Tag Archives: New Year’s Eve

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.

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.