Day 22 – EU – Spain [Bornos to Zahara de la Sierra]

27/12/19

42km

  From Bornos (Spain) to Zahara de la Sierra (Spain)

Europe

A very hard day on the road! Sunny and bright but then…

… a river to cross, mud and brambles to wade through and the mightiest of uphills!

Today started out as a typical beautiful awesome day. Running into one more amazing sunrise, a fairly flat 20km run as a starter. I had studied the route the night before. I knew that I had to expect a second half way tougher than the 1st one, mostly in terms of uphill. I thought I was prepared.

Well, as the uphill got underway, I was crushed once again by BoB’s weight. He is getting leaner, but still quite heavy. We need more work on it. Anyway, I started to struggle and took in turns to walk fast and run. I still managed a good pace, but this was a realisation I will need to think hard about the weight I want to carry going forward.

With about 15km to my final destination, Google Map had me go through some “caminos” or trails. Because of the good weather in Spain for the past few days, I dropped my guards about wet trails and mud and all the rest of it. I thought why not.

As we got into the trails part, things started to get really really hard. The thing is, the more I progressed, the less I was willing to backtrack and get back on the road (too many extra kms to consider). So I pushed through. The first real hurdle was a river (or stream of water) that I had to cross… with no bridge. I pondered for about 10 seconds and though ok, I’m going in, my shoes and legs will get wet, and I am hoping BoB will make it too, whilst keeping my belongings dry. I got cold! Bob was ok-ish.

I kept running on a very accidented and wet trail for a while. Then I hit the mud puddles. The hard part was that I was going ankle-deep, whilst I saw BoB going wheel-deep, and it was hard to keep everything from getting stuck whilst also thinking my gear bag had to stay dry… This went on for quite a while.

Then the brambles. I could only run on the sides of the trail, as the middle was filled with mud. But the sides were outgrowing brambles and I got scratched everywhere, face, arms, hair… and BoB was not spared. These things got tangled into its wheels, into the frame… It got very messy, very muddy, very naughty, and a little bloody too!

As I finally got out of the trail, I was happy for about half a second to be back on the road. I looked ahead. And saw the little White Village of Zahara de la Sierra Nevada, perched above 550m. And my hotel for the night was right at the top of it.

More uphills tomorrow – but a shorter running day. Hoping to get some good rest tonight!

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: