Thursday, October 17, 2024, 01:03
Ten miles to collect seven tons for the Bizkaia Food Bank. Javi Conde and Jon Salvador are back with their solidarity challenges and, together with El Corte Inglés, they have designed a new adventure for October 30, at 7:30 p.m. It will be on the seventh floor of the Bilbao shopping center where the two marathon runners complete 16,609 meters between sneakers and sportswear, and passing by the cafeteria and the travel agency. There, on the three-street track that surrounds the highest floor of El Corte Inglés and which has 112.7 meters of rope, Conde and Salvador will do 143 laps to give life to this new solidarity challenge in another unique space.
The series began within the program of completing all the Olympic and Paralympic marathons for charity purposes. In March 2012, Conde and Salvador climbed to the top of the Bizkaia Bridge to carry out a marathon, and then those from the Gabarra, the Sifón de Deusto, Pozalagua, Gaztelugatxe and the Gernika Tree arrived, the last one before the pandemic stopped this type of actions by the two marathon runners, who gave birth to this new project almost by chance. “If there is a track at the top of El Corte Inglés, it will be for running on it,” they came to say. And the involvement of the shopping center’s management was essential to promote this ‘race’.
“We were clear that it had to have solidarity purposes,” explained Jon Ciriero, director of El Corte Inglés, something very much in line with what the two Biscayan marathon runners have always done. From there arose the possibility of collaborating with the Bizkaia Food Bank, whose president, Luis Crovetto, expressed his gratitude, remembering that “seven tons of food means helping a thousand families.” The contribution of firms such as EL CORREO, Ander Armour, the town councils of Etxebarri and Basauri, the Basque Government through the Hazi Foundation, Bikainak and Artiach has been decisive in shaping the promotion of El Corte Inglés with their financial contribution.
The uniqueness of the test – this time it is not a marathon – also has to do with the setting. “We wanted to give a nod to the shopping center that has given us so many facilities to celebrate this challenge and that’s why we proposed running ten miles,” Conde reflected. “It will be different from other occasions, but it will also have its peculiarities,” analyzes Salvador. «It is a hard floor that demands a lot. The good thing is that there are three streets and it gives us enough space to run together. And what we propose is to change direction every fifteen minutes if we are given the possibility.
With commercial activity
The fact of running on a Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. will add a particularity to the challenge, because it will be done during business hours. “While Conde and Salvador are running, customers will continue making their purchases on the sports floor, or they may continue going to the cafeteria to have a drink,” so measures will be taken to avoid crowds in the area. “We will have to maintain a balance to maintain commercial activity and for athletes to also have entertainment,” they recalled from the entity.
Between an hour and a quarter and an hour and a half after the start, Conde and Salvador will have completed a new challenge in their career, the El Corte Inglés Solidarity Ten Miles. And a thousand families will have food thanks to the seven tons of food that will be collected. It will be the new contribution of a couple of athletes who, in their numerous challenges, have contributed 215,000 euros to different NGOs and who resume a journey that was stopped at the end of 2019 with the arrival of the Covid pandemic in 2020. On October 30, at at 7:30 p.m., the series of challenges will start again.
