The Way of Legends - Day Four

The first three stages of the Way of Legends were hard, all significantly longer than a marathon with plenty of climb. however I had always thought that Day four would be the real test, 52.5 kilometres with almost 2000 metres of upness. We would go over the summit of the highest mountain in the area, San Millan, 2130.7 metres high according to the map. San Millan is the highest peak in the range and named after a legendary hermit, Saint Millan, the subject of the legend of this stage.

I do a lot of ultras that undulate and of course I did the Last Secret Ultra in Bhutan in 2017 but generally I'm not terribly good at mountains. The first 27.5 kilometres to the second checkpoint climbed very gradually before the mountain ascent started shortly after the checkpoint. I decided my best chance was to try and gain some time on that section and hope it would be enough to keep me in contention as the race went over the mountain. After yesterday's close finish Rodrigo would be starting at 8 'o' clock with the other runners in the top half of the classification. This was good for me as it would mean I would have someone to try and chase in my quest to build a lead.

Part of our route would be along the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the saint are buried. We were warned we would be running in the opposite direction to the pilgrims and to expect a large number of people on the route. We set off at 8 'o' clock, Rodrigo went of in the lead and I quickly tucked in behind him. We stayed together onto the pilgrimage route where I was quite surprised to find that Manu wasn't exaggerating, there were a lot of pilgrims!

The trail turned onto a road and we started to pass some of the earlier starters including the ever smiling Joey Sharma. Joey was someone I knew from XNRG events in the UK and she was at Bhutan. Unfortunately she was quite ill in Bhutan and didn't have the best of races so I was delighted that she was fit and appeared to be really enjoying the Way of Legends. She was always cheerful whenever I saw her and never failed to lift my spirits when I passed her.

Further along the road we hit a slight upward incline and Rodrigo decided to walk. I thought about running ahead but decided he was probably right and so I slowed to a walk too. This did not impress Manu when he caught us up in his car. 'This is supposed to be a running race!' was the message we were given - loudly. The road levelled out anyway so we did as suggested and resumed running.

In order to make the race as safe as possible, every major road crossing was either at a checkpoint or a control. The marshals ensured that we always crossed safely. Checkpoint One was one such point, after a brief pause for water I was whisked across the road and continued along the trail. Rodrigo was starting to pull ahead of me but as far as I could tell I was well ahead of whoever was third.

I arrived at Checkpoint Two expecting Rodrigo to be well ahead of me. However he had stopped for a sandwich, a drink of water and possibly to read a good a book. He still left the checkpoint ahead of me. I could still see him as we crossed over to the start of the climb. Not far into the climb the path became quite wide and I could see a fair distance ahead of me. What was concerning me though was more what I couldn't see. I couldn't see Rodrigo, he is quick but I was fairly sure he couldn't have gotten further ahead of me than I could see. This brought me to the second thing I couldn't see - course markings. Fortunately I had only gone wrong by a couple of hundred metres and soon found the turn of the trail I had missed. I was marked but I missed it, apparently I wasn't the only one but it further illustrated that, particularly on wide trails, it was very important to keep looking for the markings.

My detour meant I had lost sight of Rodrigo, in fact I had lost sight of everyone. I could still see course markers so I was confident I was on the right route, I had some sort of lead over third place but how much? No point worrying about that, all I could do was keep pushing on. After some very pretty forested sections the path came to a clearing and crossed a small road. It went back into the forest for a while before turning onto a wide trail which I assumed was a firebreak road.

No one that way...

...no one that way...

...just me then

At around 35 kilometres in the route turned onto a road. this was kind of OK for me as whilst it was up it wasn't at all technical. I had my walking poles and was managing to keep up a pace of around 3 miles an hour. I was using a combination of metric and imperial measurements on this race, I had my watch set to measure distance in kilometres as that was the units used in the road book and so it avoided too much mental arithmetic, however I have always measured my pace in minutes per mile so I continued with imperial units for pace. This seems as good a time as any to mention the road book. We had been given a small booklet with the profile and location of the checkpoints for each day but a far more genius idea was the fact that the entire route profile and every control and checkpoint location was printed on the bottom edge of our race numbers. An even more genius idea was the fact it was upside down so when you looked down at it, it was the right way up!

Up there somewhere is where I'm going I guess

The road gave way to a wide track and I could see the checkpoint. As I was half way up what looked like the penultimate switchback I could see something else behind me - Jean. I thought I had made fairly reasonable progress on the uphill but as I expected Jean was stronger. He caught me up and we entered the third and final checkpoint at Trigaza, the peak at the end of a ridge to San Millan, together. I stopped to fill my bottles and so I left for the tricky ridge section around 75 metres behind Jean. On the technical downhill sections the gap increased but on the smoother sections I managed to close in. We raced along the ridge with little between us. I wanted to take a picture at the peak but I knew Jean didn't take pictures. Did I forego my selfie or did I lose valuable time? The question was answered for me when a random stranger asked Jean to take his picture. Jean, ever the gentleman (and also because he initially thought the stranger was a course marshal) obliged. Rather than take advantage I took the opportunity to get my picture too.

At the highest point - you'd think I'd look more happy about it...

We resumed racing, I was chasing  Jean down the mountainside until I was right behind him. At this point I decided my best course of action would be to stay there and just try and finish alongside him. As a result I was delighted when he suggested we should stop trying to kill each other and finish together. It wasn't a suggestion I felt I could have made as I obviously had the most to gain in the overall classification but given we had run around 50 kilometres and nothing separated us, this was a good call. The final section to the village of Pineda de la Sierra where we would be staying was steep and at some points quite treacherous. By agreeing to run together we could enjoy the views and ensure that we both got down safely to resume racing the following day. One section of the path was particularly difficult as it consisted entirely of loose rocks between fist and head size, racing over that could easily have been game over for one or both of us.

We still ran fairly quickly as we wanted to ensure we did actually finish joint second and ran into the town and along the road, crossing the finish line hand in hand to make sure the timekeeper had to give us the same time.

The news on Sharon wasn't so good. She had been complaining of feeling sick the day before and apparently had spent most of the trek from CP2 to CP3 throwing up. At CP3 the amazing Doctor Laura gave her a miracle anti-emetic drug and after being held for around 30 minutes to make sure she was OK she had continued, apparently in good spirits.

I found out what time she had left the checkpoint and walked back up the road to see if I could see her coming off the mountain. There are many great things about being a Little Baddow Ridge Runner, one of them is our bright orange t-shirts, which are almost visible from space, so I thought I should be able to spot her. Sure enough saw her coming down the mountainside and walked a little further along the path to meet her. She was with Annie, another XRNG regular and all round nice person. It was fortunate she had been with someone as she didn't look quite as good as she might have. She had a split lip, cuts to her face and nose and a damaged finger. Apparently while walking with Annie Sharon had decided they should run a bit over some of the easier sections and tripped over. I took her poles and ran down the road to the finish to warn the equally amazing Doctor Helen she would have some work to do shortly.

None of the cuts were too bad but her little finger was probably broken. Fortunately it wasn't misaligned and so could simply be strapped to the ring finger. She had the lens from her broken glasses and, being an engineer and liking to fix things, while she got herself cleaned up, I managed to bend the frames back into shape and refit the lens. 

Battered, bruised but ready for the next day - and look how well those glasses have been mended

She wasn't the only faller that day, Haruki needed stitches in a particularly deep cut in his knee, as Sharon said, at least she didn't damage any running parts.

The night was spent in small dormitories, as I had arrived early I had chosen a good bunk and put all my stuff out to air on the balcony. After dinner I went to bed and totally failed to get to sleep for several hours. Four days down, two to go, the hardest stage done and I was still second overall. The next day was 'only' just over a marathon and overall downhill with no big climbs. I was starting to feel that second was mine to lose now. However it was still all very close and there was more than enough distance left to cover for me to do just that...