It’s not just a race, it’s Madrid

We had a lovely week-long vacation in Spain. Our two goals were to run the Zurich Rock’n’Roll Marathon in Madrid after 11 years, and visit our friends in Chinchón whom, likewise, we had not seen in 11 years. Except for a couple of navigational glitches, problems with locking the car, the mysteriously vanished battery pack and sunglass case everything went smoothly. Even the weather was favorable for the whole time: sunny and warm, although windy. It was even a bit too warm on the race day.

We had our flight from Lyon to Madrid booked four days before the race, only then to remember that if one plans to race at a higher than training altitude one should arrive at the race location either one day before the race, so that the altitude effect does not kick in before the race, or well in advance, preferably two weeks early, so there will be enough time to adapt; the worst possible time to race is about four to five days after entering the higher altitude, since that is when the altitude effect is the strongest. So, Madrid at about 700 meters is significantly higher than our training grounds. We solved the issue by getting out of Madrid right away and staying in Zaragoza for our last race preparations; it was within reasonable driving distance from the capital — we had a rental car for our entire stay in Spain (*) — and it had the same elevation as our home, if not even a bit lower.

We returned to Madrid a day before the race to pick up our race packages, and left Madrid the day after the race to visit our friends in Chinchón for a couple of days before flying home. Actually, just before leaving from home we realized that there will be just one workday left of the week after the return (Friday was a public holiday), so we decided to extend our vacation to the weekend. We did not make any final plans yet, but eventually we spent one night in Lyon upon arrival, and then two nights in Vienne. That will be a topic of a separate post.

(*) One interesting fact to note here is that the gas prices in Spain were about one euro lower per liter than they are where we live in France.

Zaragoza

After landing in Madrid, we picked up our rental car, and drove to Zaragoza, first on the busy highway among zillions of huge trucks, but soon we moved to quieter and more idyllic small roads, which if course doubled the distance and tripled the driving time. The first thing to do next morning was to park the car outside the city center for free. That itself was not a problem, but locking the car turned out to be.

Tomi used the fob to lock it. We heard the sound, and I tried the passenger side door (like I always do), and it was not locked. All sorts of hypotheses were thrown in the air — maybe all doors were not properly closed, maybe the car was still running (sometimes it is hard to tell with hybrids), or maybe something else was still on. Tomi turned the car back on and moved it a bit, and then shut it down, and tried locking the doors again. This time the passenger door was locked, but backseat doors and the driver’s were not.

We tried several times … and finally it dawned to him: if someone with the keys is close enough to this kind of “smart car,” it “thinks” that the person wants to get in and unlocks its doors. We tested the hypothesis: Tomi walked away from the car with the keys, and successfully locked all doors. And then walked back to the car, and voilà, the doors got unlocked. The strange thing was that there was no sound when the car unlocked its doors, and that confused us.

That day was a public holiday in Spain, Saint George’s Day (also called Saint Jordi, and San Jorge in Aragon), also known as the Day of Books and Roses: the streets were lined with book stalls and people were everywhere, women walking with roses in their hands. After touring the city center, particularly El Pilar (The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Pilar) neighborhood we were ready for lunch, but could only find Middle-Eastern places open that were run and patronized by men only, so we opted for a supermarket lunch.

We started the next day with a run by the river Ebro, our last (easy) run before the race. After breakfast we walked to Aljafería Palace and found a longish line outside. Since the palace did not look too impressive from the outside, we decided not to bother checking it inside, but to take advantage of the beautiful sunny afternoon instead, and continued our walk towards the Aqua Park (Parque del Aqua Luis Buñuel). Already a bit tired and not wanting to stay on our feet too long before the race, we did not make it all the way to the park, but turned around at the expo pavilion zone of the Zaragoza Expo 2008.

The next day it was time to return to Madrid and visit the race expo at IFEMA – Feria de Madrid. Getting there was when the most navigation issues occurred: the GPS on Tomi’s tablet just could not keep up with the 100kph driving speed, and we ended up missing several exits because of being on the wrong lane. But we made it in, and out of the loud and busy expo as fast as we could!

Zurich Rock’n’Roll Marathon Madrid — No es una carrera más, es Madrid

And then came the big day! We took the metro to the start line. We were happy to find a lot of port-a-johns at the area, so there was no need to queue for a toilet before the race. There is not much to say about the race itself other than the route was very hilly (we knew that!) and we chose to walk the longest and steepest uphills; there was enough space to run, so the crowd did not slow us down; and there were drink stations with water and isotonic drinks available every five kilometers, but not much other fuel, but we carried our own energy gels. The day was sunny and got warmer and warmer, but fortunately there was some breeze to cool us. I think we paced us pretty well — after all we did not have any finishing time goal other than to finish. Given how good we felt immediately after the race and the following days, I think it went well — our first marathon since 2018 in Berlin.

Chinchón

Again, we followed mostly small roads to Chinchón. We took a short break form driving and climbed up to a sculpture by a Uruguayan artist. The exact purpose of the artwork escaped us, since the info boards had been vandalized. As a plus we found a moat dating back to the Spanish Civil War behind the sculpture. In Chinchón we just walked to the central square (Plaza Mayor) and chose the first restaurant we passed for lunch (see later in this post). Afterwards we had a short ride around the nearby villages waiting for our hosts to return from work.

We started the next day with a morning run, the first one after the marathon, to the next village of Colmenar de Oreja in the most gorgeous sunrise. It was quite a chilly morning, head wind to uphill and tail wind to downhill.

Following our friends’ recommendation we planned to spend our last day in Spain exploring the old town and the beautiful university campus of Alcalá de Henares, a town North-East of Madrid. But before we could start driving we noticed that our battery pack was missing, the one we had used the previous days to charge Tomi’s tablet while driving. We did not find it in the car nor the room we were staying at the friends’ house. The only explanation we could come up with was that we had put it on top of the car when unpacking the car and left it there when leaving for the house — which still sounds strange since I still kept checking the locked doors, and should have seen if there was something on the roof. Later we found out that Tomi’ s sunglass case was also missing, and we usually kept it in the same place in the car as the battery pack (*). Oh well! We bought a new pack at Madrid Barajas.

Unfortunately I don’t have much to write about the Alcalá de Henares, other than it is the birthplace of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. Another noteworthy fact about the town is its large white stork population; we cold see their nests on top of many historic buildings and treetops.

(*) As a side note, our friends told us that if Spanish people find lost items, they automatically think them as theirs, and keep them instead of turning them to police as lost and found. So different from the French or Finns!

Food

Finally few words about food in Spain. When driving from Madrid to Zaragoza we stopped at Las Galeras restaurant by the highway for lunch. The salads we had, salmon and “Galeras”, were probably the best lunches of the whole trip — except the ones we cooked ourselves, of course.

Upon arrival to Chinchón we just chose the first restaurant at the central square. Tomi ordered Andalusian fried fish platter (Fritura pescado a la Andaluza), and Tei a salmon salad, which they did not have. The server suggested another salad with “chopitos,” and when asked what they were, she said “fish.” It turned out that they actually were fried baby squids. The salad had a lot of them, topped with even more fried onion rings (no picture, since it looked really unappetizing). Not the wisest choice for lunch! This was probably the worst meal of the trip.

On our last night in Chinchón we went out for dinner with our friends at La Señora Winebar. We shared some appetizers — probably the best food of the whole trip — and a bottle of rosé wine, and finished the evening with a visit to their cellar.