José Luis Sierra took to running when his children began to practice athletics, to encourage them to continue on the path that sport opened for them. He started late, at the age of 41, but what he perhaps did not know was that he still had plenty of time to become the most popular runner in Pravia, the one everyone knows and who never misses a “San Silvestre” . He has run more than thirty throughout his life, although he had to leave it at age 75 to avoid risks (he is 80 today). The organizers of the Pravian “San Silvestre” will pay tribute to him in this edition, which will take place on Monday, and Sierra plans to be there and, at the very least, run across the finish line. “I’ll do the entrance or whatever we decide”, explains José Luis Sierra from Pravia, who had to stop running but never play sports: “I walk ten or twelve kilometers every day and on weekends for nine years I go with the Monteagudo Mountain Group and I have always felt good”, explains this illustrious resident of Pravia.
To verify that he is an optimistic, happy and fit person, all you have to do is talk to him for a while and it immediately becomes clear that he is one of those people willing to do anything and that for him running, more than an effort, has always been an effort. Enjoy yourself after a life in which you have had to do much harder things: “I worked for many years in a weaver, we made 16,000 bricks every day, snowing, raining, with frozen water in winter; from there we came out hard as watercress”, points.
Sierra was born in Cadavedo (Valdés), he went to live in Soto del Barco at the age of 15 and has lived in Pravia for more than 30 years, where he has been the janitor of the local sports center for many years. Running was more than just a hobby for Sierra, who explains that in his best times he was capable of running 30 kilometers at an average of 4 minutes each and doing it “without beach shoes or anything”: “In the first Oviedo-Gijón I was running, a car caught me and I ended up finishing third”, he recounted about one of his thousands of anecdotes in the popular races he took part in.
The veteran athlete defends that running is something that makes the person who practices it feel better and uses himself as an argument: “I had to wear a girdle for fifteen years to work and at 41, when I started running, I took off my girdle and I didn’t have to use it anymore”. Sierra has been one of the great cheerleaders for athletics in Pravia, someone always willing to participate in the tests and who encouraged all his neighbors to run, to try this healthy practice that keeps you fit: “Anyone you ask It will tell you that I am a person who is always in a good mood, I consider that this also gives you health”, he adds.
The race that he enjoyed the most in the years in which he was most fit was the Oviedo-Gijón, although at that time he used to always finish among the first in the popular races in which he participated. Then, later, when he started working at the sports center, he used to challenge the kids: “I used to tell them, how can I beat you by running and it was a way of motivating them.” All those who stung and fell into his net will be able to thank him on Monday with a huge round of applause as he crosses the finish line in Pravia.
