52 Weeks, 52 Half Marathons - Stage 44

Arrábida Take II - Cape Espichel

Saturday, November 9, 2024, 7:18 AM

Having fallen in love with Arrábida last week, it did not take much to convince myself to go for a second round in the natural park. This time I wanted to visit a lighthouse that I can see from my home 30 km away in a straight line. I am fascinated with lighthouses, and the Portuguese coast has several interesting ones. Cabo Espichel pings every 3.7 seconds with a light that can reach 26 NM (48 km). I was curious about why there's a difference between nautical miles and regular miles. It so happens that nautical miles, unlike other imperial units, have an interesting explanation. The nautical mile is based on the Earth’s longitude and latitude coordinates, with one nautical mile being the same as one minute of latitude. Also, TIL, the speed measurement unit, knot, is equal to one nautical mile per hour. To get to the starting line by sunrise, it implied another early wake-up alarm. I was on my way around 6:20 am, pitch dark, Cabo Espichel was still operational.

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Delightful mist upon arrival

I start my run on the main road in the area, right at the edge of a small village, Zambujal de Cima. I picked this location to be able to park near the closing of the looping route. I start with a zippy pace, around 6.5 knots, unknowingly. I have not been taking a rigid approach to my HM runs. I just try to keep my heart rate below 150. Sometimes I feel like I am going slow and effortlessly and when I check my pace I am going very fast. Other times, I think I am crushing it while I am running at a normal pace. Mind over body.

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A beautiful country road, with zero shoulder.

I run on the main road for less than a km before crossing the park border. There is a lot of fog and some clouds delaying the sunrise light. I was hoping that as the sun heated up the atmosphere, it would clear out. Fortunately I was not wrong. The terrain is mostly flat for the first 2.5 km. I keep making progress in my floating pace.

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Entering Parque Natural da Arrábida

This area of Arrábida is a lot different from the one we explored last week. The terrain is mostly flat except when it dives into the ocean. This can be a very windy area covered with shallow vegetation. I follow a wide dirt road cutting through Arrábida’s palette of green. The sun is rising behind me, so I keep glancing back to enjoy the view.

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Warm light on the horizon

I am not a fan of wide dirt roads, probably because they normally stand for climbing on my mountain bike. I much rather prefer winding single tracks going up or downhill. I am moving fast today, only afterwards I would realize that terrain is sloping down. The landscape still feels a little claustrophobic because of the fog.

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Wide dirt road always feel uphill to me

This road might have been fully paved at a given point in time, because after a while we start running in a sketchy portion with some asphalt that looks like it is being eaten by the vegetation. I learned the other day that in some areas, where I was complaining that the roads were not asphalted, the reason is so that they can remain fully permeable to the rain in order to prevent excessive erosion. It made a lot of sense to me. I think the battered road actually looked extremely cool, like an extraterrestrial landscape. The landscape is vast and deserted of people.

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Nature taking back ownership of the road

Nature is giving me orthogonal palettes left and right, and if it felt kind of dull while running, sunrise excepted, it turned out to be a pleasant surprise as I developed the photos. The vegetation is packed with character and Monet showed up to strike some distinctive brushes in the sky. We are traveling parallel-ish to the ocean. There are trails closer to the cliffs but I could not risk exploring them today. I had already surveyed the ones closer to the lighthouse using Google Earth and was expecting a few challenges.

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Shallow vegetation, typical from Arrábida

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A little warmer and with the fog fading

The sun keeps flirting with me, pushing the fog away, sending some warmth to my back, and trying hard to compose better views behind me. I am an easy catch, and since the terrain is so easy, I have no problem letting myself get distracted by the show that Helios is putting together for me. We are around km 3.5 surfing the sun waves.

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The penitent dirt road cutting through the park to the lighthouse

I enjoy pushing my blues to the sky as the heat dissolves the mist cocoon embracing me inside. My date gives me one final wink before moving away as if its job had been completed. I am grateful for the grand opening of the day just for me. Like a wingman giving one final wing salute, the sun today seems to start flying away in the distance instead of climbing up in the sky.

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My wingman completed its mission

Light is now at its premium and a few constructions scattered over the landscape purposely break the faultlessness of the photo to make it perfect from the slight imperfection. They look old and distant, and blend harmlessly. It is an extraordinary view.

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You have to try harder to taint this landscape

Around the 6km, my swift pace almost grinds to a halt. The road has become a natural trail sprinkled with sharp rocks. We are now running through two mazes, one for each foot, and have to maintain complete focus not to misplace a step. What an odd and unexpected setup. Nature signaling me to slow down and pay close attention the lighthouse beacon ahead in the distance, target acquired.

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No desire to test these sharp rocks

I am excited with the approach of the Cabo Espichel lighthouse. I have not been here in a while and nothing beats getting there running. It’s still a tiny dot in the horizon looking a lot further than on paper. Time for one final wave of goodbye to the horizontal sunrise, and we do need to hop on a road that could have some traffic on the way to visit the precious lighthouse.

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My buddy has flown away

The ten-story building is a pencil tip on the horizon that gradually grows before my eyes. The loneliness of the spot immediately makes it look brave and confident. Like it had conquered the cliffs to stand there in charge of the coastline.

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Lonely light

A wide dirt road leads the way to the entrance of the lighthouse quarters. This is when disaster happens, inebriated by the view, my butterfingers let my phone slip out of my hand and land face down on the pebble-rich trail. My phone had fallen a thousand times, face down on tarmac while running, I could not believe my eyes when I saw the screen shattered. For a moment I panicked fearing that I would lose control of the touch screen (preventing me from checking my route and taking photos). Funny how I felt lucky when everything was still working. Loved to know that kept my priorities straight - enjoy your run!

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Beautiful construction from 1790, impeccably preserved, well done!

We are now by the coast at km 9.5 and I can clearly see sister Sintra over the horizon. Just like north of Sintra, there are wonderful cliffs that we are about to explore. The run is longer today (25km), and the route is hard to follow, even though it looked very easy on the satellite map. I spent less time than I wished for in the vicinity of the lighthouse, especially because the phone incident shook my concentration.

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Arrábida’s sister, Sintra, waving hello on the other side of the ocean.

North of the lighthouse is an odd large construction, not very pretty but intriguing for being out of place - Santuário de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel. It’s a series of religious buildings from the seventeen hundreds. They look abandoned but are not. It was still very early in the morning and already a good number of visitors were gathering in the parking lot for what looked like a guided tour.

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Santuário de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel

There is a nice miradouro to see the Atlantic Ocean, the Sintra mountain range and of course, the lighthouse completing the splendid topography. It’s an exquisite day, with the clouds sleeping right on top of the Atlantic waters south of the lighthouse. The sun pushed them down to make way for the blue sky. I need a better camera! Or at least I need all my lenses to be working.

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The lighthouse seen from the Sanctuary’s viewpoint.

We are now at the 11th km and will start heading north along the cliff line. I was thinking thatI could use a similar route the cliff exploration north of Sintra, but unfortunately there were no obvious trails going right by the coastline. Navigation would actually be quite hard because there were many alternative trails and many of them extremely challenging.

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Looking NW, zooming in on Sintra as much as my 1x camera’s digital zoom allows.

Right from the start there were some warning signs that the cliffs were unstable. I did not plan on doing any risky adventures so it did not bother me at all initially. It did not take long for me to understand that it also meant that some of the trails were super hard to run. The erosion caused by the rain and wind carved some waist high canyons through the middle of the trails. It looks awesome but becomes impossible to run without a high probability of taking a nasty fall. I was extra careful, and had no choice but to stop and crawl down some of the descents. It was fun though.

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Reassuring signs

The view up north is phenomenal, something to experience, not to photograph, it’s impossible to capture. The field of view is tremendous and widely diverse. A feel like a mouse trying to find my way around a maze. I have to rely on my phone, now with a shattered screen, to help me find the route closer to the one that I had planned. On the map it all looked flat, but it is in fact mostly descending in a very irregular way. It’s very hard.

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Lots of green and blue. I travel alone.

This was probably the most challenging trail of all the HMs so far. I was not expecting this at all. Tackling multiple very steep ascents and descents with the Grand Canyon carved through the middle. I had at least one climb where I had to keep a leg on each side of the canyon and eventually also my hands on the ground - it was a circus. I ended up drowning my shoes in a huge mix of mud and water, there was no way around it.

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Mud bath

At a given point I was getting excited that this could be an enticing spot to come and explore on my mountain bike. It did not take long to realize that I would be carrying the bike on my back a lot more than I am willing to. The trails demand complete concentration today, I don’t have the luxury of soaking in the landscape as much as I often do.

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It’s impossible to capture how steep and irregular this climb was

In a few spots, it almost felt like I had reached a dead end because it felt impossible to climb. Cell coverage is very spotty too, later I would know that my Strava beacon failed to update my position for several minutes and that got one of my sisters a little nervous. I share my position through the “Find My” option of my iPhone and also through the nice “Beacon” feature of Strava.

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This descent is very steep and with large depressions. It would be a fun challenge a MTB ride.

It is tempting and possible to try and floor it through the descents but it wouldn’t be wise. I am alone and if I take a hard fall it will take a while to get help, I am becoming hungry, can’t risk the pain of an empty stomach on top of the pain from a fall. It’s funny that while running through tricky areas I think about not getting hurt because on the day after I usually have plans for an MTB ride that I don’t want to miss. During my MTB ride, after shredding at full speed I think about not falling because I don’t want to miss any of my HMs. In the end, I have already had to run with a fractured finger from an MTB fall and normally suffer while standing on the MTB after climbing 500 m on a HM.

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Another Grand-Canyon to raft

After several kms of rafting through a dry Colorado river, I got to a more normal trail, back to a similar landscape when we started. We start heading east, inland, away from the wilderness of the Atlantic and closer to farms, villages, roads and dogs… At a given point I am accompanied by barking sounds that keep getting louder and louder. I finally found out that they were behind a fence but made sure to run by my side until the end of the property, which was quite long - I feared for a hole in the fence.

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Finally back to a normal trail

The trail becomes sandy and extra hard but fun. At the 18th km we get to the bottom of today’s run. That meant that, without knowing, I would be climbing for close to 5km. I lost track of my lighthouse, the beacon that brought me here. I am a lot more tired than usual not being able to keep a steady rhythm and the radical mountaineering took a toll. I knew I was going to suffer to get to the end.

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The first stone pine grove of the run

What I did not know was that I would suffer hard. I would face some brutal ascents, small distance, but very steep. Mentally I was defeated by the unexpected terrain. It's nothing compared to many of my previous climbs and still, for some reason, it became hard. Mind over body, take II.

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The start of a 5km climb that I had no planned for

The landscape keeps surprising me. The sky seems to have just the perfect amount of clouds and it’s a very bright day, what a contrast from the start of my run. That’s what makes me love half marathons more and more. The distance, and time, has us running different runs during a single one.

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As we move inland there are more trees (maybe because it’s not as windy as by the coast)

The trail says good bye with a final climb that gets close to 16% just before getting back to the main roads. It’s long and punishing. I was left with my lungs burning twice as much as my legs. We are at km 21 and still have almost 5km to go. There was a couple hiking, they were my motivation. I could not pass them and die, had to show that I was killing the climb (you should know me by now).

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A very steep climb (up to 16%) by the 20th km is always cruel

We are back on the road for the final 5km of the run. If the beginning of the run was surprisingly fast, because of a slight slope down, the end of the run would become harder because of a similar slope (now up) and the extra kms on my legs. At first, there was a nice sidewalk to keep me safe from the road, not that there was much traffic going on.

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On the road again

I confess that I had to dig deep to keep a decent pace. It was one of those days when I did not feel as strong as I normally have been. My body wants to kill me and I want to kill my body, figuratively. If all my muscles could talk, they would be lecturing me about getting less working hours in the week, I am not 20 anymore. I do need to pay more attention to my resting, especially sleeping. Days are always small for me, I have an insatiable desire to do and learn things. I need 10 lives.

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Living on the edge. No shoulders but also close to no traffic. Love the crunchy pattern of the asphalt on this photo

The shoulder-less road is not scary. We can always have a very large viewing distance and if there are cars coming it’s possible to stop and step out of the way safely. The very few cars that passed saw me in advance and made it clear that I could remain on the side of the road by moving to the other lane. Very friendly and safe drivers today.

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Back on the main straight that will take me to the finish line

The scenery as we arrive to the finish line is very beautiful and begs for a final sprint. Regrettably, my legs were begging for mercy. I was benevolent and spared them today. Just sat back and enjoyed the view cruising to the checkered flag.

I loved exploring a different facet of Arrábida and especially the precious Cabo Espichel Lighthouse.

It was an extraordinarily simple, beautiful landscape. I have to be back.

Enjoy your runs!

-APF

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Route and profile as recorded by Strava