–There is a distance from saying to doing. I had said that I would go below 2h06m in the Valencia marathon, but then I had to put it into practice. And luckily, he turned out fine.

All of this, in one go, says Tariku Novales.

He does it half an hour after having fulfilled his promise, surrounded by cameras and microphones. He did not win the race (he finished eleventh), but he clocked 2h05m48s.

And that is the record of Spain.

(It was in the possession of Ayad Lamdassem, at 2h06m25s).

In recent days, Tariku Novales, the man whose age he himself does not know (he had been adopted in Ethiopia, he estimates that he was born in 1998), had said that he would be the first Spaniard to break the 2h06m barrier.

And so it has been: it has executed its mission. And then, he blurts out everything he thinks:

–Actually the hares have failed and I have had to show my face. It is true that we crossed the half marathon under 63m, but then the partials began to fall and I had to take control. And at km 35 I started to suffer and I said to myself: ‘Shit, man, you screwed up, showing your face so much’, but then everything turned out fine.

And then, when Carlos Arribas (El País) asks him why he wears his sneakers hanging around his neck while serving us, the famous 500-euro Adidas Adi Zero Adios Pro, Novales responds:

–This is a symbolic gesture, a token of gratitude to the firm, which has supported me even last year, when things were not going well and I was injured. But don’t make me talk… –he adds.

And we look at him, and the man speaks:

–Come on: the Spanish Federation doesn’t give me anything. I was 21st in the world (last summer in Budapest) and before coming here I had a best time of 2h07m, but nothing, my scholarship is minuscule. And to do athletics I have to sacrifice my time and energy. If I show you my bank account, you’ll see it’s hilarious. People freak out when I tell them that I don’t have help from the federation, but that’s how it is. But hey, I don’t want to talk about it.

(At the moment, he has just received 25,000 euros, which corresponds to his Spanish record).

And laughs.

And those of us who listen to him also laugh.

Well, it has been shipped.

Majida Maayuf (34) is small and very light, and has also broken the Spanish marathon record (2h21m27s, compared to the 2h26m14s set by Marta Galimany, who this time finishes in 2h28m16s).

Majida Maayuf also has matters in the bedroom.

–He had been in Álava for many years, he had arrived in Spain eleven years ago. But they didn’t give me nationality until a few months ago (last June). And as the years went by and I saw the records that were achieved, he always told me: ‘I could have that record.’ I’ve spent all this time preparing for this moment.

Majida Maayuf speaks softly, you can barely hear him in the roar of the finish line, Guns N’Roses is playing, and in his low voice we discover his story.

He tells us that he comes from Brarha, a rural commune in Morocco, and that as a child, at the age of twelve, he had been an athlete.

–But I had not been able to continue as a runner because at home there were many siblings and we had to help with other things. And I also didn’t have material or a good place to train until I decided to emigrate to Vitoria (he lives in Salvatierra). That’s where I left that life in Morocco behind and reconnected with athletics.

Today Asics dresses her, she dresses her from top to bottom, and she has a work team and a sea of ??forests on the roads of Salvatierra and also in Vitoria, a green city par excellence (Global Green City, according to the UN) whose parks she frequents.

–Sometimes, I run from one city to the other –says Maayuf (30 km open between Vitoria and Salvatierra), who has a notch on his record, a positive in 2020 for terbutaline (a medication that combats asthma and bronchitis). ) whose outcome came to nothing, since Maayuf could take the medication under a doctor’s prescription.

–That controversy left me very touched, but even then I decided that I should speak quickly –he said yesterday.