What Behobia unites, no one can separate

According to the Royal Academy of Language, tradition is the “transmission of news, literary compositions, doctrines, rites, customs, etc., made from generation to generation.” In the Larreategi-Basterra-Zuzuarregi family the Behobia San Sebastián is a tradition. Because it strictly complies with the definition of this concept: its love for this athletic event has been passed down from generation to generation. This 59th edition of the most popular of the popular races was going to be the most special for Macu, Itziar and Lorea. However, as Inmaculada Zuzuarregi ‘Macu’ relates, “a problem in the Achilles” is going to leave them with honey on their lips.

This Behobia was going to be unforgettable because the intention was to do it with his daughter Itziar and his granddaughter Lorea. Three generations together in a test that is religion in the family. «In May I ran one morning and when I got home I realized that I couldn’t walk. I had to slow down, stop, and now I’m in treatment trying to solve the problem. The truth is that beyond the discomfort I have, it makes me sad not to run with them.

It was going to be the first time. The three together, from Behobia with the demanding 20 kilometers ahead until reaching the Boulevard. However, this veteran athlete takes it with sportsmanship. «I’m going to enjoy it with them in a different way. “I will keep an eye on the route and at one point in the race the three of us will hug each other with the rest of the family.” They already have next year’s edition in mind in which “we want to run all three,” they say with a wide smile.

“I don’t keep track”

The Behobia unites three generations, a proof of life that Macu and her husband – regular participants in the race for many years – passed on to their children and grandchildren. “I don’t know how many I’ve run, I don’t keep track,” says the family’s teacher. “The first one was in 1991 and I did it in one hour and fifty-one minutes,” he explains while reviewing several photos in which he can be seen reaching the finish line on what was the old Boulevard. Itziar, his daughter, and Lorea, his granddaughter, listen carefully to his explanations and anecdotes, even though they have surely heard them many times. “I have only run three times,” says Itziar. «I can say that I would never have imagined that the Behobia would run. It is true that it is something that was almost in my daily life at home because my parents ran it and they are fond of going out to train almost every day.

So, how did the bug get into this 47-year-old San Sebastian woman about to turn 48? «I thought that I was never going to run it, that they were crazy and that that didn’t suit me. I started running a few years ago and the truth is that now I can say that it is engaging. She can serve as an example for the undecided or timid. “Everyone can do Behobia,” say Amona and Ama. “Of course, with training, you have to prepare it well,” warns Macu, who is used to going out almost daily to train and run. “It has become a way of life and right now I can’t conceive it any other way,” he adds. «I have done a lot of Behobias and I also dared to do marathons, I have also done track athletics. Well, I have really enjoyed running, very, very much, yes,” he admits.

“Sometimes I usually come to work running because it’s around here – the interview and photographs were taken in the back area of ​​the UPV Faculty of Psychology in Ibaeta – and that’s how I take it as training,” says Itziar, who usually go running two or three times a week. She is one of the runners who does not keep an eye on the clock. «I’m not going for a brand, at all. My challenge is to have fun in the race and have a good time.”

“Slowly at first”

This year is going to be very special because Itziar is going to leave hand in hand with his eldest daughter, Lorea, 18 years old. The ‘smallest’ of this saga of runners is going to do her first Behobia. She is nervous about being a debutante and calm because she is going “to run with the mistress,” she confesses with a smile, looking at her mother. “Amona has told me many times to be careful with lactic acid,” he says, looking sideways this time at Macu, who smiles when he hears his granddaughter. He also instructs him to “go slowly from the beginning, because sometimes with people, with emotion, you might go faster and that can take its toll on you in the long run.” It is easy to happen among beginners who get carried away by emotion in the first kilometers of a race that can be long due to the constant up and down, with the Gaintxurizketa, Capuchinos and Miracruz peaks as the main obstacles.

Lorea has an unbeatable pedigree to be an excellent runner. “I did athletics but I didn’t do long distance but my thing was more speed and jumping.” All of this will be useful to him, as will the advice he receives from his master and his mistress. “First we started running a kilometer,” Itziar says about how the first contacts began to prepare Lorea for the 20-kilometer popular event.

«We started little by little, it was not going well. “We changed the training ritual and it has gone well.” Lorea smiles when her mistress tells her that “it is an example that there are different paths to reach a goal. “It is useful for us to prepare the Behobia and for life in general.” Lorea is studying to be a dental hygienist and her aspiration is to start medicine next year. “I’m really looking forward to it, yes,” he confesses.

The family does not know how they are going to celebrate the first Behobia of Lorea, the eldest of three sisters, because they know that the B-SS does not end when the finish line is crossed but that the adrenaline continues during Sunday lunch and in the hours following. “Luckily we see each other very often, my granddaughter comes home to eat once a week and she also comes on weekends with my daughter,” says Macu Zuzuarregi. “Yes, we will improvise what we are going to do after the race, there is nothing planned at the moment,” says Itziar.

The kilometer 17 tea

There is no special fear of the weather. “The weather is going to be good,” says Lorea. «Okay, yes. About 17 degrees,” says Itziar, although the voice of experience with more than twenty Behobias behind him, Macu, maintains that “that’s a bit hot, I think.”

The three generations of the family hug each other when Macu hands the baton, symbolized on the Behobia shirt, to his granddaughter Lorea. Itziar, in the middle, smiles proudly that her mistress led the way, she followed him and now she is the one who guides her daughter. The tradition is maintained, like the one that the Basterra Zuzuarregi couple started years ago.

Itziar explains that “I remember how when we were little we waited for the Aitas at kilometer 17 with hot tea in a thermos to give them encouragement and a little sustenance for the final four kilometers.” That tradition will be maintained this year and in front of the English School, on the descent from the Miracruz hill, this time it will be Macu and his family who will wait for Itziar and Lorea. “Yes, we will wait for you, we will cheer you on and we will take a photo together.” It is impossible that something that unites Behobia San Sebastián can be separated.

“Going through the port of Pasaia was very hard,” recalls Macu.

“I went to the mountains, to the gym and then I started running and the first test I signed up for was the Lilaton,” says Macu Zuzuarregi, who at 76 years old is in impeccable shape and only that injury to his tendon Achilles is going to deprive him of running the Behobia. That Lilaton was in 1990 and debuted at Behobia-San Sebastián a year later, in 1991. Macu reviews, under the gaze of his daughter and granddaughter, several photographs of the more than twenty Behobias that he has completed in recent years. “That was the first one,” he tells them both, – pointing to the photograph at the top of this report – and he remembers the brand perfectly. «I did 1 hour 51 that time». His daughter Itziar did not remember “that the Boulevard where the race arrived is now the pedestrian part. Phew! “It’s been quite a few years,” she exclaims with a smile. Lorea listens attentively to her master’s explanations, as she scrolls through each of the snapshots. “Here I go with your grandfather,” he points out in a section of an edition that passed through the port. “Before passing through there was a killer, yes, yes,” recalls Macu, 76, who has experienced first-hand the evolution of Behobia. From when a handful of thousands ran until now where participation must be capped.