One more New Year’s Eve running the popular San Silvestre Vallecana.
Year by year we’re creating a small community: Jaime, Pablo, Kike, Jon, Juanma and Abraham.
Compared to the last year, this time Gonzalo and Nacho could not run. Though the fact that the latter couldn’t, made it possible to have the great pictures he took of the rest of us in Calle Alcalá. Enjoy them:
Kike, Jon, Pablo, Abraham, Jaime and I (picture taken by olemiswebs).
Pablo, Juanma, I, Abraham, Kike, Jon and Jaime (picture taken by olemiswebs)
Jaime was running his 14th San Silvestre in a row. Impressive! I was doing my 12th (I missed three along these years: one due to injury and other 2 being in NL). Pablo must have done around 5, Kike 3, like Juanma (?), this was the second for Jon and Abraham, I believe. But they’ll complete many more.
Numbers… the time was ridiculous: 1h7′. As usual it was impossible to run, and this time we had to fully stop twice in Vallecas due to runners’ traffic plus the long pause to make the pictures. I cannot attach the route as at the beginning of Xmas time I forgot my Garmin watch in Toulouse (Kike, Jon, if you read this, please, could you attach the records in the comments?).
Commenting on the difficulty to run in that race nowadays: I remembered our first San Silvestres back in the ’90s. Already then it was difficult to run, especially in Vallecas. I tried to find the results from the first one I ran and I couldn’t, but I found those of the 2nd, in 1999, already with Jaime. We then finished in around 55′ to 56′ net time and positions around 3,500 out of less than 5,000 finishers… about one tenth of today’s figures.
Due to the strike of underground metro workers, this time we came back from Vallecas to Jaime’s flat, close to Retiro… adding up some nearly 4km after the race.
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PD: In last year post, I wrote that Luca wanted to have spent the past Christmas in some sunny island… well, one more year Madrid and its San Silvestre got it :-D.
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