BarcelonaAdrenaline, fear, vertigo, stubbornness, courage and perseverance. This is the mountain. Every challenge, every race and every kilometer. Ferran and Noelia decided to embark on the adventure of the Pyrenees Stage Run (PSR), a race of 240 km and 15,000 meters of positive gradient that crosses the Catalan Pyrenees from end to end for seven days. The ARA has accompanied them in this challenge.
The nerves are raw. It is impossible to contain the smile and Ferran and Noelia keep looking everywhere. The biggest challenge they have ever faced is about to begin and right, the moment they enter the tent to do the check in, the deepest fears begin to surface: “Will we reach the cutoff times? Will we always be behind?” While Jordi and Tomàs, organizers and ideologues of the PSR, make them the briefing from the first stage the quinielas begin: that place where everyone wants to appear. 240 km and 15,000 meters of positive altitude difference await them in 7 days to make good predictions and surpass themselves.
Ferran and Noelia arrive in Ribes de Freser, from where the PSR starts.
The alarm went off very early, when Ribes de Freser, in Ripollès, was still in the dark. At six o’clock it’s time to go to breakfast to gain strength for the start and the first tens of kilometers. “What a magical moment!” 64 runners, from more than 15 nationalities, gather behind the inflatable that they will cross to enter the Catalan Pyrenees. The music is blaring, the runners don’t stop jumping, not only to warm up, but to contain the adrenaline rushing through their bodies.
After overcoming the first 34.4 km, Ferran and Noelia are on the podium. Fears begin to fade: “Very surprised and a little scared because we came third in mixed teams!”
Ferran and Noelia before the departure of the PSR.
While they are counting the kilometers, the head is spinning. One can get lost in one’s own mind: in worries, frustrations and fears. For this reason, great luck is always having the other by your side. “We’ve been going together for thirty years and we started in the mountains at the same time. We know each other very well and that helps a lot: knowing where one pulls, where the other pulls, where one can give more… It’s a joint effort because it’s important to both finish and do it well. All the teams and couples have their rules and pacts that make the race a very beautiful moment. Always together, if one doesn’t pull the other waits. Always together”. This is not negotiable.
“What stupid thing are you going to do now?”, their friends and family say to them every year. Ferran and Noelia always spend their holidays on a new adventure, but never one as daring as the PSR. Throughout the year they have prepared body and soul to be able to face days like the third of this competition with guarantees. “Doing a race like this without prior training is impossible,” they confess. The queen stage, of 47 km and 2,600 positive meters, is a leg-shredding machine. “We have a lot of respect for him.” The sacrifices, however, have had their reward and they maintain the podium they have occupied since the first day.
Ferran and Noelia reaching the finish line of stage 3.
Half the race passed. The legs start to feel heavy and the muscles are strained. That is why the organization has planned the equator of the competition as the shortest stage: a half marathon of 20 km. It is a fast day in which the runners have completed the course before noon, which has allowed them to have a few hours of very valuable rest. For those who have not had a day of impasse, it has been for the recuperators. “When you reach the finish line they are waiting for you to put on cold gels, they give you massages… In the last kilometers, everyone has in mind the physios who are waiting for us! It’s a pleasure to have them. This is a long way few runs.”
The days begin to subtract, not to add. Saturday’s finish line is getting closer and closer, but it still seems a long way off. “Today it seemed like the finish line would never come,” admits Noelia, dragging her words a little. They are limp, lying down, trying to regain their strength for tomorrow. “It’s been one of those stages where you get everything: moments of extreme euphoria where you get sick of laughing and two seconds later you start crying. When people were going up the mountain they were shouting, laughing, crying… Almost all of us cried when we arrived. It’s been a very hard stage, all the teams have been affected psychologically, but reaching the finish line heals you.”
The mountain has an intoxicating duality: the beauty it gives you and with which it embraces you as you walk along it goes hand in hand with the pain and fatigue that accompanies you as you add kilometers. After five consecutive days, the forces are equal, but the competition does not disappear. After remaining on the podium during all the stages, Ferran and Noelia, with only one day to go, have fallen to fourth position. The chocolate medal, however, seems like a nice reward. Every time the legs go more by inertia, by stubbornness, than by will. Now, they will face the last stage differently: it is a gift and a punishment until they cross the finish line.
Celebration of the arrival of the penultimate stage.
maximum happiness Tears in the eyes. Music at full volume. Screams, applause, hugs and laughter. “Are we finishers!”, Ferran and Noelia shout before kissing over the finish line. The excitement is palpable and the desire to party, despite the accumulated fatigue, reigns in an arrival that is a party .” You do things to make this work, but you don’t know if the legs will hold. Now we’ve made it!”. Every time a team arrives in Salardú, a small town in the Aran Valley, there is an explosion of joy. Everyone has been waiting for the last couple to arrive. “A family is formed, a team among all . You share so much suffering and emotions that you can’t stop crying and hugging each other.” Everything is worth it, beyond the position and color of the medal.
Final arrival of Ferran and Noelia at the Pyrenees Stage Run.
