Alonso half marathon. It’s at 12 o’clock from the plush new Ponferrada sports complex near the football stadium. I might just wander on down there….

[Bierzo Baggie]

My times for Chus Alonso half marathons are either very fast or very slow. I suspect that this may be because the circuits have been incorrectly measured. A half marathon may range anywhere between 20 and 22kms. For this reason most of my half marathon times over the last 10 years must be treated with a certain scepticism.

Turned up on Sunday morning and signed up for the half marathon. It’s a two lap course and like last year there’s the option of running the full 21kms or just the one 10km lap. Also like last year the 10kms turns out to be well over 11. I rashly signed up for the full half because I haven’t run a half marathon in 2005 and well, I got carried away by the occasion. Hey, there was music, a bloke with a loud speaker and an ambulance flashing its lights (OK, I lied about the bloke with the loud speaker). And the half marathon comes as part of a bumper weekend bonanza of sporting activities promoted by the town hall. The aim is supposedly to encourage people to take up sport as an alternative to more traditional weekend activities such as getting wasted. So, as the posse of lithe athletes limbered up, motorcross fiends performed their stunts on the slagheaps behind the football stadium whilst next to the sports hall a group of aficionados played with remote control cars. Both “sports” attracted a greater audience than the half marathon.

The race was impeccably organized though with changing facilities and an attractive urban circuit where runners and cars were always separated by traffic cones. There was a half decent turnout and most of the local runners were there. Chus Alonso was busy organizing and not racing and perhaps for this reason everything went smoothly. The great Rodrigo Gavela showed up and so did Pedro the lumberjack, Miguel the prof, Luis the footie player and his son, Mr and Mrs ultra-runner (Jacinto and Raquel dos Santos), Pinilla the miner, the sports delegate from the town hall (in his 60s and a great cyclist) and about 80 others… It was an only slightly chilly 8ºC and some runners wore gloves. The Montes Aquilianos and the Ancares mountains in the north were deliciously covered with fresh snow.

Confession time. I ran the first lap and then decided to call it a day. It was still the farthest I’d run since the Toral de los Vados marathon in July. Felt fine but didn’t feel up to the full whack, so I quickly got changed and watched some of the half marathon runners arrive. I reckon the first 6 all finished in 1hour 10 minutes or less. Didn’t get a t-shirt this year but I quite enjoyed the event and might just recommend this one to me mates next year. Now I never thought I’d say that about a Chus Alonso half marathon!
Total running time: 48 minutes.

[Sweder]

We're on the same wave-length, BB - A half marathon feels like a lifetime away at the moment.

Much as I'd enjoy the slightly anarchic atmosphere of a Chus Alonso spectacular, I suspect I might be several leagues out of my depth. It could be fun, though: to see if I could beat the quickies - they over 21K, me just the 10, natch.

[Bierzo Baggie]

No internet connection for a while. Kept track of the running though.

Thursday 17th November.
Swift early morning run around the railway. Misty, “Hound of the Baskervilles” sort of landscape. Fresh flowers on the level crossing as usual.
25 minutes.

Saturday 19th November.
Hit the Pajariel trail to Toral de Merayo. Below, a vast expanse of almost leafless poplar trees all along the river. Bleak, autumn landscape but cool and perfect for running. Muck spreaders in the village doing their dirty business.
44 minutes.

Sunday 20th November.
Saw the solitary heron again as I stumbled across the river Sil via rocks and strategically placed bits of wood. (To call it a bridge would be generous). It soared upwards, sleek and elegant. Very unlike me at the moment.
Ran up to the village of Otero and beyond. Just outside the village, as I chugged up a beast of a hill, sweat pouring from my forehead and lungs exploding, I crossed with a Jehovah’s witness. He offered me a copy of “The Watchtower”. I said “no thanks!..bye”. Any elaboration on this would probably have finished me off and I staggered on ever upwards leaving behind me the Jehovah’s witness and perhaps a trail of biblical metaphors. Ran on to San Lorenzo to take the road back to Ponferrada. Early on a Sunday morning not even the mad ankle-nipping dogs of San Lorenzo are out yet….only Jehovah’s witnesses.
51 minutes.

[Riazor Blue]

BB, you recommended the Chus Alonso half to me last year (look, he never recommends them to friends, only wierdos). Last year, in turn I recommended the race to a few people in La Coruña and was hounded for ages by people wanting to see the results... no chance. Glad you enjoyed it though. I loved it last year.

[Bierzo Baggie]

So, are you on for Lugo then?

Tuesday Nov 22nd
A wonderful sunny morning; ideal for a run around the river. It’s been a mild start to the cold season and last week’s snow has almost disappeared from the Montes Aquilianos. Plenty of old folk out walking, pushing prams, listening to transistor radios, etc.
The construction work on a new bridge across the River Sil threatens to dissect another favourite route. Managed to jump over a couple of fences and dash across a huge, muddy hole to get past but in a couple of weeks time I suppose the upper section of my river circuit will be impassable.
39 minutes.

Thursday Nov 24th
Cold and frosty run around the canal. At one point a startled rabbit shot out from one of the allotments. This is a noteworthy event as I’ve only seen a handful of bunnies in all my time in Bierzo. I think the mixtametosis (is that what it’s called?) must have wiped out most of them. Some people keep them in sheds (but not as pets; these unfortunate furry friends are destined for the pot!) so it might even have been an escaped domesticated rabbit. When I lived in Devon I used to see thousands of them. The things bred like….rabbits.
29 minutes.

Saturday 26th November.
Greeted this morning by the sight of Monte Pajariel covered by a thin layer of snow. Treading the virgin snow ranks alongside smelling the first wild flowers of spring as the sweetest moment of the running year. Unfortunately by the time I got out it was drizzling and the Pajariel trail was a mucky shade of brown. It didn’t matter. I far prefer this weather to the unbearably repetitive days of summer heat and run much more comfortably.
Monte Pajariel-Toral route; 44 minutes.

[Riazor Blue]

I've got it pencilled in. Due to lack of running I'm gonna miss the Ferrol half the weekend before, but I'm sure that these old legs can summon up enough to run a 10K.

Since santiago I've managed a couple of runs and yesterday I ran with the HRM, 10 minutes slower than in May for the 8Km along the paseo maritimo in LC.

Somehow I don't think I will be in the medals in Lugo. Sounds like a great course though. Didn't you mention something about empanadas last year?

[sampedro]

Hi RB and BB. Lugo is one of the best courses in GAlicia (i am from Lugo) and it will be a reference in the future for all the "populares". This year fila is the sponsor of the race and it is included int he official calendar of the Federacin Española, what means that the distance is also official and approved by the Federacion. Some athletes said thtat in previous editions the distance was shorter that 10K.
RB get ready for the "empanda de bonito" and little cakes at the end of the race in the arcade of the town hall. But even more important is the chance of walking int he "vinos" street going from one bar to another tasting the wonderfull tapas free of charge. As the popular saying goes "...y para comer...Lugo"
See you in Lugo (but first i will try at the Volta a Ria in Ferrol)...

[Bierzo Baggie]

Really enjoyed the Lugo 10k last year. It's one of the best I've done although my time was suspiciously quick.
Good luck in Ferrol Sampedro! Rosana "my other half" is from Neda which I think you'll pass through on the way.
Hope to see you both next Sunday!

[Bierzo Baggie]

No internet access for a while so I’ve uploaded the last couple of diary entries at Mr and Mrs Scousers’ house, much to the bemusement of Mrs Scouser.

“So what’s on the CD?”
“It’s a running diary”.
“A what?”.
“A running diary. When I go for a run I sort of write about it afterwards”.
“Oh, and that’s it…”
“Well, yes, errr, and I read other people’s running diaries as well”.
“That doesn’t sound very interesting. So what do you all write? Is it like….Thursday, went for a run…me too….sounds great! Ha ha ha!”

I wanted to say it was really all part of an experimental creative writing workshop but decided I was already on a hiding to nothing. Scousers! They just can’t help taking the piss. And now they’ve got me down as some kind of sad, anorak-clad running geek.

No running at all last week. Cracking walk last Sunday though.

This time there were four of us, Mrs Scouser, Miguel the mushroom, Manolo and myself. We left the car in “Colinas del campo de Martin Moro Toledano,” which is probably the village with the longest name in the whole of Spain. Unlike a certain Welsh village of similar surplus syllables there’s no railway station, just an isolated, but very attractve village at the end of a winding mountain road, gift wrapped with the first decent snowfalls of the cold season.

The route followed a path through a narrow valley which eventually opens out into an immense natural amphitheatre which the locals call “La Campa”. Here is the birthplace of the river Boeza, a tributary of the river Sil, the meeting point being at the start of my “round the river” route back in Ponferrada. The walk is one of my favourites but I’d never done it with so much snow. At one point you pass through a small wood of wild holly trees and the accumulated snow creates a tunnel which we pass under.
There’s a small hermitage at the entrance to La Campa where the nearby villages celebrate a “romaria” each summer in homage to Santiago, “the Moor slayer”. The place was the scene of a historic battle between Moors and Christians over 1000 years ago. Today it’s a silent, unspeakably beautiful place with only us ….and a couple of bear-spotters to disturb the whiteness. Bearspotters? The border of León and Asturias and in particular the Laciana region is the last sustainable refuge of the brown bear in Western Europe. The last native female Pyrenean bear was shot dead by a hunter about a year ago. Here, in a less visited mountainous area there are an estimated 50 or so, some of them electronically tagged. One of the bear-spotters is a tall guy with a pair of binoculars and the other is a younger fellow with dreadlocks. They identify themselves as freelance ecologists, although they pass information on to “The Brown Bear Foundation,” which is the official conservation group responsible for protecting the species. “Dreads,” mentioned that they’d seen a wildcat on the way up but the bears were proving to be more elusive. We stared up at the rocky crags where the bears probably wandered, enjoying their last excursions to and fro before the winter hibernation. We stayed chatting for a while in the vast empty landscape, reminiscent of a scene from Dr Zhivargo, until the cold started to make itself felt and “dreads” and the tall guy set off again in search of a mountain refuge where they could make a fire. We headed back down to the village again.
Colinas del Campo; 980m.
La Campa; 1500m.
Total walking time; about 4 and a half hours.

[El Gordo]

Fascinating stuff, as always, BB. Thanks.

Didn't know we still had brown bears in Europe.

And yes, I'm familiar with the perplexity caused by the running-writing thing. It's hard to explain that there is actually a pretty complementary relationship between the two. You've got to do it to really understand it properly.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Hi Andy!
Don’t you think running is conducive to writing because it really stimulates the senses..all of them, especially if you get off road? I suppose William Burroughs would have said the same about drugs! Personally I prefer the running…

About bears. Eastern European countries still have loads apparently. Read Nicholas Crane’s book “Clear Waters Rising” (someone mentioned it on the forum a while back). He bumped into one! North West Spain is the only place in Western Europe where a native brown bear population exists although they’re in constant danger of extinction despite heroic efforts of individuals like the two bear-spotters we met last week. The world today is rather bear-unfriendly and with new motorways, ski stations, short sighted hunters who mistake small bears for large wild boars, mines and quarries and looming land speculation, it’s difficult to see how the bears who’ve inhabited these mountains for centuries are going to survive this one. A shame, but there you go. I suppose there were bears in the UK once upon a time.

[Nigel]

Hi BB - do you know if there are any bears in the Sierra de Urbión or the Sierra de la Demanda (a bit to the southeast of you, between Burgos and Soria) ?

There are some high mountains and huge pine forests there, without many people, and I've often wondered if a few bears might have escaped the hunters.

[sampedro]

Yesterday I was at the start line in Fene to take part in the half marathon “Memorial Mario Puentes: Volta a Ría de Ferrol”. I don’t how the weather is wherever you guys live, but these last weeks we had an awful weather here in the northwest of Spain. Cold, rainy, windy, hail….the worst you can imagine. Of course yesterday morning was not better but I have to say that we were lucky because five minutes before we started the race a hell of a storm fall over all the participants, but it was just for five to ten minutes and after that time we had no more rain in the rest of the morning, but to offset these good news the wind showed up. As far as I am concerned I didn’t have great expectations on this race, first because of the course (a really hard one), second because I am not at my best yet and third because of the weather conditions. But at the end I was happy with the result, 1h:30m, not my pb but I found myself very comfortable from the half of the race and even better in the last 6K , though they were the hardest part of the race. The organization of the race was good, but they made a mistake locating the water points too far one from each other (the first at the 5k point, no water in the 10 k and the next at the 16k). Now I am recovering to be ready for Sunday in Lugo, eating “bocadillos de jamon” with Neda bread (very famous around here as BB should know.

[Sweder]

I don't know a lot about this particular region, but I did hear a chap in the pub the other night say something about bears spending quite a bit of time in the woods . . .

[Bierzo Baggie]

Sampedro, thanks for the Ferrol report. I’ll definitely run it one year. Signed up for the Lugo 10k this morning!

Nigel, here are the bear facts. Sorry if I ramble on but please bear with me……errrr, I don’t know the two areas you mention but if they are in the north of Burgos they don’t fall into the two surviving brown bear-zones although bears used to wander most of the Cordillera Cantabrica until relatively recently. The motorway from Oviedo to León has sliced through the main population and there are now two pockets. The western zone has the larger population, possibly as many as 50. To the east near the Picos de Europa (from Riaño across to the north of Palencia) there is a smaller population of maybe 20 or so which is threatened and perhaps condemned by the construction of a new ski complex and all the paraphernalia that this entails.

The Pyrenean population has long been unsustainable and the shooting of the last female by a French hunter was sad but anecdotal. They are now trying to re-introduce imported Slovakian bears but this has been met with controversy.

So, the only area with any slim hope of maintaining the last native brown bears of Western Europe is about 50kms north of here. They mainly inhabit the León-Asturias borderline but the odd bear has been known to cross into the Lugo province of Galicia to trash a beehive or two. I don’t think they’d make it as far as Burgos or Soria though. Anyway, I’m no bear buff and you´ll find more information here, although it´s all in Spanish.
http://faunaiberica.org/especies.php3?esp=74

Sweder, I had a conversation with a bloke in a pub once who said he’d shot a bear back in the 80s thinking it was a wild boar. Even then there were hefty penalties for murdering an endangered species and so apparently him and his mate skinned it and then buried the evidence. Be careful with blokes in pubs….

Enough bear-talk. I'm off to put some lights on the Christmas tree….