Life is an Ultramarathon: The Odyssey of an Octogenarian in the Spanish Lockdown
Slowly and cautiously, European countries are emerging from weeks of “lockdown”.
Spain’s confinement rules have been the strictest in the EU. Children and adolescents under the age of 18 could not go out of the house for any reason, not even across the street to buy a loaf of bread. Older, retired people could leave home for medical emergencies or to do “essential” shopping, if they had nobody do that for them. Overnight, everyone under 18 and over 65 vanished from the streets.
And -unlike any other European country- going outside for exercise was strictly forbidden. Not even a 10- minute jog or a quick stroll around the block was allowed. The Minister of Health in Madrid firmly believed that the main reason Spain had been so badly hit by the pandemic was that people in this country love going out so much; too much for our own good. The outdoors had become a dangerous place and doing exercise was henceforth hazardous to our health.
Hazardous and highly illegal.
For the next eight weeks, anyone caught running, cycling, swimming, doing yoga or just walking for the pleasure of walking faced arrest and a fine of anywhere from 100€ to 2000€. In the first days, a few offenders got away with warnings or minor fines, but as things became more serious, the minimum went up to 700€, as much as the monthly salary of many workers in this country.
Police and soldiers were everywhere, along with helicopters, drones, coast guard boats and vigilant neighbours keeping a lookout from their balconies, ready to notify the authorities of any suspicious activity that looked like they might be clandestine exercising. “Sucesos”, the local newspaper section that usually reported arrests for things like drug trafficking, child molestation or domestic violence now exposed dastardly anti-social types apprehended for jogging on a beach at 4:00 in the morning, sunbathing in a remote cove or walking their dog two kilometres from home.
For many, “confinement” meant being really confined. More than two thirds of Spain’s 47 million inhabitants live in flats, not houses, and over a third of these homes have a dimension of less than 60m2. In the news, you may have seen uplifting images of Spanish people going out on their balconies to greet neighbours, sing, dance, perform gymnastics or applaud health service workers, but, in fact, many flats here do not have balconies, let alone sunny gardens or patios. Small wonder many Spaniards prefer socializing outside their residence, if they live in flats as dingy and cramped as the dungeons in Alexandre Dumas novels!
To make things worse, it was the height of spring; the days were growing longer and warmer, but nobody could enjoy this. A friend’s teenage daughter grumbled: “My cousins in Sweden can stay out all day, so they’ve all got nice tans, while here in the Canary Islands, we’re as pale as bedsheets! The world is upside down!”
As the weeks of lockdown dragged on, some people began to argue that the total ban on outdoor activity was counter-productive to protecting the public’s health, especially for children and old people. If tobacco, alcohol and Pringles were “basic necessities”, why not fresh air and movement? Why was it ok to go out and spend half an hour in a tightly packed queue to buy cigarettes, but not to go for a jaunt on the ample beaches and promenades in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria?
I worried about the children and elderly folks I know, especially the latter group: the “gente de la tercer edad” (people of the third age) I see exercising out by the ocean every morning. Well past the age of worrying about having a beautiful body, these are men and women who rely on their daily exercise routine to maintain their physical, emotional well-being. I have heard many of them say it is their “medicine” for afflictions such as diabetes, depression, hypertension, insomnia, digestive problems, Parkinson’s scleroderma, even (don’t laugh, several elderly gents have confided this!) impotence! And for many, it is a social, perhaps even a spiritual therapy as well.
We all age at different rates. There are people in their seventies still running marathons, hiking in the Himalayas or doing never-ending rock and roll tours, whilst others the same age are already in care homes, wasting away. It is undeniable, however, that staying physically active is a tremendous advantage -not just to live longer, but to maintain the “real” quality of life.
There is one man I know here in Gran Canaria who illustrates that perfectly.
José Sánchez Del Moral, better known as “Pepe el Rápido” (Speedy Joe) is 86 years old, born in Andalucía in 1933. He is barely a metre and a half tall and wiry thin, but with the muscular physique of a diminutive action film tough guy. And he works hard for it. Of all the “early bird” fitness fanatics on the Paseo Maritimo in Las Palmas, Don Pepe is the earliest. He rises daily at 3:30 AM and by 4:30 he is out on the pavement, even in rain, gale winds or “calima” dust storms, as punctual as the sunrise over the Atlantic.
Don Pepe has a flexible definition of “running”. He strides, he sprints, he marches (he was in the army for many years), “power-walks”, zig-zags and occasionally shifts into reverse gear to run a few metres backwards. His running is mixed with a highly disciplined regimen of push-ups, sit-ups, stretching, rotations and other calisthenics; no part of the body is neglected. “You need a well-rounded routine.” he advised me once. “The champion runners who only run burn themselves out before they are 40. You’ve got to do a bit of everything.”
Don Pepe’s daily runs are also his social time: if he sees an acquaintance or admirer (and, of course he has many), he will slow down or jog in place to exchange a few words. And he never neglects his feline friends: there are a lot of stray cats on the Paseo, well-looked after by kindly animal rescue volunteers, and Don Pepe is one of their benefactors. When he comes across their hangouts, he often stops for a few seconds to stroke their backs, caress their heads and check to see if there is food in their dishes. “Of course we have to be kind to them!” he laughs. “They own this place!”
Pepe el Rápido does not run with a stopwatch, he takes his time. But he keeps going until he has logged a minimum of 10 kilometres- or maybe a couple more. Usually he finishes about 7:30. What does he do the rest of the day? At 11:00 he has an early lunch, with a small bottle of wine, in Barrio Vegueta, the Old Town. This is his only meal of the day. After that, a brief siesta and then- good heavens!- another five kilometer run! Every day! Except on Sundays, of course. On this Day of Rest, Don Pepe runs 20 kilometres all at one go, finishing by an hour when most other people are still in bed.
“That geezer drives us crazy!” a sergeant at the local military base told me. “I take my 20-year old recruits out to run a couple of kilometres, and they end up sprawled on the ground, moaning and gasping for breath- then this little old elf comes breezing past us!”
Don Pepe himself used to be a military man. Originally from Cordoba, he was a small child during Spain’s Civil War (1936–1939). At the age of 14, during the famine years that followed the war, he began working as a hairdresser, at 17 he was conscripted into the army and sent to what was then the Spanish colony of Sahara Occidental in northwestern Africa. The young Pepe’s hairdressing skills were noted and he was assigned him to work as an army barber. He learned to shear heads fast; in two minutes flat! This was how his nickname “El Rápido” came about- not from his passion for running, which would come years later.
Being in the Spanish army during the most brutal years of General Franco’s dictatorship in a harsh, god-forsaken desert territory must have been difficult, but at least it offered room and board at a time when many people in Spain were starving. Don Pepe only returned to civilian life after twelve years, but stayed on in the Western Sahara for another half decade, opening his own hairdresser’s for civilian colonists. He finally left the territory in the late 1960’s, when the growing native independence movement made life there too precarious. The Canary Islands were only a hundred kilometres away, so he relocated to Gran Canaria, and opened another hairdresser’s, which was named “Pepe el Rápido”.
Over the years, his business went through its ups and downs, but overall Don Pepe did well, not only because of his speed with the scissors, but because, like a good bartender, he offered his customers plenty of personal attention. If someone came in the door with a world of troubles outside, Don Pepe was ready to listen. He was a psychiatrist, a confessor priest, a marriage counselor and a conflict arbiter. He cheered up the depressed. He reconciled couples whose marriage was on the rocks. He resolved disputes between neighbours and relatives. “Make love, not war!” was his favourite slogan. All in all, an excellent value for the price of a haircut!
Near the end of the century, Don Pepe turned 65 and handed the hairdresser’s over to his son. What would he do after that? Take it easy, sleep in late, watch a bit of tele, enjoy a long lunch, maybe venture out once in a while to play some cards at the senior citizens’ centre or toss some breadcrumbs to the pigeons in the park?
No way! Not for a hyperactive type like El Rápido!
He took up running. “I’d always been athletic” he explained. “Now I could do sports as much as I liked! And running became my vice!”
And it was a “vice” which he never quit, as he passed through his 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I first saw him in action when he was 77, but only found out how old he was years later, one day in October, when he stopped me and exclaimed: “It’s my birthday! I’m 80 today!
I was stunned. I know he was old, but not THAT old! I shook his hand, muttered my congratulations and limped home, feeling like a real wimp. That was six and a half years ago. As far as I know, he has never missed a day of running since I met him. At least not until the 15th of March 2020, when the State of Alarm was announced.
Throughout the following weeks of lockdown, I thought about him daily and wondered how he was handling it. I was not much worried about the virus: I reckoned he was much too tough for those microbe buggers. I knew he had a big family: at last count four children, twelve grandchildren four great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. But with this extreme confinement could any of them see him?
After all these years, there were many things I did not know about his private life. I had heard he was a widower, but I was not sure about this. I didn’t know exactly where he lived or what sort of place he lived in. I had no way to get in touch with him: no phone number or street address and I could not imagine he had email or any electronic social network. Even more than the isolation that was especially hard on older people, I worried about the depressing effect not being able to run would have on his body and spirit. For people like Pepe el Rápido, running is not just an activity to keep fit, it is part of one’s own identity and an affirmation of life itself.
After a long, cold, lonely winter than began in mid-March and continued throughout April, we were finally liberated. In faraway Madrid, the Ministry of Health announced that we would finally be allowed outdoors again on Saturday, the second of May.
Sun, sun, sun, here we come!
By 6:00 AM on Saturday, the Paseo Maritimo was full of runners, cyclists, Nordic polers, dogs trying to restrain their giddy owners, pallid surfers rushing to the beach with their mildewed boards and dazed ramblers, disorientated after having spent eight weeks in dark cells. The ambiance was as festival as Carnival or New Year’s Eve, without the debauchery. I saw lots of familiar faces, all of them beaming. But where was Pepe el Rápido?
I was unable to find him that day or in any of the following days. I asked other people if they’d seen him, nobody had -and they had been looking too. I started worrying again, but finally, on the sixth day, when I was running on the Paseo and lost in my thoughts, he materialized in front of me, grinning underneath the scarf he had draped across his face.
“Don Pepe, you’re back!” I shouted gleefully, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears welling in my eyes. “I’ve missed you! How have you been coping with the confinement?”
“Same as always! Running! Ten kilometres every day!”
“You mean to say you broke the quarantine? You went outside to run?”
“No-o-o-o! At home! TWENTY-THOUSAND CIRCUITS AROUND MY ROOM!” He made a theatrical circular motion with his arm.
Of course, I should have known!
“Don Pepe, you are the greatest marathoner on the planet!” I spread my arms open wide to mime the hug that social distancing rules did not allow us anymore, then sprinted home, humming “Born to Run” and realizing I had been wrong. Don Pepe was not “back”; he had never been gone.
Life is an ultramarathon. We are all born to run. Our hero Don Pepe el Rápido knows that better than anyone. “I’ll keep running as long as God wills. Death is out there. I don’t care about death; I care about life!”
Clearly! Don Pepe does not run to live longer, he lives longer to run!
