Yesterday, six runners began a tour of multiple sclerosis and to publicize the actions of the Pichón Trail collective. The route joins La Orotava, Isla Baja, Teno, el Sur, Santa Cruz, Anaga and La Laguna, to return again to the starting point. They will try to arrive today at noon.
«Five!, four!, three!…». José Marino Álvarez, the president of the Pichón Trail Project collective, gave the countdown. The challenge was on: 273 kilometers of a return to the Island by six runners through short relaysbetween one and three kilometers. The objective is none other than the visibility of the multiple sclerosis, the disease around which the activity of an entity founded in 2014 and based in La Orotava revolves. They were not alone. On Carrera del Escultor Estévez street, in the heart of Orotavense, a group of members of the association, family and friends gathered to give them strength.
Isidro Santos, Salva Cáceres, Luis Alzola, Álex González, Vidi Thadani and Jon Hernández are the six athletes who will take turns through the roads of Tenerife until today. From La Orotava to Isla Baja, from there to Santiago del Teide via Teno, the South, the old road to Santa Cruz, Anaga (from San Andrés to Las Canteras), La Laguna, Tegueste, Tejina, Tacoronte… and again to La Orotava. There is no improvisation. Even ifand marked hours of passage to try to be today at noon in the northern municipality. As explained yesterday by Jon Hernández, who is also one of the members of the Pichón Trail board, they had been preparing the adventure since November. José Marino Álvarez specified that the idea even comes from before, from the confinement stage, when he saw some runners from Barcelona do something similar.
Runners will attempt an average pace of 5 minutes and 13 seconds per kilometer
Despite the relays and the accompaniment of a motorhome and a van (in which the athletes who are not active at all times will rest), the challenge is not entirely easy, especially to adjust to the schedules that have been set . They will have to achieve at least an average pace of 5 minutes and 13 seconds per kilometer on a route that is not exempt from unevenness. Until now, something similar had not been done, according to Hernández. “The tour of the Island had been done in stages,” he said, referring to an athletic event that had been held some time ago. “The difference here is that it is with a caravan, with relays and we cross Teno and Anaga,” he detailed.
After leaving at noon from the Orotavense helmet, the first bars of the challenge took place without setbacks. Minutes before 1:00 p.m., one of the runners faced with apparent solvency the slope that appears on the TF-342 after the pedestrian detour to Tigaiga, while his companions were waiting for him next to the caravan at the El Throw. Already at 5:00 p.m. they had accumulated about 63 kilometers and were in the municipality of Santiago del Teide, as could be seen in a live monitoring through the Wikiloc application. The goal is for them to arrive today at noon at the same place as the start.
Be that as it may, the sportier aspect is not the main one. “The objective is to make the disease visible and achieve a social impact so that the actions we carry out are supported,” they remarked from the Pichón Trail Project. This entity is more of a social group than a club, although it has a large group of athletes who wear the team’s clothing and banner at the races.
In their field of support for those who suffer from the aforementioned pathology, they carry out actions of home help, physiotherapy, psychology, first need, techniques or payment of access to sports complexes… To name a few other initiatives, last May they launched a contest on social networks under the title Your best slogan, coinciding with World Multiple Sclerosis Day, in which motivating phrases were sought to resist the disease. They have also bought a Joëlette, a kind of chair that is used to carry a passenger who cannot run and is carried by other athletes.
Other members of the association, family and friends support the athletes at the start
In June, when they announced the project that is being developed yesterday and today, they explained from the organization that there was a moment when they began to realize that the group of people with multiple sclerosis, «In addition to living with the disease, which is already complicated, I had to fight every day with a lot of obstacles and social stigmas». That is why they offer activities aimed at raising awareness and others with which they offer them “a handle to hold on to in the worst moments,” according to Álvarez. They also seek to change society’s perception of multiple sclerosis, and it is precisely for this that they have planned this summer’s sports challenge.
Behind the aforementioned association and the current challenge is a neurological disease that affects the central nervous system. Every May 30, since 2009, the World Day is celebrated to make visible what is usually called the disease with a thousand faces, because not all people are affected in the same way or with the same symptoms. “This makes its diagnosis very difficult and even the way of relating among those of us who suffer from it,” says the president of the Pichón Trail Project. More in detail, and according to the Spanish Association of Multiple Sclerosis, over 2,500,000 people have multiple sclerosis in the world and 770,000 in Europe, while it is estimated that in Spain 55,000 may suffer from it.
