MARCH 2024 Monthly Running Challenge

Last weekend was this year's edition of the 100 Millas Sierras de Bandolero, the oldest and probably most renowned ultra in Andalusia. It's held in the mountains west of Ronda, notorious for bandits from Roman times to the 20th century (thank you Google for that snippet), hence the name of the race. There are three distances: 100 miles, 50 miles and the marathon, a loose term there as tends to be the case with trail races - my watch made it 39.7km. The terrain in those mountains is interesting, to say the least, rocks and stones galore. When they open inscriptions the 1000 or so places usually get taken within an hour.
I will say before I go any further that I was well aware the trails there are extremely technical, and the race is infamous for nasty weather, either extremely low temperatures for southern Spain or very wet. Well, this weekend we were lucky enough to get both! Although I missed the worst of it, they had to stop the longer races on Saturday evening because the conditions were too dangerous.
So, I had always said I would never run any version of this crazy race (never say never, huh), then my friend started texting me at 5 am on the day they were opening inscriptions and yeah, I fell for it.
My evil coach was pretty cross with me as it was exactly a month after the Backyard Ultra and ordered me to not race it. Hilarious because the cut-off times compared to my turtle pace meant I would have no choice, but we agreed this wasn't a race, it was just a long training run with a number pinned to my pack and aid stations.
Compared to most trail races here, the elevation was pretty low, and the second half is on trails that in theory you can go pretty fast on, nice wide hiking trails and dirt roads and stuff. The first half, however, basically starts in a village on one side of a rocky mountain, goes almost in a straight line up to the top and then almost straight down to a village on the other side. The total time for the race was 6 and a half hours, but there was a 4-hour cutoff at the checkpoint at km 22.8. I wasn't too sure I would make that. but had decided it didn't matter and that as long as I was feeling good I would carry on anyway.

We started from inside the bull ring in the village at 7.30 am after getting on a bus from the finish line at 6. (Pro tip: don't take a sandwich and coffee to have on a bus in the dark on winding mountain roads if you get at all travel sick. Luckily I was fine once I got off the bus, but it was an uncomfortable, queasy 45-minute ride!) There was quite a jam to get out through the doors, then after getting out of the village we had to cross through a little gate in a barbed wire fence and the queue to get through was ridiculous, everyone was milling about not sure how to get through. Dumb. After that came the slow, hard part. Up, up, up and it had been raining so there was a lot of mud and streams running down. I like the cold but a lot of people were complaining about that. Once at the top, it was very misty (or foggy or cloudy or I dunno, all I know is I could only see a couple of metres ahead and my hair was soaking wet even though it wasn't raining) and then, of course, coming down the other side was hair-raising because the rocks were wet and slippery, but I made it down in one piece and caught up with another lady from our club. Then came my mistake. We got to the aid station, and I had carefully planned everything so that I would only need to fill my bottles and get going again, knowing that time was going to be very very tight. However, the other lady started dithering about and spent at least 10 minutes there and I stupidly didn't want to seem a *kitten* by leaving without her. Then when we finally got out she announced she had to pee and was going to hide behind a car parked on the side of the street! I'd had enough then and said well I was going to start walking up the hill and she could catch me up. She never did. I did my best to make up lost time but the next stretch was terribly muddy and slippery, even using my poles to test it I ended up with mud over my ankles a couple of times, and then there was a tricky descent into the village where the cutoff point was. I was 5 minutes late and they tore my chip off my bib even though I begged a bit hahaha.
As that aid station had a bathroom I decided to use it as time no longer mattered, and also shed a few tears of frustration knowing that I could have made it if I hadn't waited for Lorena. My husband was outside and he walked with me for a couple of minutes and encouraged me when I said I was going to carry on because physically I was feeling fine. I thought about slowing right down and making the rest of it a true long slow run, but then decided I would actually still try to reach the finish line before the 6.5-hour mark. I passed quite a few people during the last 15 km, all of whom were still in the race, which made me angry but also encouraged me to keep going even though by then I was tired and getting some cramping. The last 8 km of the route are hell. You can hear the finish line, there's music and people shouting, but you know you still have quite a long way to go. Then it started raining, and there was even more mud to slip about on. Finally, the village came into view, at about the same level I was at, but (you guessed it) on the other side of a valley. So we had to go dooooooown to the bottom, and then uuuuuuuup to the village, on a concrete hill from hell. I reached the entrance to the village, looked at my watch and saw I had 10 minutes to get to the finish line, which was, of course, up another hill and I didn't know exactly how far away. By that point, I was forcing myself to run 50 steps, then letting myself walk 50 steps, over and over. Unexpected signed turn to the right, then to the left and up a pedestrian street with bars on either side and people shouting and clapping! Left again and I could see the finish at the top of the hill, then my friend appeared, grabbed my hand and shouted "RUNNNN". I crossed the line with less than 3 minutes left, so although officially it was a DNF, I'm taking it as a huge triumph because I made it and I now know if it wasn't for external factors I would have finished 'officially'. They still gave me a medal, so really the only thing I missed was the ITRA point I could have gained (a bummer because that was the sole reason I signed up, but oh well).
The day wasn't over though. When I sat down and started looking through messages, I saw that the relay team the friend who had got me into that mess in the first place was running in was in a state because they had lost a member halfway through the race! The relays were 4 team members, each of whom ran a section alone and then all 4 had to run the last 12km or so to the finish line together. This guy finished his section, then got back to his Airbnb to find someone had crashed into his car, and instead of calling for a tow truck he freaked out and decided to leave immediately and limp it home, leaving his team missing a member to finish. I felt ok, and I'd just run (well, run-walked-shuffled) that section so knew what I was letting myself in for, and luckily I had packed a headlamp even though I didn't need one for my race... so I said ok, I'll do it. It was a bit risky because I was clearly not the person the bib said I was, but it was cold and dark and raining and I pulled my buff over my mouth and nose, cap over my face, jacket down over all but the bottom edge of the bib, and nobody noticed hahaha.
All in all, I did 51.5km in just over 8 hours altogether (with a 6-hour break in the middle) and despite an official DNF I came home with two medals, LOL!