Bienvenido a mis amigos mexicanos querido! Gracias por cuidar de mí tan grande aquí en México.
Mi sitio web tiene una traducción al español la posibilidad!
Por favor, sólo tiene que desplazarse hacia abajo y seleccione el idioma español en la herramienta de TRANSLATE en el lado derecho de mi página de blog. Espero verte en el camino!  Tony

Maillot Jaune… Well not exactly!

I had a lot of serious climbing for the first 35km of the 65 I ran today
I had started at 1am. The whole day was a long tough slog and nowhere to rest as the only restaurant on the route was closed when I ran by in the wee hours. It’s dogs came out to give me a serious greeting.

A DAY FOR MAD DOGS AND IRISHMEN!

This is a problem I am having now as I run earlier and earlier. Some people don’t lock up their dogs, just leave them outside. It is even a minor problem in some of the places I am staying in as I have been getting up so early to leave the property on my own!
Eventually I got over the hills with Angels, Fermin and Antonio keeping up the rear doing a wonderful job.
Just before dawn a 3 ton red truck came thundering up behind us. I heard a screeching of breaks. He must have lost control and went into a spin as the truck was now pointing away from us. Luckily it was not a semi as there were other vehicles approaching it had time to stop. So the red truck driver just drove away from us. A few minutes later when I stopped for water at a roadside pull off I noticed the truck pass us without any horn blasting! I figured he thought the Angeles were cops and decided to get the hell out of the area, that’s why he went the other way, returning when he saw he was not being pursued.

 I just ran on and 3km later 3 men stopped to give us water, delicious oranges and even drove the 7km to the next shop and return with sodas! They were boxing promoters returning from a bout they had the night before.
Then on a bit more as far as km marker 35 where it was arranged for me to stay in La Montana Restaurant.
A lovely lady called AleJandre ran it. I treated myself to a nice steak dinner as my reward for a tough day
AleJandre cooked up some rice for my breakfast. I put it into my tupperware dish along with some steak I didn’t finish. She even gave me a supper of a chicken drumstick, gravy and though it was green, she called it a black tortilla.
Alejandre also allowed me to shower,shave, use her computer. I spent the evenings drinking sweet peppermint tea out of my thermos,keeping a cup for breakfast.
I was given a bed inside the family home, which was rare for Mexico as I usually am offered an outbuilding of sots. I had a nice 5 hour sleep before Fermin and Silvestre arrived at 4am.
Only 35km to La Paz. A city I have counted down the kilometers from 1,500+ km since I arrived in Baja almost 5 weeks ago.
After yesterdays massive stage, I used today’s easy one as a gentle recovery run.
It was glorious all the way. After 21k we stopped at a convenience store, I bought the lads sodas.
On I ran towards La Paz. I now had two Green Angeles trucks escorting me. Xico was driving the lead vehicle in front of me with Fermin in the back of the pickup taking some snapshots.

AT LAST

 I had a big smile on my face, it was almost like a celebration run, like a day off from the hard core stuff like yesterday.

TONY'S ANGELS! FERMIN,SILVESTRE,ANTONIO AND XICO

And then I realized that far off in Paris the riders of the 98th Tour de France will be riding towards the French capital with a similar mood.
For them it would be the end of a 3 week chase around France, for me just the end of another far off signpost on my never-ending run around the world.
As I ran towards the town, many people called out words of encouragement, like ‘ Animal! ‘
They clapped, honked their horns, came out of their work places, homes to take pictures of the runner they read about in their daily.
Silvestre and Antonio were in the rear vehicle.
I felt I was wearing the Maillot Jaune, or leaders yellow jersey.
I had my team members around me ready to react and protect if needed.

LE MAILLOT VERDES TEAM MEMBERS PROTECT HIS LEAD INTO LA PAZ

  They had already warded off a couple of dog encounters that morning.
Then I went into a day dream. I remembered that last weekend of Le Tour back in ’87 when Irelands own Stephen Roche had a sniff off taking the jersey off Pedro Delgado. I booked an overnight train and ferry for Paris without telling my boss, I wouldn’t be in that Friday or Monday!
Then when the Tour began in Ireland in 1998, I was living in Colorado at the time but went to great expense at the time coming home to Ireland. I went to the prologue and a mountain stage in the Dublin Mountains. How to get there was another thing.
That was back in the time when I used to drink. I gate crashed a journalists party in the Aisling Hotel. The party was called ‘ Le Grand Departe Party.’ I got plastered on the free bar. Next morning I bought a second hand mountain bike and cycled up the night before the first stage proper. I camped near the route, with yes my bottle of French plonk. The riders were gone in a flash.
I remembered thinking that if I was a multi-millionaire that I would trade it all just to finish this great tour in the peleton. Now today as I ran under the 1km to go red kite, I would not trade my tour for theirs with all their drugs and cheating tarnished sport, not even for millions of dollars.

MAILLOT JAUNE GOES UNDER THE RED KITE, 1KM TO GO

Just then I woke up from my day dream as a  runner called Raul joined me as I ran towards Hotel Perla who kindly offered to put up with me for two nights!
Many thanks!

VIEW FROM HOTEL PERLA

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under jogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.