Geoff Newton travelled to Madeira hoping to bring some medals back from the European Masters Athletics Championships
“A chance to combine racing with a good holiday. What’s not to like? Madeira is basically a mountain rising straight out of the sea. Houses and banana plantations cling to impossibly steep slopes. Events were scattered over the island in various places between 15 and 60 minute’s drive from Funshal, in the shuttle buses provided.
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I entered five events, 10,000m track, cross-country, 5,000m track, 10km road race and half marathon. However, the provisional intention was to miss out either the 5,000m track or the 10K road race, depending on how the first two events went.
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As it turned out GB had a team in the 10km road race if I ran, so the decision was an easy one and I dropped the 5km track race. Given the large numbers of entries (about 4,250) and the five year age groups for both men and women, events ran continuously from early morning to late evening. There was a very large British contingent who ended up topping the medals table with 132 Gold, 102 Silver and 77 Bronze with Germany 2nd on 110 Gold, 98 Silver, 82 Bronze. Alas, no space to cover all that. Best age graded performance came from GB’s Sarah Roberts who broke her own world W75 record for the 10,000m with a time of 47:41.41 (she did 46.11 in the 10Km road race).
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Including me, there were only five entrants for the M80 10,000m track race. Wim Oudjans from Netherlands – the favourite, Åke Jonson from Sweden and a Slovenian who had neglected to confirm the day before and was therefore running under protest. The Lithuanian did not turn up, apparently giving the championships a miss. Numbers were made up with three M75’s and two M85’s. Everyone would get a medal, just a matter of which colour. An M95 had confirmed but did not attend.
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Our race was scheduled for 17:30, the last race of Day 1 at Camara de Lobos (Wolf’s Lair), home of the longer distance track races. It had been baking hot all day but fortunately it eased off a bit by the time we started. At the off I found myself at the back of the field, but I was able to pick off the runners in front one by one.
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By half way I was lying fourth overall and 2nd M80. Shortly before that, the first two M75’s lapped me at an impressive pace and a bit later Wim Oudejans also lapped me. However, I was able to hang onto him for about a lap and a half. A bit after that the two M75’s lapped me again, but they had slowed a bit by then and I was able to hang onto them for over two laps. They were clearly running a tactical race which would end in a sprint finish. I could not resist the temptation to keep them honest and briefly passed them which woke them up. Thus, I ended up with a “silver” in 54:00.76, a long way behind Wim Oudejans in 50:13.63. The Slovenian dropped out at some stage. Ake Jonson was 3rd M80 in 54:51.98.
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Day 4… After two days rest, back in action in the cross country. Finding a cross country course on Madeira was apparently challenging. Madeira is justly famous for its gardens but has no parks to speak of. It has hosted International Masters fell races in the past. Eventually the organisers located a sort of alpine meadow, Chao de Feiteiras, nearly 4,000ft above sea level, a popular beauty spot with the locals, who use it for walking, picnicking and mountain biking. Here the organisers devised a convoluted 1 kilometre lap. This meant that women and the older men did six laps and the younger men eight laps.
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To make the start of the first race for over 70 men and women at 9:00am it was necessary to catch the first shuttle bus from Funshal at 6:45am, half an hour’s walk from my hotel. There was not a single spare seat on the bus! A fifty minute’s drive up winding mountainous roads and we were dropped off in the dark (it does not get light until 8am in Madeira) where a broad track led off through magnificent tall trees.
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We walked along this for a while until we reached an open area where the organisers were putting the finishing touches to the course by torchlight! After witnessing a beautiful sunrise, we were able to get a good look at the course. The surface was a thin layer of grass over solid knobbly rock, relatively level with a few sudden short drops and short rises. One of the climbs was so steep that I had to walk a few steps each lap. The course had a few sharp turns and ran between tapes throughout. Fortunately, it was of a generous width and suitable for short spikes as the grass was still damp with dew.
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There were ten M80 starters in the field of 49 men. I thought the Frenchman Roger Godard the likely favourite and so it proved. I started as fast as I sensibly could, helped by the bracing mountain air, but Roger was out of sight in no time. Halfway round the first lap I passed the Spaniard who eventually finished third. I kept moving steadily through the field and by half-way the gap between me and Roger had stabilised.
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Roger finished 1st M80 and 18th overall in 33:51. I was 2nd M80 and 24th overall in 35:34. The Spaniard, Emelio de la Camara Peroza, was third M80 in 37:28 just in front of the next brit Michael Johnson 4th M80 in 37:35. Åke Jonson 5th M80 in 37:41. Other British finishers were Phil Brennan in 42:46 and Barrie Roberts in 50:42. So, I picked up the M80 “silver”. GB & NI were the only country to field the necessary three scorers in M80 and so picked up an easily won “gold”.
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There were I understand a total of 79 runners including the women. I lapped a lot of runners twice and was lapped myself once by the two leaders in M70. There was the potential for people to run the wrong number of laps but as far as I am aware this did not happen. We would like to have watched some of the other races but in view of the limited capacity of the shuttle buses we thought it advisable to catch the first bus going back down the mountain. One of the more memorable cross-country races I have run.
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Day 8… Giving the 5,000m track race a miss, I had three days to recuperate before the 10K road race and was hopeful of a decent run. This did not happen. The 10K road started on the seafront in Funshal, outside the CR7 Christiano Ronaldo Museum and its notorious statue of the said footballer, a native of Madeira.
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The race started at 8pm just after it got dark. Street lighting in central Funshal is more romantic or Victorian than functional. It all went wrong for me at the start. There was a big field of 456 and I did not line up close enough to the front. So, a lot of ground was lost before I was clear of the congestion. I then picked up a lot of places straight away, but this only gave me a false sense of security.
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After a km or so we hit the old town and the poor street lighting, the complex course, the uneven slippery black stone block road surface, and minimal course marking, all meant that rather than concentrating on running one was trying not to trip over and not to go off course.
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Apparently, some runners did take a tumble although I never witnessed this myself. There were some marshals, or policemen dressed in black. Not used to this and I had to ask some to point out the way. It was a two lap course which involved crossing the finish line no less than four times, which was also confusing and near the end of the second lap I stopped very briefly at the finish not at first realising that I had to carry on for another 200m or so, run round a turning point and run back to finish line to complete the course. So, I had two sprints to the finish.
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There were ten M80 starters. I ended up 4th M80 in 54:30, so half a minute slower than the track version, when I would normally expect to be half a minute or more faster. I passed Vincent Basista of Slovakia who finished 5th M80 in 55.51 about halfway round the first lap. The M80 race was won by Belgium’s Leon Segers in 50:06 with Wim Oudejans second in 52:24, significantly slower than when he won the track version. (Wim won the 5,000m track in front of Leon). Åke Jonson by contrast was much faster on the road taking the “bronze” in 52:59.
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After the finish I was surprised to meet another athlete with BAC connections, Szymon Chojnacki. He was running for Poland, who finished 37th male overall and 5th M40 in 34:54. He was pleased to help Poland win the M35 team race, with Andrej Starzycki who was 1st overall in 31:15 and Grzeyrz Kjiuski who was 10th overall in 32:47. As understood, this was Szymon’s first venture into Masters Athletics.
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Szymon Chojnacki (sitting on step 2) won a silver medal with his Poland team in the 10k
By way of explanation, if a country has three or more runners in an age group their team is automatically formed by their first three runners to finish, scored by aggregate time. This is called a natural team.
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If a country has less than three runners, they can fill the gap with spare runners from ‘older’ age groups. This is called a composed team. Scoring by aggregate time.
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The GB & NI M80 team was completed by Phil Brennan who was 7th M80 in 1:08:55 and Barrie Roberts who came 19th M80 in 1:21:28. An aggregate time of 3:24:53 put us 2nd to a composed team from Germany with an aggregate time of 3:14:52. That team also did the Half Marathon and I will give more details then.
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Two days of relative inactivity and then the Half Marathon on Sunday 19th the final day of competition. The Half Marathon had a 8.00am start, fortunately only 10 minutes brisk walk from my hotel. On the morning of the race, I found that there was still some soreness/stiffness left in my calves from the 10K and so decided to run the race using compression socks for only the second time. This seemed to help.
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There were only seven entries in the M80 age group. From the 10K results it was obvious that the two Germans and the Slovakian were unlikely to cause me a problem and that the Belgian was in a class of his own. So, the silver and bronze would probably be decided between me and the Swede, Åke Jonson. And so we started the race keeping an eye on each other.
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The first phase of the race was two undulating out and back sections of the Avenue Monumental, the road with the biggest concentration of hotels in Funshal. These buildings provided welcome shade from the sun. It also meant that the course ran past my hotel four times. We passed the Slovakian after about 1km, just as the Belgian passed us, looking very smooth and fresh. By 3km I had used downhill sections to open up a gap on the Swede. A gap which slowly increased during the race.
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With the out and back sections over at nearly 14km, the course ran steeply downhill into the old town and became too complex to describe here. Suffice it to say, it involved passing the finish on the seafront and doing another loop of about 3km (some of which we had already covered once) before finally finishing.
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There was potential for mistakes here, although with markers every 1km there is not really an excuse. I passed the Germans just before the finish and took pleasure in ensuring that they did not miss out the final 3km. Leon Segers was first M80 in 1:50:06, I was 2nd M80 in 1:57:59 and Ake Jonson 3rd M80 in 2:00:00. Germany was the only country to finish with an M80 team. They had M85 Karl Walter Trümper and M80’s Seigfreid Kalweit and Volker Fröde, recording an aggregate time of 7:31:31 with the help of their useful M85 Karl Walter Trümper. The same team had prevailed in the 10km road race. The standard at the front was high. M35 Lopez of Portugal was 1st overall in 1:03:22.
.Geoff secured the silver medal in the Half Marathon
I got a lot of encouragement from Brits lining the bits of both the 10km and Half Marathon road race courses where they ran along the seafront, which was nice.
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I will admit to being quite good for my age, but there are runners out here who are at another level, albeit as I get older there are fewer of them. This was confirmed in the results. How did I do? Mixed feelings. I think I ran to my current capabilities, given the conditions and the limited recovery time in three of the four races but would have done better in the 10K road with better tactics. And nice to come away with three individual medals and two team medals. However, the M80 races were won in times I was doing two years ago – a measure of how quickly my body is deteriorating. Not surprising as the leg and thigh muscles have been visibly wasting away during those two years.
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How was the organisation? Handicapped by geography. Event HQ and the main stadium was the Madeira National Sports Centre in Ribiera Brava, way out west from Funshal. That took 50 minutes plus by shuttle bus from central Funshal where most athletes were staying. Intermediate stops on the shuttle were the home of long distance track at Camara de Lobos and an army barracks RG3 on the outskirts of Funshal where some field events were located. Separate shuttle buses for Cross Country up in the mountains and Race Walking road races at Machico, the islands old capital, a long drive to the east of Funshal.
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Awards ceremonies all took place Ribiera Brava which effectively took half a day each time out of your stay on the island. The shuttle buses were a bit flaky so most people ended up having to get a taxi at some point. There was a shortage of officials. Those who were there had to work long hard hours sometimes in very hot weather. Most events ran to schedule despite this. There was however a problem at RG3 where there were tales of the women’s hammer finishing at 4am!!
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Madeira is a beautiful island and Funshal a beautiful city, but alas often clogged by traffic. The tourist season in Madeira lasts all year due to the excellent sub-tropical climate. There was plenty to do and see on rest days but there was a sting in the tail. Three days after I left the island, I went down with covid 19 despite having had a booster jab three weeks beforehand. Presumably that was acquired on flight back to Gatwick. Will I recover in time for the Masters Cross Country International?”
Geoff Newton