The Way of Legends - Day Three

After the ups and downs of the first two days, Day Three seemed to promise a little respite before the mountain challenge of Day Four. Admittedly it was the first stage with an overall elevation gain but I was hoping the slightly shorter distance (47.5km) and fewer steep climbs would suit my style of running more than the first two days had. As always there is a legend to go with the stage.

As yesterday there was a 7:30 start, an 8 'o' clock start and Rodrigo, 30 minutes later. The first part of the stage consisted of simply running back the way we had come the day before into the village of Poza de la Sal. No one seemed to really want to take it on so I found myself running at the front of the pack, until the inevitable happened...

OK, so I should have turned left at the junction, I didn't go far wrong due to the fact there were about twenty people fifty metres behind me to call me back. Well, it gave Pit the chance to get a good photo anyway...

Yours truly running back to the course... (Photo Credit: Peter Minicka)

After my unscheduled exploration of Poza de la Sol I settled into a good running rhythm and started to enjoy myself. After the initial climb from the village the track started to undulate and I was particularly enjoying the downhill sections, not too technical but enough to be interesting.

Every person running and supporting the event was interesting with great stories and none more so than Ricardo. At 76 years and 11 months he was the oldest runner in the race. I had spent some time chatting to Ricardo and found him a thoroughly entertaining and friendly sort of chap. On Day Two when I had passed him he had a few friendly words for me and Day Three was the same. After I passed him I skipped down a particularly fun (I thought) piece of downhill and arrived at the bottom to hear Ricardo calling me 'Colin, Colin'. Last time I 'skipped' downhill I completely missed a turn, had I done it again? I turned round and looked up the slope to Ricardo, who raised his hand and shouted 'Well done!' I told you he was a nice guy.

Stunning Scenery

Further on the trail I passed Caroline and Sam. Just after that I saw a large puddle. I remembered Manu mentioning in the very first race briefing that Stage Three had the only possibility of getting wet feet. Fortunately the puddle didn't cover the entire path so I ran round it... into the thick mud at the side. My foot sank a good 20 centimetres and came back up without a shoe on it. Sam and Caroline arrived to find me on my knees trying to pull my shoe out before the mud oozed over it and buried it forever. Fortunately I retrieved the shoe and used the puddle to wash the mud out of it. I'm not competitive at all but I must admit I walked up the trail, one shoe on, one shoe off, untying the laces to try and avoid losing any more time than was strictly necessary. Eventually I got the shoe back on and re-passed Caroline and Sam.

More amazing views

Today was a day of contrasts in terms of terrain. As well as the rocky trails, farm tracks and occasional swamp, there was a significant section along a disused railway route which had been surfaced with a kind of white gravel. It was easy to run on but not the most exciting section, although if you lifted your eyes from the white ribbon there were still some stunning views.

Back on the farm tracks I resisted the urge to hitch a lift on a passing tractor and continued until the tracks gave way to fields, which I found not entirely dissimilar to some of the terrain used on some of the navigational trail races I do in the UK. Back on the farm roads I passed the photographers - this will be important later.

We had been warned at the briefing that there was a major road crossing a couple of kilometres from the finish. Fortunately there was a road underneath the Autopista del Norte but I still had to cross the 'old' road, the Carretera de Madrid a Irun. Fortunately Manu had deployed his crack road crossing team there (which included his mother) and I was whisked safely across a fairly busy road quickly and safely.

As I came to the finish at Olmos de Atapuerca I knew Rodrigo had gained less than half an hour on me as he hadn't passed me and give or take 100 metres near the start I hadn't strayed from the route today.

We were staying in a group of houses and once again Sharon and me had a very nice en-suite room - this was the only one to also have a double bed, which made no difference whatsoever this far into the race.

Warny finished less than 10 minutes after me followed by Tristan and Jean just over 5 minutes later. Pit was suffering with his ITB but was still less than 10 minutes behind Jean. Rodrigo finished and we compared times, he had beaten me by less than three minutes, I was quite pleased with that.

Later Manu came to talk to me and told me I had won the stage in a time of 5 hours and 9 minutes. I questioned this as I had 5 hours and 19 minutes on my watch. Manu checked with several other competitors who all agreed with his timing within a minute. Perhaps I'd forgotten to stop my watch? I'd downloaded my pace data to my phone. If I forget to stop my watch there is usually a section of no or very slow movement at the end. There wasn't, also I was fairly sure I remembered stopping my watch as I finished. I know some would say I should have just taken the result but I can't do that, if I gained a place by less than 10 minutes knowing I'd gained 10 minutes erroneously I would never be comfortable with that and the contest between me and Jean was that tight. Sorry, I'm just like that.

To his credit Manu continued to search for evidence as to who was right, him or me. This where the photographer was crucial. The picture he took of me near the end was time stamped, the time stamp on the photo and the distance to the finish meant I couldn't have run as quickly as 5:09, it looked like an error had been made in recording my finish time. Actual finish time of day was recorded, I finished at 14:22 but the person recording the times had written 14:12, an easy mistake but one which fortunately was caught and corrected.

So three stages down and it was still incredibly tight from second to fifth. Tomorrow was the longest and hardest stage, we would go up and over the highest mountain in the area. Given Jean's strength on the climbs and technical stuff I wasn't holding out much hope of finishing tomorrow still in second place...