IKER KARRERA
I was born and raised in Amezketa, a small village in Guipuzkoa (the Basque Country). Home was a farmhouse known as ‘Lizeaga’, which now falls within the Aralar Natural Park at the foot of Mount Txindoki.
My parents earned their living raising cattle, dairy cows to more precise. There was always plenty of work for everyone on the farm and my two brothers, my sister and I spent very little of our childhood playing out in the street. The farmhouse and its surrounding area were our own little world, where we learned many of nature’s secrets, taught to us by our parents. This knowledge that country folk possess, which they live by and which comes from truly understanding the countryside and respecting it, taught us both to look after our environment and to cherish it.
Even though there were times when we had to work hard, and such farm labour was a burden and a chore for a young child and even for an adolescent, looking back now I feel fortunate to have grown up in this environment. If life hadn’t been this way, I wouldn’t be the person that I am now.
I completed my secondary school education in Tolosa. Football was the most popular sport at school, and I used to play in goal. Looking back I think I made quite a good goalkeeper, but running was always my passion.
The next important stage of my life involved studying for my degree. I went to Pamplona, where I studied Agricultural Engineering and Farming. Life as a university student often provides you with the possibility, and the time, to do other things and it was here where I began to “train’ with some degree of regularity. It was also here where I began to compete, taking part in the Behobia-San Sebastian road race for the first time. Considering the little training that I had done, I completed the race in quite a good time. They say if you try something then more often than not you usually end up getting hooked, and this was certainly true in my case.
I continued to participate in popular road races for several years, but hill running was still what I really liked to do.
When I finished my degree I started work at ‘Tolomendi’, the ‘Association for Rural Development’ in the Tolosa area. I am still in the same job, and thus still linked, in one way or another, to the mountains and hills, to the countryside, to the people and the rural environment in which I grew up. Via my job I can continue to make my humble contribution to the development and conservation of this environment, and to the economic activities that take place here.
Starting work inevitably brought with it a certain degree of ‘economic independence’, and I was thus able to buy my first car. As a result, I gradually began to discover new hills and mountain ranges like the Pyrenees, which won me over the very fist time that I went. Most of the time I travelled on my own, and this was how I discovered and ascended my first hills of over three thousand metres – alone. These trips were very intense experiences, both very intimate and personal, and proved to be a way of bringing me closer to the mountains. It was a way of working and discovering my own identity, my own personality.
There is no room for arrogance or pretentiousness in the mountains, nor conceited displays of strength. The mountains require you to be humble, to be honest with yourself and accept that we are weak in comparison with their greatness.
