I suppose really this is day two as I travelled to Birmingham via train on Wednesday for an overnight stop at the airport. Not something I really wanted to do but a 0600 departure didn’t really leave me much choice. A couple of glasses certainly helped with a good five hours sleep and then the early rise.
Travelling to the island of Las Palmas is actually an ultra in itself. Being a small island, not many flights go to and from the island. When you take into account that 500+ people will be making the journey for the weekend of May 12th to take part or watch the ‘showdown’ as I like to call it and you realise that a direct flight just isn’t going to happen. Anything but.
Departing Birmingham at 0600 I arrive in Amsterdam 0800 to then make a quick transfer to a different terminal for a KLM flight to Madrid. Luckily these two flights meant that my luggage would be forwarded on. Always a little nervous of this but I am pleased to say that my baggage popped out on the belts in arrivals at Madrid.
Out of the airport I then had to check in, go through security and pick up an Iberia flight for Tenerife. A real lack of information in Terminal 2 at Madrid meant questions had to be asked and lucky I did… Turns out my next flight was Terminal 4, a bus drive away! I had time but it was added stress. Check in was stress free thank goodness and security was smooth. Took me a while to find my gate, it would appear that Madrid don’t like to sign things too well.
At the gate I was looking out for Marcus Warner from Ultra168 in Australia. He had flown through the night via London and was picking up the same two flights as me to the island. We had tentatively arranged a meet up. Not knowing each what each other look like the potential not to meet up was possible, however, it soon became apparent that we found each other straight away… Marcus was wearing head to toe Salomon gear and a Suunto Ambit on his wrist. I was wearing Hoka’s, an Endurancelife Team t shirt and a pair of sport glasses on my head. We stood out!
The journey now should be pretty straight forward we thought but unfortunately at Tenerife we needed to collect our bags and re check in for the last leg to Las Palma. This shouldn’t have been a problem but sitting on the runway at Madrid for thirty mins didn’t help our cause.
We made the twin prop flight to La Palma with time to spare. As we approached we had a real sense of what this island is like… Pretty small and basically hilly with one serious mountain in the middle.
The journey from the airport to our hotel took some 60 min and was basically driving up for 40 min and driving down for 20 min. Our destination a super hotel complex.
Marcus and myself arrived at 1850 and we had a press conference at 1900. That is the quickest check in, shower and change I have ever had! We had a quick catch up with Anna Frost and then attended the press conference. All plans have been laid out for the next few days.
Tomorrow morning, Marcus, Bryon Powell and myself will meet up with the runners for a pre race jog at 9am. This could be painful… I can’t help but think that Kilian and the rest of the runners going at a nice steady pre race pace may still very well be too quick for me but hey! I will tell you about that tomorrow.