Tariku Novales crosses the finish line of the Valencia Marathon.Kai FORSTERLING (EFE)
In August, Tariku Novales made two decisions that he believes four months later and a marathon later changed his life.
When the Spanish Athletics Federation informed him he had lost the right to reside on a scholarship at the Blume residence due to a lack of results, Novales, 24, spoke to his bosom friend, long jumper Héctor Santos, who went to Guadalajara to live when he also left La Blume. There he trained with Iván Pedroso and shared an apartment with Jordan Díaz, the national triple jump record holder. Santos told her that they were moving into a bigger house, too expensive for two, but that it would be great for three. “I did the math and saw that it was the best,” says Novales, two days after running the Valencia marathon in 2h 7m 18s, the best Spaniard in the race, ahead of national record holder Ayad Lamdassen, the minimum for the World Cup Budapest in the bag, the result, the time that convinces him that he is making good steps towards maturity. “We get along really well. It was a very wise decision. I needed a change of scenery.”
Living together in the home of the champions may be one of the keys to his Valencia marathon, but perhaps more important was the second decision he made in August, when he took a plane and headed to Ethiopia for a couple of months for a radical change of scenery. “He had gone to Ethiopia other times but never to train for that long and the trip was not only for training but also to rediscover his roots and the roots of what he loves most, which is running,” says Juan del Campo, his coach in Madrid since Novales, who was adopted as a child by a Galician family, arrived in the capital from Galicia at the age of 18 as a great youth talent. “Leaving the flower had made him think: ‘If I only like this, if I only like running, I have to do a lap, I have to pool my batteries.’
“He settled in Addis Ababa and took a bus every day to train in the outskirts and he did extremely hard training at 2,700m altitude, 230km for weeks, runs 25-30km to 312m, trail running- Trips for rough roads…” says Nacho Barranco, athlete, journalist and friend. “And he thought about extending it further but feared he had injured his femoral head and returned to Spain at the end of November to be treated by the physiotherapist.”
Ángel Basas, the federation’s physiotherapist, told him he hadn’t broken anything, but he had good edema and only gave him a 20% chance of running the marathon. “He was lame, he ran the marathon lame and how he ran it,” says Del Campo. “He showed his great personality. He is brave, daring when his blood boils. He was lame and went out to run the marathon at 10 feet per mile. It’s very easy to say, I think I can, I have to do it. It is not the same to believe as to do. You have to go out and do it. It’s about power, not dreaming.”
Thus, finally, in Valencia, the talent of a “born runner” blossomed in the expression of Barranco. From the generation of another great Galician athlete, Adrián Ben, 800m Olympic champion and world finalist, and Mario García Romo, middle-distance runner from Salamanca, Tariku Novales won the silver medal at the 2017 5,000m European Junior Championships. He was only surpassed by Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian genius who is already an Olympic champion. “He has a sporting talent that we first noticed when he arrived in Madrid. A brutal natural for long runs, for the asphalt, not for the track. You can talk about short distances, I told him, but tell me what difference there is in running the 5,000 m in 1:50 or 1:40 and it took you three years,” says Del Campo, who is only frustrated by Novales, “a very intelligent young man, very imaginative, creative, with many ideas, with a great intellectual capacity”, who did not go on to study after high school. “And we’ve already started training him to be a long-distance runner, learning how to drink during the race, how to sleep, diet strategies, weight loss…”
Tariku Novales wants to live the life of an African runner, what he wants is to run what he likes and he lives that life, with a good marathon under his belt, although two days later he still can’t take two steps without crutches, the price of value.
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