Racing in Portugal

This will be a short post as I am a little pressed for time and using a Portuguese keyboard.  The latter results in a squiggly red line below almost every word, indicating that my Portuguese's spelling is atrocious.  Fortunately, spellcheck checks for English spelling errors, so not all is lost...

Lee Anne and I are spending a month in Portugal, starting with 10 days on the island of Madeira, which although part of Portugal, is off the coast of Africa.  Madeira is a relatively new island, at about 5 million years old.  This may seem like a long time, but the mountains have had little time to wear away.  Most of the mountains have steep-to-vertical sides,  So when we were told the Madeira marathon was flat, it reminded me of when people used to say the earth was flat...

We opted for the half marathon, as we planned to hike the next day.  The first 3K was uphill.  Not 20% gradient steep, but enough slope to affect our breathing.  The course was a bizarre mix of out-and-backs and loops.  All this to avoid any serious hills.  There was one steep hill about midway through the half, but fortunately it was downhill.  Our times were slow.  Really slow.  I was barely under 3 hours.  This is due primarily to a lack of training, but the sad time was also influenced by my left ankle, which behaved quite badly for the last 8K.  At one point I realized it hurt just as much to walk as to run, so the last 3K was an impressively fast hobble.

Hiking in Madeira is another story.  We were lulled into a fantasy state on our first hike.  We walked beside a Levada - a small viaduct used to transfer water from one place to another, as water is scarce is some regions of Madeira.  We walked along steep hills, cliffs and through tunnels, but the gradient was unfailingly a gentle downhill slope.  We were not so lucky on our second hike!  Think metal ladder\stairs ascending 1,000 meters vertical.  The metal stairs were aesthetically arranged up near-vertical cliff faces.  I´ll post pictures when I get home (February 15).  When not ascending or descending metal stairs, we were on rock stairs, similar to those found on normal European hikes.  Flat sections?  Re-read the part about the half marathon above.

We are now in Tavira and have rented mountain bikes.  Tavira is on the Atlantic ocean and fortunately, quite flat.  We had rented road bikes but on our first day in Tavira, we did not see any smooth paved roads, aside from the highways.  Dirt roads in the country and the roads in town are either cobblestone or square stone.  Again, pictures are needed, but think of 5cm X 5cm stones set in concrete.   The patterns of white and black stones are beautiful, but I would hesitate to walk my road bike over the surface.  If you are ever in Tavira, I recommend Abilio Bike Rentals.  Great service and very accommodating.

That´s it for now - I hope to post again within a few days.


Bom dia!