Data Analyst as a Service
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I spent the past couple days in Lisbon visiting the office and getting to know my colleagues, since I never met them before. While it was a great experience, it was very short!
Since every time I’m visiting a new city, I like to do a run and get to know the surroundings better, this time I chose the biggest green spot on Google Maps and created a route through that park. It was Parque Florestal de Monsanto.
A very nice and big park where I would have liked to spend more time there to discover the trails in it, I had to stick to my route because I had limited time before going to office. Overall, it’s a nice park but there are many small roads that are paved; so the route I prepared from home (trail running and following popular routes on Garmin) used the paved roads half of distance I think.
Nevertheless, it was a nice early morning run! By the way, during the 2 hours run through the city and the park, I’ve seen 3 people running! Compared to Barcelona where I would have seen hundreds at the same hours. Guess running is not a big deal here…
Managed to squeeze in a short and easy hike yesterday afternoon 🙂
This was kind of an unplanned hike. I decided to postpone the Santiago Way for later. Instead, I’ll join a group of people and we’ll do the Mont Blanc circular route, which is about 160 km and 7k total ascent.
For this purpose I bought some new shoes from Salewa and wanted to test them. If you’re curious, I liked them 🙂
Also, this was my first activity with my new Forerunner 955.
This route was part of the Catalan’s endurance 2023 serries.
My gps managed to direct me to the wrong city so I arrived at the start about 15 min later. The crowd of 2000 people were already long gone and I had to catch them and overpass, because I wanted to walk fast, to see if I can sustain a high pace for this distance.
It took me about 2 hours to get in the front of the biggest group. At the first checkpoint I was in the 400-ish position.
The second checkpoint, 372 position. From this point, it was harder and harder to reach and overpass someone, people were walking faster and were more spread.
Third checkpoint and the place where the lunch was organized, 325. I ate my home-made lunch quickly and left. I did not get anything from the organizers as there was nothing vegan.
Last checkpoint before finish, 212! I guess there was a good number of people still having lunch 🙂
Finish, 202.
I’ve started doing long-distance walkings, to prepare for summer’s St. James Way (Camino De Santiago). I got approved 3 weeks holiday from work so will try to do the entire French route in 3 weeks. That would be around 40-50 km per day (depending on which source doc you follow). Not an easy task, but not impossible either.
So this route was planned as a long (until Barcelona, ~80km in total) and steady one, with a small deviation around Garraf National Park.
Since planned things do not always match the real life, the small deviation turned out to be the turning point. Nothing really hard in the Garraf, but it was a super sunny day and there is no water up in the hills, so I got very tired there.
Looking at the route from the beginning, it’s a very easy one until Cubelles (km 15). Asphalt near the beach, nothing else. By the way, this also means that, depending on the season, public toilets may be closed, so you’ll need to use bars/restaurants if you need to pee, for example.
After km 15, the asphalt ends and you have 2 choices here: go straight through sand or use the public road, as I did. PLEASE go through the sand! One, it is a little shorter and two, the public road is not at all safety! It is very stretchy; there are lots of cars and there are places where you have 5-10 cm between the road and the stone wall, so nowhere to get safe if needed, and the cars don’t bother to slow down or try to avoid you…
Once you pass this area and until km 21 in Vilanova y la Geltru, all is fine, nice-easy asphalt beach road. Afterwards, there is a half-km of beach walk through sand and then a trail-like road (low to medium complexity) parallel with the train lines. CAUTIOUS here, you go through this road on your own safety, there is a state sign telling you this just when you try to exit from Vilanova y la Geltru, before the Far de Sant Cristofol.
Anyway, this trail with rocks, and some ups and downs, is nice and there are beautiful views of the calas.
After this trail you’ll enter Sitges, with its long and nice beach road. In the center of the city your nice-easy walk ends 🙂 Since Sitges does not communicate with Garraf through a beach road, you need to enter the Garraf National Park to reach Garraf city. This is where things get interesting. Depending on the season, refill your bottles with water or buy more bottles, because from here on you go up first through city (nice views, by the way) and then through the national park. For the next 15 or so km there is no source of water. There were 2-3 houses but I don’t know if these are private or not. Anyway, here you will spend 2-3-4 or more hours, depending on your physical condition. You have to climb 2 times to 200+ meters. Does not seem much but the rocks and terrain does not make it an easy task. The first climb is entirely filled with rocks, both the up and down part. The second one goes up using an asphalt road but goes down with using rocky terrain and steeper slope. Again, no water until you reach Garraf and there are plenty of direct sunlight here, so plan accordingly.
From Garraf to Castelldefels it’s all piece of cake compared to the past hours 🙂. I stopped in Castelldefels because I was tired; the lack of water and the heat beat me this time.
Anyway, from Castelldefels to Barcelona you have to pass through many industrial zones to avoid the airport, so nothing interesting. I don’t think I will do this part any time soon.
To summarize quickly: make sure you have enough water during crossing Garraf National Park. Lastly, but not least important, use Vaseline, going through plain asphalt is not an easy task for your feet.
P.S.: if you have knee issues, think twice before doing this route.
Pues nada, as Spaniards say, this happens when one Friday evening you’re happy with the work done and think on what to do during the weekend.
Started planning for a 30-ish km hike, then it went to 45 and then – why not 50?? Then the hike got into trail run… Then next morning this happened 🙂
Needless to say I’m very tired, tomorrow will be a y tough day, especially for my 2 nails that took all the pressure on themselves 😀
