«I had managed to escape the underworld of inactivity»

How I got here

The Hades challenge was my first contact with Victoris. I found out about them thanks to my partner, who won the II Trail Retin-to 1537 medal and showed me a social media post with other medals, so I did a bit of digging.

María: That partner is Isa, and she told us her story too.

When I saw what they offered, I fell in love with the medals straight away, and on top of that it came at just the right time. I was at a point where I needed an extra bit of motivation.

When I started the challenge, it had barely been 10 days since I'd managed my first 5k after more than 10 years of inactivity following a cruciate ligament injury. That was the start of my Victoris experience.

Step by step

The hardest part of this challenge was finding the time and the will in a pretty difficult personal situation after a loss, but every kilometre I could do gave me more strength and more drive to complete the challenge. It didn't matter where or when, the point was to keep moving forward, whether in San Fernando (Cádiz), in Riotinto (Huelva) or finishing the challenge in Coripe (Seville).

When I completed the challenge I felt on top of the world. I felt I could do anything they put in front of me. It was the springboard that led me to do other things I'd never have imagined I was capable of.

Everything in life is achieved step by step, like in a race. Having goals, persevering and chasing an objective is what drives human beings. You just have to move, go forward and keep going. All it takes is getting started.

Poseidon was my second Victoris challenge. I had managed to escape the underworld of inactivity, freeing myself from Hades' clutches in his challenge (50k), so I felt able to go a little further.

The hardest part of this challenge was, as always, finding the time to do more kilometres and more training sessions, but the motivation to dive headfirst into the race like Poseidon and having my sights set on a goal was what pushed me to keep going.

This challenge gave me such a boost of motivation that I ended up doubling my number of training sessions and kilometres from one month to the next, going from almost 60k in one month to more than 140k the following month. Before I knew it, I'd completed another 100k!

If when I completed Hades (50k) I thought I could do anything, when I completed Poseidon (100k) I no longer thought it, I believed it!

So the only thing on my mind was deciding what my next challenge would be, because I was absolutely sure I'd do it.

My wise father used to tell me that "he who wants to does more than he who can", so you just have to want something and start trying to get it. It doesn't matter how long it takes or how much effort it costs. The satisfaction of having reached your goals is the greatest reward you can have.

The Fanpin Race was my third Victoris challenge, although it was my fourth medal. Over the previous two months I had completed the Hades challenge (50k) and the Poseidon challenge (100k).

I also took part in the Adrenaline Race in Zahara de los Atunes on 28 September 2024, and I felt so strong and motivated that the next day, the 29th, I went with my partner to the Sierra de Grazalema to climb El Simancón. A challenge like this deserved something like a mountain half marathon over technical, rocky terrain to make it even more worthwhile, if that's possible.

The hardest part of completing this challenge was the heat that day, on top of the overload of kilometres my battered knee had already built up. But the motivation of completing a challenge that set a minimum to achieve it pushed me to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reached my goal.

With every challenge I completed I felt more unstoppable. It would never have crossed my mind that with my physical problems I'd be able to do these things, but with the push from Victoris I've been able to do this and much more.

If you want to complete a challenge, start, keep going and never look back, but if you do, let it be to see how far you've managed to come.

The Zeus challenge was my fourth challenge in a row, and it was my fifth Victoris medal. I started the challenge with all the motivation in the world. With every new challenge I wanted more and more to rack up kilometres and feel able to go a little further.

Whereas at the beginning, with Hades (50k), reaching that figure seemed almost out of reach, with Zeus (150k) it was no longer a question of whether I could or couldn't, but rather of when.

The hardest part of this challenge was controlling the urge to finish it. It was triple the distance of my first challenge, and even though I was clocking more kilometres and doing more training sessions, I had to be patient to get the medal.

When I finished the challenge I felt super satisfied and super proud. I had almost completed the whole collection of the gods when just 4 months earlier I had done my first 5k. All I had left was the Artemis challenge to have all the medals, and for that I had already chosen the moment and the place.

Artemis was my fifth Victoris challenge, and it was my sixth medal. I'd done all the other challenges over the previous four months, and for my last challenge (or so I thought) I had picked a very special moment for me. I decided that my first time taking part in the Eurafrica Trail would be the best setting to complete the Artemis challenge (21k).

In this challenge the hardest part was accepting that I had completed the whole collection of the gods, and I was afraid I'd lose the motivation to keep running again. Even so, I managed to complete the challenge on a rainy day, with a storm, in a place as beautiful as Los Alcornocales park, in the Bay of Algeciras. An incomparable setting to put the finishing touch to the collection.

I felt satisfied and happy to have completed the whole collection, but above all, very proud to have been able to do so many kilometres driven by the motivation of the Victoris challenges.

The finish line

A year after completing the collection of the gods, I get the lovely surprise of seeing I had a new challenge ahead of me! No less than the 300 big kilometres of the Hermes challenge, and it came at just the right moment, right as I was about to start the Camino de Santiago. There couldn't be a better motivation than a 2-for-1.

The hardest part of this challenge was reaching that number of kilometres, even though I could do a little over a third of the challenge on the Camino de Santiago alone. Luckily, on top of training and earlier races, I was preparing for two big events: the 65k ultra of the Trail de Pueblos Blancos, which in the end became the 30k because of an injury, and the intercontinental Eurafrica Trail, with 5 consecutive days of races, which would give me a good boost of kilometres.

What better motivation and what better setting could there be than completing this challenge in a race that goes through 3 different countries and 2 different continents?

When I completed the challenge I felt very happy to have completed a new challenge, but also very sad because I know there are no more gods challenges left for me... You do know there are still lots of gods from lots of cultures available, right?