A few weeks ago, I completed my planned goals for the beginning of 2021. First, the Spring CMTR Scavenger Hunt, which is more or less documented on my Instagram. But the real highlight of my goals for this year was running the Cuerda Larga or, as I like to call it, 10 miles of power walking followed by five-ish miles of awkward downhill jogging.
I had intended to complete this on the first weekend in May, which is a long weekend, or puente, here in Spain, but this was mostly so my partner could meet me at the end. However, the weather was rather terrible that weekend, so I pushed it until the weather improved, which ended up being just the following weekend.
Also, in a confluence of unlucky and lucky situations, my partner was able to be there because he had to cancel his planned trip to Nepal due to the COVID situation. This turned out to be a fortunate plan, as shortly after that, international flights were cancelled. Although the entire situation was unlucky for him, it turned out lucky for me.
During the last couple weeks of training, I was getting pretty excited, surprisingly, more excited than nervous, which is unusual for me. However, during the taper period that was extended a week due to the weather, I started to get a bit nervous and sort of apathetic about it.
The morning of my run, my nerves increased tremendously, though not as bad as when I used to race but still unpleasant. It didn’t help that while I was waiting for the bus to the mountains, some older men were asking some older ladies about “la sola,” who, I can only imagine, was me – pobre sola, all alone to die in the mountains. Going to the mountains alone is much, much less acceptable here, especially among older generations, than in the US. Fortunately, those badass, hiking grandmas had my back and told the concerned gentlemen, “déjalo,” leave it.
By the time I got off the bus at Puerto de Navacerrada, I was excited again (yay!), but still nervous. The route starts uphill, but it’s not particularly steep. After walking a bit to warm up, I had planned to jog it at an easy effort until it gets steeper before reaching the first summit, Bola del Mundo. Unfortunately, because I was still a bit nervous and out of sorts, every time I tried to run, my heart rate shot up, making me feel panicky. So, I scrapped that plan and alternated between walking and jogging until the steep section. Due to this shaky beginning, my mind started churning:
“I don’t think I can do this. Why are you nervous, this doesn’t even matter to anyone? Maybe I should come back another day. But (my partner) is waiting for me. I wish I hadn’t arranged that. What if I fail? This matters to me; if I go home, I’ll just have to come back again. Then I’ll be even more nervous after I already failed once.”
Despite my own fun and extremely pleasant company, I made pretty good time since I’m okay at power walking and before long, found myself at Bola del Mundo.
After Bola del Mundo, the route continues gently down to the saddle, then up to Valdemartín, then down again before climbing Cabezas de Hierro, which is the high point of the route but near the beginning. Since the terrain on these next two descents was mostly smooth, I jogged down.
The way up to Cabezas de Hierro is steep and generally rocky, a combination that I cannot run, so I powerwalked, no biggie. Cabezas de Hierro, as you might suspect due to its plural name construction, has two summits. The descent from the first summit is not remotely runnable for all but the very special people and is a lot of rock scrambling. As such, it took me some time to make it over these two summits. When I reached the final, higher “Cabeza” a little less than two hours in, I promptly texted my partner to tell him that this adventure might take me longer than I had planned and that he didn’t need to wait for me. I originally gave him an estimate of “between 4 and 5 hours,” and at this point, I was thinking it might be more like 6 hours.
After Cabezas de Hierro, the route is mostly all downhill, though it does climb a few more smaller peaks (Navahondilla and Bailanderos), with longer sections of runnable terrain in the saddles. Although a lot of it was not as runnable as I remembered when I hiked the trail last year. Most of the trail was still quite rocky. It made it a bit hard to get into a groove, especially since I had to pay so much attention to the trail, both to find the route and to not trip and fall. I reassured myself that I wouldn’t trip and fall here; if I fall, it will be on the much easier terrain, as is typical.
Technically, the last peak on this route is La Najarra, but the marked Cuerda Larga trail bi-passes it on the North-Northwest flank. Coming down the last peak on the flanks of La Najarra was one of the parts I was most worried about. I remembered the trail being eroded and steep, and I was worried about coming down it on tired legs. I figured that in the worst case, walking is always an option. However, I was pleasantly surprised that aside from the initial steeper part, I found it quite runnable and enjoyable. I even smiled and sang a little bit. It was here where I passed a couple of the few people I had seen all day (and almost no one since Cabezas de Hierro). Shortly after passing them, the trail turns in such a way that I could see the couple behind me. The man had stopped and was looking at me; so I stopped too. He waved and I thought that I had dropped something. But no, thankfully. I think he was probably wondering about “la sola loca.” But no worries for me, as in just a hop, skip, and a jump over a large rock, I was at Puerto de la Morcuera, which is where the trail meets the road again. There’s a medium-size parking lot there that is usually quite busy on the weekends, but on this Friday, it was mostly quiet – just one cyclist and a handful of cars.
From Puerto de la Morcuera, it was a mostly gradual descent down to the Fuente del Cura in Miraflores de la Sierra. I knew this section pretty well, and I wasn’t too worried about it – it has some sections of easy fire road and others of forest trails. After the more technical trails through the mountains, I figured I would run really well here. Unfortunately, the upper parts of the fire road and trail were absolutely covered with pine cones that made my descent perhaps even slower than coming down off the final peak. On tired legs and terrain covered with, essentially, marbles, I felt completely unstable. So, remembering a former hiking companion who broke her foot quite badly on an acorn-covered, rocky trail, I went carefully through this section.
Finally, I made it to the easy and last portion of fire road that winds past some farms and houses. The road is a bit rocky, but generally easy to run on. I looked at my watch and figuring at this point that I had probably less than two miles to go, I realized I could most likely make it in under 5 hours and within my planned estimate. I picked up the pace slightly, running happily and easily for about 10 minutes until suddenly I wasn’t…I was sliding on the ground on my right side. I rolled over and let out a perfunctory laugh, remembering my earlier thoughts on follows. This is always how it goes, right? Make it through the technical part; fall on the easy terrain. I got back up and took a cursory look at my injuries – mostly superficial, hooray. I took a couple of steps. Excellent, everything was working well, so I started running again, gently curling my hands so I didn’t have to see the carnage on my palms. They hurt pretty badly, and I didn’t want to look too closely in case they were actually really bad.
When I arrived in the park, I ran through the parking lot looking for my partner. He was seated at a picnic table and jumped up to try to take a photo as I approached. I caught him off-guard as he had just arrived from his training hike up La Najarra about 5 minutes earlier. Luckily for me, he had had time to make a batch of delicious Tang from the cool water of the fountain.
Before walking down to the bus stop on the outskirts of town, we inspected all my wounds – palms, elbow, shoulder, hip, and knee. The palms and shoulder where the worst, but not as bad as the fact that I ripped one of my favorite running shirts. Flesh heals, shirts don’t.
I washed the blood off in the fountain, lamenting my holey shirt and stinging hands. I hoped that the promise of the “Fuente del Cura” would materialize on either flesh or fabric, but, as you might expect, there is no cure but time…or a bit of thread.
