A very special breed

Setting off on my bike under a heavily clouded sky with rain forecast to a probability of 97%, I discounted Janine’s warnings with a manly ‘Well if I get wet, I get wet! Not the end of the world’.

Ah, but it can be, very nearly. In the past I’ve had some really miserable times in the rain, not least on cycle-camping holidays in Norfolk. We don’t get much chance to experience rain in La Gomera and one tends to view the risk lightly. This morning’s trip was important, I was heading into town to deliver to a new outlet a few copies of my book ¿Todavía silban?, the Spanish version of Do they still whistle? - which, incidentally, includes a story about the joyful benefits of rain. I hadn’t even delivered the books before the first drops began to patter on my cycle helmet. Within minutes I was engulfed by the first real downpour of the season.

I sheltered under the narrow awning of a bakery along with several other people, all of whom were pretending to be happy. The very worst thing about Gomeran rain, which is just as unpleasant as anyone else’s when it happens, is that you’re not allowed to complain about it. I scuttled into the bakery to buy a couple of loaves just as Jorge was about to emerge. ‘Mucha agua!’ I warned him, lots of water, wiping mini-cascades from my forehead.

‘Es buena!’ he roared, throwing his arms apart and gazing towards the ceiling like one giving thanks for a heavenly bounty. Jorge is unfailingly cheerful and often hands out boiled sweets from his pocket. Of course he was absolutely right, rain is only good, rain is a bounty anywhere (except in Norfolk when you’re camping) and intellectually I joined everyone else in celebrating this early gift of water for the reservoirs. But it could have waited until I got home.

I was also beginning to worry about sixty trail runners currently up in the rain-soaked hills. This is an amazing event. I’ve mentioned trail running before (The boy who wouldn’t eat), a sport for which this island is tailor-made with around 600 kilometres of footpaths, all of them through wonderful scenery in huge variety from gentle plains and ancient forest to expert-only climbs through wild crags. It has taken off in a big way in recent years with marathons and ultra-marathons that attract keen trail runners from all over the world.

But those who were up there today must be a very special breed of human being. They set off from San Sebastián at nine o’clock on Wednesday morning and were required to run a serpentine course around the entire island, a distance of 212 kilometres, to arrive back within 85 hours. On a Gomeran footpath you’re never far from an uphill climb and the ascents in this race totalled 13 kilometres, along with the downhills which can be even more challenging. Challenge was the whole point of course, the event was called the WAA 360º and subtitled The Challenge. WAA is a specialist company selling high-tech clothing and equipment for people who enjoy challenges. WAA stands for What An Adventure.

Not only did participants need to be up to this adventure physically, they also had to find their way along the route unaided, without marshals to guide them at critical decision points. The only help they got was a map on their mobile phone. There were four base camps at intervals around the route for optional food, shelter and rest but it was up to each competitor to devise their own race strategy.

My specific worry was that rain makes those rocky paths much more slippery, especially on the downhill stretches, and is also chilling. In northwest China a few months ago 21 trail runners - one of them a legendary champion - died when rain and high winds overcame them. One was rescued by a shepherd who carried him unconscious into a cave and lit a bonfire to warm him. So I was relieved to learn that an emergency meeting of the Gomeran race organisers had modified the route to avoid the highest, coldest and wettest stretches.

I also learned that, astonishingly, some of the participants had already arrived back in San Sebastián by the time I was sheltering from the drizzle on Friday morning. The first was an Italian whom everyone expected to win, a world champion, and he was photographed as he passed through the triumphal inflatable archway just after one o’clock in the morning, holding his arms aloft with a big smile on his face. One of those slight, wiry people who seem indestructible, he had run around the entire island in 40 hours and 8 minutes, commenting that it had been without doubt the most difficult race of his life. As a Gomeran by adoption I shall interpret that as a compliment.

The boy who wouldn't eat

Mongo's mum Ana was worried. 'He's stopped eating!'

Well, yes, we had noticed that he was losing weight, young Mongo. 'All he wants is lettuce!' wailed Ana, despairingly.

'He only eats lettuce?'

'Well, lettuce and tomatoes. Carrots. Vegetables. When I try to make him eat meat he just pushes it around on the plate then eats scarcely enough for a hamster.'

There's this thing about meat, which I've mentioned before (Where do all the carrots go? 10 February 2016). Gomerans do love their meat. And are amazed that we two foreigners don't eat meat at all. When J pointed this out to Ana - 'You can live without meat, Ana, we've been vegetarians for forty years' - she politely dismissed it as foreign nonsense. 'He's a growing boy, he needs meat!'

Mongo was indeed growing and, to be perfectly frank, he had been growing a little too much. Compact like his mum and dad, he was swelling alarmingly sideways, clearly destined to join the legions of lumbering youths who spend their time slaughtering each others' avatars online with lollipop sticks clenched between their teeth like cowboy cheroots.

It seemed, however, that Mongo had recently experienced some kind of Road to Damascus event. He had been dramatically converted, transported in a flash into the unfamiliar world of Health and Fitness. I have no idea what did this to him. A first tentative tasting of some salad garnish as well as the steak? A compelling lecture at college on lifestyle choices that included nutrition as well as sex, drugs and global warming? Or a new and lovely girlfriend who crunched carrots instead of cheese-and-onion crisps?

Whatever - someone or something had hurled him off his track towards obesity and on to a different one altogether. 'He's taken up running now!' announced Ana one evening, with an exasperated roll of her eyes. 'He goes out every morning for half an hour, then again when he's finished college. Running around the town.' She gave that wonderful, palms-up Spanish shrug that says, who on Earth can explain such a thing?

We tackled Mongo about it one day. 'Your mum is worried that you're not eating enough. Especially now you've taken up running.'

Mongo gave the same shrug as his mother, rolling his eyes, but instead of stomping off in a teenage huff he launched into a lucid explanation. What he ate was a balanced diet - vegetables and fruit for the vitamins, a little carbohydrate like potatoes or pasta, a little protein like fish or meat - not too much of anything.

Vitamins? Carbohydrate? Protein? This was earth-shaking stuff, cataclysmic! This was not the way dyed-in-the-wool Gomerans speak of food!

But times are changing, have already changed. The seafront promenade is popularly known as the Avenida de Colesteról, Cholesterol Avenue, from the scores of old and young who jog, stride or waddle along it every morning to flush the clutter from their arteries.

Mongo, however, had propelled himself into a different category altogether. Here was Ana, a month or two later, anguished: 'He's started running on the caminos, the footpaths!'

'The footpaths?!'

'The footpaths and the senderos, the tracks, up in the hills!'

Now, this was truly impressive. The footpaths of La Gomera are its treasure, its glory, and one of the main attractions for visitors. You can walk over most of the island. The long-distance paths known as caminos reales, royal paths, are interlinked by some 600 kilometres of minor tracks. For the most  part they are well maintained and not dangerous unless you're drunk, but for me they are not things to run on. They are not paved walkways, they are lumpy, twisty and up-and-downy, scratched into the landscape over the centuries.

Mongo, however, had taken to running along not only the caminos reales but the whole complex network, minor paths, goat tracks and all. He had discovered an astonishing new sport called Trail Running. New to me, at least. But this island is tailor-made for it and so, it soon became clear, was Mongo. He entered himself in a local competition against dozens of tough, knobbly-legged athletes, and he won it.

Then he entered another competition in Gran Canaria, a much larger island, and he won that too. Soon he was invited to join a trail running club, a team, and he kept on winning. Mongo had inherited from his ancestors an ability to skip light-footedly along the tracks like a goat, speedily and effortlessly. He was also bright enough to plan his races well, pace himself through the course, pressure the leaders until they began to flag then dance past them to breach the finishing tape fresh as a daisy.

In one of the more prestigious Canary Islands trail running events he came in first by a large margin and took away a substantial cash prize, which enabled him to travel to a world-class competition overseas. Ana, distraught: 'He's going to Chile, to Patagonia! The mountains! And he's never seen snow in his life!'

Nor had Ana but she knew it was nasty cold stuff. I was with her all the way on this, snow can be beautiful in photographs but in reality it's damp, cold, clingy and generally to be avoided. And in Patagonia it's not just snow, it's snow at thousands of metres above sea level, where only rock trolls and turkey vultures venture in safety.

'How long is the race?'

'Forty two kilometres!'

Aargh. Patagonia, though, was where Mongo wished to go. By now he had acquired a voluntary trainer, an expert in physical education who knew everything there was to know about vitamins, carbohydrates and proteins. They spent a few days on the slopes of Mount Teide in Tenerife, the highest peak in Spain at over 3,740 metres, where Mongo experienced extreme cold and even a little snow, but was undeterred. He flew to Chile, ran the 42 kilometre Patagonia marathon and won it.

This is absolutely true, I have not invented it to make a good story, he won it against seasoned competitors from all around the globe. The once-chubby Mongo went on to become a world champion in this dauntingly strenuous sport and he now gives inspirational talks to the local schoolkids: you don't have to become a potato, you can turn into a butterfly or gazelle or whatever you want to be. He has also placed La Gomera firmly on the global trail-runners' map, and world-class events are now held here as well as in Patagonia.

Ana still worries about him, I'm sure, but perhaps not so much these days.