No pictures taken Bolognese?

A bunch of us around one long table, strangers still, and the waiter just saying we can’t split the bill. Half of us have no cash. What now?

This is the first test. Not a climb, not the heat, just a pile of notes and coins moving slowly from hand to hand. It has nothing to do with the ride, and everything to do with how we will find each other later on the trail, tired and unguarded, at our most vulnerable and perhaps our most honest.

Somehow it all gets sorted. I try to keep tabs on who I owe what. And we carry the conversation to another bar and keep building the small village we will be neighbours in for the next few days. And who knows. Some of us might stick.

The heat is scorching. The desert slows me down, but I keep telling myself that a slow kilometre is still a kilometre. So I try not to stop, because it all adds up. Five minutes become fifteen, and if I let myself pause every time it gets really hard, we are not talking about minutes anymore, but hours. The only way out of here, and closer to the place where I can finally rest, is to carry on.

I never look at the distance. It is like watching a pot on the stove. Staring will not make it boil any sooner, and counting kilometres will not carry me to the end of them. So I take the road as it comes, and wait for the first sign with the name of Gor on it.

“My podcast for the one and only Agnes Fischl. The long lost cousin of Alison Farkash…”

She sent it to me before the race with only one instruction: listen to it when it is dark.

Four in the morning, sitting at the bar in Gor, I decide it is time. I will start it on the climb to the Calar Alto observatory. She is not there, and yet she comes along for the ride.

So I press play, and I can’t stop smiling. I listen to it on repeat. A familiar voice in the dark is a huge comfort, and apparently you can learn a lot too. While I get to know her better, I also find out that clouds are not as fluffy as they look. They are heavy stuff. She also gives me songs to sing along to, and on that dark mountain I feel so, so connected.

I often say that to do an ultra you need two things more than anything else. A delusional optimism that no matter what, you will get through it. And good friends.

After enough hours awake, bits of dreaming leak into waking life for a second or two while your eyes are open. That’s why the figures feel alive and do things, like waving, rather than just standing there. I found it very interesting that I saw these figures in the midst of my exhaustion, when it was the most remote, and instead of making up animals out of every shadow, I saw humans. I wonder why. At first I thought it must come from fear, but I don’t remember being scared of them. So back home, I started reading.

Mountaineers, polar explorers and solo sailors have described something close to it for more than a century, from Shackleton crossing South Georgia to climbers alone high on Everest. It even has a name: the “third man factor”, the feeling of a companion who is not there. It comes with exhaustion, monotony and too little sleep. The brain loses track of where your own body ends, and part of you gets filed as someone else. And perhaps because we are social creatures, the mind fills the emptiness with people rather than rocks or animals.

Out there, far from anyone, my brain didn’t give me monsters. It gave me company.

I am hungry for something warm and hearty. I roll into the square in Agua Amarga, hoping something is still open. The square is full of people in nice summer clothes, and the little streets along the beach smell of light perfume. I feel so self-conscious. I haven’t showered in two days, I am wearing the same clothes, and I barely dare to look around. Then I see my friends, Steven and Jeff, sitting at a table, not caring at all. I feel my face light up. The relief is huge: I get to share a meal with people just as feral as I am.

I get a burger with salty fries and an alcohol-free beer. It tastes better than any dinner I can remember. Jeff decides to carry on towards Almería, but I head down to the beach. With the joy of a shared meal still in my heart, I brush my teeth, pull the emergency bivvy over myself, and fall asleep to the sound of the waves.

I sleep only three hours, so I can reach Cabo de Gata while it is still night and see the lighthouse at work, keeping ships on their course miles out on the open water. By the time I enter the park, I am already so excited. I know there is some climbing first, but I don’t mind. On this route, every wonder has to be earned. That is also what makes it so unforgettable.

Finally I reach the top, slip through the little gate, and stand there in awe. Lighthouses stand where the land stops and the unknown begins. Each one flashes in its own sequence, so sailors can tell which one they are looking at in the dark. Fingerprints of the coast. There is something moving about a building you can recognise only by its rhythm.

I have always wondered why I am so drawn to them. Standing there, I finally understand. It is solitude and connection at once. A lighthouse stands alone at the edge of the land, but its whole purpose is to reach people. And I realise I do the same. I ride long hours alone, but I carry so many people with me.

I roll into Íllar, not expecting another welcome like this. Pekka, Jeff and Felix are at the bar. We are just before the part of the course I fear the most: El Romeral. I have already decided to ride through the night without sleeping, so I can finish before the heat gets to me again. I am going home.

But first, I rest and charge my lamp and my bike computer, so nothing fails me in the dark. While the tech gets sorted, I ask for some pasta. And another alcohol-free beer, the best treat of this whole trip.

“¿Quieres una boloñesa?” the barman asks.

“Sí, sí, mi amigo,” I answer, with all the confidence I have, and he laughs.

The bolognese is gone in no time. So I ask for one more. And then one more. By now he brings bread with it too. “You very hungry,” he says. I can only agree.

Felix is sitting in a plastic chair, looking tired, so I go over for a little chat. He tells me his girlfriend has surprised him: she is coming to Granada for his finish. It warms my heart. I hope I will see them both once we are home.

At the bar, I buy a can of Coke and squeeze it into my back pocket. That will be my celebration drink at the top of the mountain.

“Muchas gracias, mi amigo.” And off I go.

The night is slipping away surprisingly easily. Maybe I’ve adjusted to this new normal: being out here, hunting distance and time, over and over. Or maybe it’s because I know Pekka is around.

I keep glancing over my shoulder to check he’s still there, and every time I catch his headlight, something in me settles. For days my tired mind has been inventing company along the road, but that light behind me is real.

Close to the end of the race, I think back to how he was the very first person I met, at the airport, waiting for the bus to Granada. It always starts a little awkwardly, with the curiosity of not knowing whether this person will become someone you know or stay a stranger. And here we are. After crossing paths again and again on the course, I call him a friend.

Last year, someone was waiting here for me. This year, I stay at the finish line for a friend myself. And while Steven is still out on the course, I catch up with the person who once did the same for me.

The circle closes, completely. I love how poetic life can be, without making any of it up.