Transgrancanaria. Somewhere around 125 km of trails, a bit more than 8,000 m of climb. What more could you want to squeeze into a weekend’s escape from cold, rainy Wales to the warmth of Spain?
Lesson learned though (or maybe not, I didn’t learn last year), it is highly recommended to arrive several days early, relax, get used to the climate, run some bits of the course, and recharge all physical batteries before a trail ultra. But, such is life as a young academic (actually, probably most academics, and a bunch of other professions), that taking Thursday and Friday as annual leave means working till midnight Monday and Tuesday to clear the ‘urgent’ folder. Anyway, I have a fun job, I got to go to the race, can’t complain (or at least not too much!).
Getting in to Maspalomas, south on Gran Canaria and near the race finish, was fantastically warm (shorts and t-shirt weather! :D), and as surreal as ever. I mean, this is meant to be Spain, right? Not Sweden, Norway, Germany and Britain in some weirder, hungover, warmer combo? It’s the first time in a while that I see a Norwegian ad on the side of a bus, Scandinavian restaurants, a Swedish primary school, and newspaper stands with papers only in Scandinavian languages. The mind boggles, but according to my phone (the 21st century reality-check) I am, indeed, on an Island belonging to Spain.
So, having established that although the population is predominantly north European and the official street language some combo of Nordic and German, I have made my way to Gran Canaria, and time between arriving and the 11 pm, Friday-night race start, can be spent sleeping, packing, and doing the other pre-race stuff. The latter means going to the expo, registering and getting a bag of stuff, try make sense of the briefing (definitely Spanish, not a bad running translation though, pun not intended), and eating lots of pasta (Prof. Noakes might have a point, but when it comes to pre-race meals he will be ignored, for now). My heart rate monitor claims I’m going into the race 40% recovered, not great but how much can some software know? Anyway, going easy on the post-flight leg-loosener and hoping sleep will fix me.
Ok, ’nuff pre-amble. Starting at 23:00 is weird. It means spending a day trying and failing to get some sleep, then getting into a bus for a scarily (when you know you’re running back) long drive from the finish to the start, to find some coffee to wake up and convince your body that ‘no it’s not bedtime, it’s time for another day!’. Ran into a South African friend at the start, thanks for the catch up Armand!
Pre-start selfie, thanks for the catch-up and pic, Armand!
Now, the Spanish are good race organisers and fantastic at putting on a party, so the start had a major flavour of the latter – it took at least an hour to get the Gran Canaria rap to stop playing on repeat in my head. It also had a major flavour of being dark (as happens when you start at night, but sometimes you’ve gotta state the obvious). The great thing about it being dark, is that you can’t see the monstrous hill right in front of you. So one can remain blissfully ignorant of the visual evidence for what’s on the course profile on the start number. By the way, printing the course profile, upside-down, on the start number, is one of the best ideas since sliced bread and more organisers should adopt it.
The start line (organizer photo, http://www.transgrancanaria.net)
This race starts at the pier in Agaete, right on the sea; the first check point is 8 km away and some 1200 m higher. The first few hundred metres is a rare section of road, then it’s a narrow single trail and a melee of trekking poles. Seriously people, keep your sticks to yourselves! This was my first time using poles in a race, but only got them out near the first check point; before that, when surrounded by people you’ve got no space to use them, so what’s the point (other than tripping over the competition and causing some stab wounds…). Ok, rant over. Despite some minor frustration over sticks, the slog up the hill is actually sort of nice. It’s good to get going, the weather was cool and clear, and the occasional random group of spectators keep the vibe up. That is another feature of Transgrancanaria; getting around a random corner, in the dark (for the first third, anyway), in the middle of nowhere in the Gran Canarian mountains, to a group of loud and enthusiastic Spaniards going ‘Vamos, Vamos, Vamos, Arrrrrrrrrriba!!!!’ You kind of needed to be there, but the local support in this race is brilliant, and hard to describe. The support doesn’t stop when the daylight comes, by the way, it’s just a bit less surreal.
Checkpoint and food station at Teror, these volunteers are great, thank you! (organizer photo, http://www.transgrancanaria.net)
It’s a race in three parts, approximately back-to-back marathons. The first third ends at Fontanales, where the 83 km, ‘advanced’ course, starts. I remember this first section as a great 6.5 hours of night running, that went by surprisingly easily, the general fatigue from the last few weeks of life washed away by trotting along volcanic single tracks, including a wonderfully fun downhill after the first CP (like Kasteelspoort going on for 5 km or so, for those who know what that means). I mentioned the first monstrous hill, there’s a second one right after it, as soon as the long downhill is over – then the terrain changes, from what felt Alpine (in the dark), to undulating forest tracks (that weren’t muddy! Bliss – at least after the Welsh Winter Fell Series). Through the third check point at about 4 am in the morning, shot of espresso (nice touch to the check point crowd for that one!), and on to Fontanales.
The second part starts with the sun rising during controlled (sort of) falling down the steep sections down to Teror (after first doing that unexpected $#%! steep little climb between Fontanales and Vallesco. In the pre-race interview, last year’s women’s winner said the race starts at Teror. She’s got a point. I mentioned two monstrous hills in the first third? There are two in the middle third too, and they’re bigger. That kind of sums up the middle bit. I had some company here, ‘running’ a chunk of the big hill out of Teror with Andrew, and American based in Sweden, always good with someone to chat to making time pass up the slogs. Second hill, up to Garanon and the ‘one marathon to go’ mark, via the postcard motif of the Roque Nublo rock formations, feeling like hard work now, but pushing up the hill, wanting the sub-20 hour time and chasing the sunset. Oh god, that song got stuck in my head for hours… this happens (and Linda explains it better than I can).
The official profile (from transgrancanaria.net); four big hills then (sort of) all downhill.
The third third (no, not stuttering) looks really easy on the profile: little climb out of Garanon (after re-stocking on goodies [i.e. sour worms and nougat] from the drop bag), then downhill ALL the way to the finish (except for a couple of bumps, but really, what are those after the four monstrous hills?). Right. Let’s do this point-by-point:
1) That first little climb. Not that little. Very steep. Oooh, snow! That probably sums up what was going through my head, while slogging up that hill stuffing my face with sour worms, keeping the mood up. Oh, by the way, sour worms is an ultra thing, I never have them while stationary, and not without running at least a marathon first, don’t ask, I don’t know.
2) Downhill… never-ending downhill. I thought the end of the Comrades down-run was going to be the sorest my quads could get. I was wrong. Running down Fields Hill is a 200 m drop over 3 km, that’s the biggest of the hills in Comrades. Running from Garanon down to Tunte is about 1100 m drop over less than 10 k; so more than five times the elevation drop in about three times the distance, to compare to Fields Hill. Oh, and a big chunk of that is on cobbles, lovely on tired legs.
3) At some point in an ultra, you’re in a very very dark place… This time, that happened at about the 95 km mark, after that never-ending, relentless downhill. There’s a feeling where the body says ‘enough now, no, No, NO, we’re not doing this’, and you either listen or tell it to HTFU. I listened for a bit, walked, had some sour worms, got passed by some 83 k runners that looked far too energetic, gave up a bit more and sat down to get some food and drink in. It’s amazing what little things can swing you from trough to peak in no time. Andrew caught up (mentioned earlier, company on that monstrous hill out of Teror), told me to get up and walk along, and as we slowly made our way up what, on the course profile, looked like a little bump (about 5 km of climb on gravel, comparable to the Back Table from the Nek, for the Capetonians that get the analogue), energy came seeping back.
4. More relentless downhill, not quite a vertical k this time, but not far off, quads increasingly unhappy, but feeling strangely happy about life. The calculations in my head start to say sub-20 is possible, also cheering me up from earlier thoughts of being in the middle of throwing that away. Still, the downhill-spiralling road just keeps going. And going.
5. The last stretch of river bed. Right. Through the ’17 km to go’ check point, one last little hill (2 k on gravel, fairly gentle, basically a Polly Shorts equivalent to keep the Comrades analogues going), then all gentle down. Ok, the gentle down happens to be largely in a gravel/cobble river bed, but right now I’m having that awesome adrenalin-fuelled high where that is not a problem, except for moments of my legs having something to say about it, at which point I have a sour worm and tell the legs to shut up. That tactic got me through the last 10 km of each day at RTP Ecuador, it worked again.
And that’s about it. Final bit across the finish line, beat the sunset (!and that song can stop now please!), tried (and mostly failed) to eat something real (sour worms don’t count), got back to the airbnb (thanks for the hospitality Thomas!), passed out. Post race blues, up, coffee (thanks Thomas!), off to the airport, back to the hustle of Heathrow, and writing this on the Great Western Rail to Cardiff. Back to day-to-day normality, as normal as my day-to-day is (trying hard to keep it interesting!).
Åke Fagereng 