Aside from trotting daily along the Diagonal and writing essays (I’ve already swallowed Gambada a Gambada , from Columna publishing house), the good of Miquel Pucurull tweets and this latter surprises me especially: it turns out the Pucu is 82 years old.
El Pucu tweets about the world of running and thousands of netizens thank him, because we no longer feel so alone or so weird.
El Pucu will be his years old, but he is still a dreamer who, at night, sees himself flying in the last kilometers of a marathon: he distinguishes himself by breaking records just as Elisenda, his daughter, did in the eighties, when all this running in Barcelona was coming to life and queues formed in front of the sportswear stores of Domingo Catalán (in Sants) and José Manuel Abascal (in Les Corts).
Running was then economical, so much so that a range of popular races were free: without further ado, the Cursa de l’Amistat, that crazy idea of ??the Mates family to unite the castle of Montjuïc and the summit of Tibidabo on foot.
In those times of joyful gratuitousness, close to a thousand brave men ran rampant down the slope of Montjuïc before beginning their ascent to the magical mountain. Naive, they were happy to reach the summit, since it had not cost them anything (in economic terms, of course).
Then, life, friends, life…
The Mates stepped aside and a firm took over the race, now converted into a business of 30 euros per bib number and just 270 runners in its last edition.
And here I go back to the Pucu
A few weeks ago, our beloved tweeter treated us to a waterfall of numbers, a worrying exercise for race organizers. The main Catalan road tests witness a dramatic drop in the number of registered. Between 2013 and 2022, Bombers Barcelona has lost 60% of its participants (from 23,750 to 9,526); the Barcelona Marathon, 63% (from 14,766 to 5,410); la Mercè, 53%; the DIR Diagonal, 34%; the Cursa de Sant Antoni, 57%; The half marathons of Granollers, Montornés, Sitges or Terrassa have also collapsed…
The arguments?
They come in all colors.
Some say that the ruteros have gone to the mountain trails. Others, that many runners have reached their peak of form and records and, as satisfied as they are disenchanted, move on to something else, butterfly. There are those who have already run the marathon and are not going to repeat it. And there are those who, burned by price inflation, rationalize or resign themselves: when they go for a run, they do it for themselves, not for the collector.
And there, they succeed.
Well, this is what running is about, right?
