On the return flight, I had to sit next to two men who were dozing.
I made noise organizing my things, but they barely flinched. After occupying my place, now calmer, I observed them for a few moments. The race bracelet hung from his wrists. Both had competed in the Marathon distance, the equivalent of 46 km, of The North Face Transgrancanaria.
My career.
I wondered how they had fared. I sensed that they had melted. How the guys slept.
(…)
They woke up an hour later, already in the middle of the flight to Barcelona, ??and then we got into a chat.
We started talking about Transgrancanaria, what else. What a torment of heat, slopes and stones, and what a satisfaction to have finished it, and such and such…
Then they told me that they were miners.
Mineral salt miners in the Súria mine.
I couldn’t help it: I asked them about the 33 miners from the San José mine, in Chile.
They looked bored. Just another guy with the usual clichés.
They reminded me that a year ago, in their own mine, three geologists had died.
–Poor things, many tons fell on them. When they rescued their bodies, they closed that gallery. You don’t enter there anymore.
They told me what life is like in the mine. The townspeople work there, eight hundred of them. Many miners follow the family line. His parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents were miners…
–And your children? -I asked them.
–I only have one daughter. I hope to avoid it –one answered me.
-Because? –I added, naive.
They opened the memorial of grievances. The elevator takes four minutes to reach the destination, its gallery. Half a dozen miners mill around in a narrow, dark space.
–If our frontals fail us, that is blackness –they told me.
Like mountain runners, miners carry supplies with them. A sandwich, some fruit, water. It will take eight hours to return to the surface. Below, the temperature is around 50ºC. When the elevator finishes its descent, their vehicles are waiting for them. For half an hour, they immerse themselves in a tunnel octopus, heading to their work area. Respiratory conditions abound, and the grinding of tunnel boring machines and excavators is deafening. If you start working in your twenties you retire in your early fifties. Today, at six in the morning, they will be clocking in again.
When we brought up the topic of the ultramarathon, I thought I was talking about a garden of roses.
