Yet another year running on New Year’s Eve the popular San Silvestre Vallecana.
This year we had some newcomers to the community: Maicol, Alicia, Almudena and Ubaldo with friends (1) and Nacho managed to run again.
Jaime was running his 15th San Silvestre in a row. Impressive!
This race is a tradition that can hardly be matched (2), that is one of the reasons why I try to spend every year New Year’s Eve in Madrid. Again, we had talked a bit about dressing some costume or preparing something for the race but we did not.
This year my second half of the race was less fun than other years. Just after the kilometre 3 I let myself lag behind our main group to join two of our runners to talk a bit. At the km 4.5, not seeing the rest of the group, I decided to go ahead again in pursuit of them. After some 2-3 kilometres running a bit faster (~5’05″/km) than we normally do in this race (~6’30″/km) I realized that I had overtaken them without seeing them. What do I do now? Wait for them? Run softly till the end? Finally, I tried to run moderately fast when the crowd permitted (very difficult in the last 2 km).
I crossed the finish line alone, something which I think had not happened to me in over 10 years… and hopefully the last time.
Final time: ~1h00’51” (best time I have managed in ages, departing at the back of the pack).
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(1) Though compared to last year we missed Pablo, Juanma and Abraham.
(2) In 2013, during the honeymoon I run the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, which in essence is very similar. Except that it is not on New Year’s Eve and there is much less of a crowd cheering the runners.
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