The Way of Legends - Day One

Finally my ramblings are getting towards the point at which some actual running might occur. However before then there was the small matter of the Druids...

We ate breakfast, filled water bottles, packed up our camp bags and generally got ourselves ready for the start of the race. At sometime just past 7 we boarded buses which took us along progressively narrower and steeper roads until we arrived at the Celtic Hill Fort City of Ulaña. The reason the race is called The Way of Legends is that there is a legend associated with each stage. Rather than plagiarise the excellent accounts on the race website I'll simply include a link to the first legend. However a small explanation is needed to explain why we were about meet some Druids and be given some yew. Basically the hill fort was home to the Turmogi Clan, one of the last groups of Celtic warriors in Spain to resist the Romans. When defeat was inevitable, rather than be captured, they took their possessions and the bones of their ancestors and disappeared into the valleys and canyons where they committed suicide by eating yew berries. Enter one bunch of bewildered Romans who find that their enemy has apparently vanished off the face of the earth.

Back in the present as we get off the bus we can hear a drum and a conch shell being blown - yes, it's dark and someone is blowing a conch shell, have I stumbled into the Barkley Marathon by mistake? 

As we walk into the trees we see a couple of Druids with drums, and a conch shell obviously.

Druids!

The druids apparently only speak an ancient Iberian dialect, which is spoken by no-one else in the 21st century according to Manu anyway. Fortunately he had Google Translate on his mobile phone and so was able to provide a translation of their wise words.

Ancient wisdom being imparted and translated

Basically we are told that the Romans are coming and we should kill ourselves rather than be taken as slaves. We were then helpfully given pieces of yew to eat should capture become inevitable.

Photobombing Druids

Fortunately we have the option of running away with all due haste as, after this almost certainly unique ceremony, the race started and we were off!

I didn't make any attempt to be at the front of the pack as we had been told the first 400m were a steep technical descent down the side of the hill fort. My ability at steep technical descents is such that the quickest way down for me is usually to wait for the next Ice Age and ride down on a glacier and so I let those that shared some genetic material with mountain goats go first (or so I thought...)

Apparently I got down from up there - I have no idea how

Having gotten to the bottom of the technical section by using the technique of trying to only fall on bits of me that aren't easily damaged I got onto some runnable terrain and started running - I may even have overtaken some people.

Then the sun rose and the scenery just became stunning.

Breathtaking sunrise

The only downside to the sunrise was that as we were running east it made seeing the course markings more difficult. At least thats my excuse for running into a dead end and having to be shouted back by Stan and Pit who I'd overtaken about 10 minutes earlier.

The first half of the stage was predominantly downhill and passed over grassland and past field after field of sunflowers. The sunflowers were a little past their best but still made a colourful sight and certainly provided a different landscape to anything I had run through before.

Sunflowers in the morning sun

The profile for the second half of the stage resembled a roller coaster as we would be crossing a series of canyons. By now I was swapping positions on a regular basis with Stan and Pit. It wasn't that I didn't want to run with them, we just had different strengths and so as the course changed in gradient and technicality so did the order.

Approaching the final checkpoint - spot the course marker

I arrived at the last checkpoint with Pit. I knew Pit from Bhutan the year before and I knew he would provide strong competition for me. As we left the checkpoint together he told me he thought we were third and fourth - I told him I thought he was talking rubbish. I was sure at least a dozen people went off the hill fort in front of me and I only thought I'd overtaken five or six. Top ten certainly but third and fourth? No. Pit was convinced the only people in front of us were Rodrigo (he was so far in front I think he had finished by the time we got to CP3) and Tristan. At this point I hadn't yet met Tristan so I had no idea who he was but Pit reckoned he was a strong runner and ahead of us.

After we left CP3 Pit and myself continued to trade positions on the climb to the most glorious piece of forest running. I was in my element and pulled away slightly. Any time I may have gained was largely lost when I met Manu in his car at the end and had to tell him how great it was (he already knew, he runs there a lot).

By now it was getting hot and I was walking a fair bit. I had thought that if Pit and I really were third and fourth I would prefer fourth place as I didn't want the pressure of being on the podium after Day One - or ever really. At the race briefing the night before we had been told we would run a couple of kilometres above and around the village of Sedano where we were staying that night. This wasn't (we were told) simply in order to increase the distance but rather to give us some nice views of said settlement.

The church above the village

View from the top - the large building to the right of centre is were we would be staying

Pit was right behind me as I stopped to take a few photos. Any thoughts of finishing fourth went out of my head as I took off downhill ahead of him for the final loop round town to our overnight stop. I crossed the finish line, hot, exhausted and... second??? Pit had been absolutely right but didn't know that Tristan had taken a detour and added a couple of kilometres on to his day. This left me with a few questions as to what I did now. First was out of the question, Rodrigo was already around an hour and a half ahead of me after one day. However second to fifth were covered by only around 12 minutes. My hope had been for top 5, would I still be happy with that or was I going to try and keep second place? The main difference would be how many photos I took. Day One had quite a lot as I didn't feel under pressure and stopped when I liked. If I was going to race with such evenly matched people I might not have that luxury.

One thing I couldn't really train for in the UK was the long downhill stretches. These had really taken their toll on my quads, something which became evident when I went for my massage. The masseur didn't really speak English but seemed to be implying she was expecting my leg to fall off the next day and showed me some tape she could stick it back on with if I wanted. It seemed quite possible that I didn't need to worry about position as worst case I could win the one-legged category.

Sharon arrived not long after me, also with sore legs but at least no one was predicting hers would fall off. We had a very nice double en-suite room with an excellent shower to remove the grime of the day. After the evening meal Manu gave the briefing for the next day. The main point was that there would be three starts all half an hour apart, slower runners, quicker runners and Rodrigo. After dinner we went to bed. After a while the locals went to bed too and we could sleep.

So Day One had gone well, possibly too well, what would Day Two bring?...