25TH CLUB LA SANTA LANZAROTE INTERNATIONAL RUNNING CHALLENGE

I headed to Club La Santa (CLS) in Lanzarote with my sister Louise (Dundee Hawkhill Harriers) and her boyfriend Stuart (Falkirk Victoria Harriers) to take part in the 25th International Running Challenge which involved 4 races over 4 days.
The first race took place on Sunday and was a 10k road race, which started in the sports stadium within CLS and involved a lap around the track before leaving the complex and heading out into La Santa.  The race is run on asphalt roads and involves running towards the villages of La Santa and Caleta de Caballo.  The course was over two laps, which included coming back into the stadium and running another lap of the track.  Having not arrived until 7.00pm the night before and with the heat on the Sunday I did not do as well as I might have done on this race, finishing in a time of 45.05 (Louise – 43.58, Stuart – 40.21).
Monday’s race was a 13k ridge race, starting yet again in the stadium.  As Louise and Stuart had competed in the running challenge last year as well they knew what to expect and warned me that the first half of the race would involve a bit of climbing.    The terrain for this race was a mixture of asphalt roads and dirt trails, running around one of the big volcanoes near to CLS.  The first 4-5km were mainly uphill but the decent off the ridge was not as bad as Louise had made out (we came off a ridge earlier this year than what they did last year – on Friday we went out and re-ran the ridge race ourselves but we tackled the second ridge as well and I certainly would not have liked to have tried the decent off that ridge in a race!)  I enjoyed this race more than Sunday’s race and I found I was able to settle into a rhythm over the last few kilometres, completing the race in a time of 58.20 (Louise 56.54, Stuart – 55.14)
On to Tuesday and we headed to Puerto Del Carmen for a 5km beach race.  However, as we had to be transported to this race, together with the fact there were only two toilets at the start area, I spent  a lot of time queuing and therefore had very little warm up time.  I thought with me being in the middle of the cross country season that this would stand me in good stead for this race but as I soon found out the soft sand was not east to run on.  Once we got near the sea I headed for the harder ground (albeit I did get my feet soaked a few times).  But we were soon back on to the soft sand and I found myself struggling again.  The heat was not helping me either.  This was a two lap course which I completed in 25.49 (Louise – 25.04, Stuart – 22.07).
And so finally on to the last day which was the 21km La Vuelta de Tinajo.  We were transported to Mancha Blanca, a small village about 10minutes away from CLS.   The buses were slightly late in leaving CLS and therefore by the time we got to the start line we literally just had time to go to the toilet and then the race started (a common theme was emerging here!).  This run took us around the volcanic Montana de Tinache (1 loop) through Tinajo and back to CLS.  It was a similar terrain to Monday’s race with a mixture of asphalt roads and dirt tracks.  However Lanzarote experienced rather windy conditions that day (and speaking to someone later on in the week they said they had not seen such a windy day as Wednesday for a while).  As a result I found in the latter part of the race I was struggling against the wind and the sand which was being blown up.  Apart from a climb around about 4km into this race, this one was relatively flat and downhill.  This was my most satisfying race of the week as I felt once I got going that I was able to pick off other runners as I made my way through the race.  Once I arrived back at CLS I had one lap around the track to complete before I had finished the running challenge.  My time for this race was 1.33.33 (Louise – 1.31.51, Stuart – 1.22.54).
My overall combined time for the challenge was 3.42.46 and I was 22nd overall in the women’s competition (7th out of 14 overall in my age category).
The running challenge overall was a very good experience and was well attended with over 400 runners taking part from a wide range of countries all over Europe.  Some running clubs were well presented such as Crusaders and Sportworld running clubs of Ireland and Sparta of Denmark.  There was an awards ceremony on the Wednesday evening followed by a showing of the race video (this can be found at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weDACRvBzNY) and afterwards a disco.
Julie

Well done Julie on keeping the Harriers' International racing tradition going. Back to reality on Saturday at Kilmarnock!

Alan