More Than Kilometres: Antonio Jaén and Twenty-Four Years on the Mountains of Cehegín

More Than Kilometres.

Twenty-four years after his first run, Antonio Jaén still wakes before sunrise with the same excitement to meet the mountain.

At five in the morning, the Sierra de Burete is still dark. The Quípar River moves quietly somewhere below. The air carries pine resin and cold stone.

Antonio Jaén is already running.

The Place

Cehegín sits in the northwestern corner of Murcia, sixty-six kilometres from the regional capital and comfortably removed from the circuits of Spanish tourism. It is a town of sixteen thousand people, a medieval old quarter rising above the Argos river valley, surrounded by four mountain ranges that have hosted the FalcoTrail — one of Spain's most respected national trail races, twice the venue for the Spanish Championship and the Spain Ultra Cup Final.

The Sierra de Lavia rises to 1,236 metres. Sierra de Burete to 1,189. Peña Rubia stands at 805. The landscape is limestone and pine, dry Mediterranean air, sudden ravines, ancient Roman roads hidden under centuries of scrubland.

This is where Antonio Jaén has run for twenty-four years.

He knows these mountains the way other people know their own apartments.

5:00 AM

Most people need a reason to leave a warm bed before the sun rises. Antonio Jaén stopped needing one years ago.

“I don't even check the weather the night before. It's something I love so much that I don't even need an alarm. At 5:00 AM I've already jumped out of bed and I'm ready.”

Twenty-four years later, he still feels the same excitement he felt the first time he laced up a pair of running shoes.

Twenty-four years of dark trails and cold starts and mountain air before the world wakes up. The routine has long since ceased to be a discipline. It has become identity. The same way another person reaches for their phone first thing in the morning, or goes straight to the bathroom — his body simply moves toward the mountain.

That kind of constancy is not built. It is grown.

For twenty-four years, Antonio Jaén has approached the sport with the same idea. Not as a competition against others, but as an invitation to adventure.

“It's not about proving anything to anyone. It's simply the pleasure of embarking on a challenge you don't know if you can overcome.”

He doesn't train to win. He doesn't dream of winning races. He trains because the mountains of the Noroeste Murciano are out there — the Coto Real, the Barranco del Saltador, the paths that wind between Cehegín and Moratalla and Caravaca de la Cruz through terrain that traditional tourism never reaches.

He runs to reach the places that can only be reached on foot.

Chamonix, 2015

In the summer of 2015, Antonio arrived in Chamonix for the CCC by UTMB. One hundred and one kilometres. More than six thousand metres of elevation. The most important ultra trail race in the world.

It was also the first time he had run more than a hundred kilometres.

“It was the turning point. A dream fulfilled that shaped everything that came after.”

Two years later he returned to Chamonix. This time for the UTMB itself — 171 kilometres, 10,170 metres of ascent, through France, Switzerland and Italy. Three countries in a single race.

Crossing that finish line was not the end of something. It was confirmation of something he had known for a long time.

Chamonix was only the beginning. Over the following decade he would continue crossing mountains across Spain and Europe — Sierra Nevada, Penyagolosa, Val d'Aran, Andorra, Lavaredo, Annecy — returning again and again to the long-distance adventures that had first changed him.

What They Don't Understand

Ask someone who has never run an ultra trail what they imagine it to be and they will almost always describe suffering. Exhaustion. The body pushed past what it should be asked to endure.

Antonio sees it differently.

“I don't think about the suffering — and there is suffering. But if you've trained well and you truly love the mountain and the competition, you can genuinely enjoy an ultra trail. Every kilometre you advance is a kilometre you subtract. It takes you closer to the finish.”

The key, he says, is the right pace and a genuine love of the terrain. When you have both, a hundred kilometres is not a punishment. It is an adventure that took months to plan, that takes you through places you would never otherwise see, that reduces the noise of daily life to silence.

Just you and the path.

The Pandemic and the Integral

In the summer of 2020, every race in the world was cancelled. The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc — scheduled for the last weekend of August — had been suspended because of COVID.

Antonio Jaén had been carrying an idea for some time. He decided it was the right moment.

He designed a route himself: 105 kilometres connecting the towns of Cehegín, Moratalla, Caravaca de la Cruz and Bullas through the ancient paths and mountain passes of the Sierras del Noroeste. More than four thousand metres of positive elevation. He chose the last weekend of August deliberately — the same date the UTMB should have been run.

For months, he and his friends from the Club Elegantes Trail refined the route, adjusted logistics, and improvised within the restrictions of the pandemic. No official aid stations. No signposting. Self-sufficiency through whatever springs and bars they could find along the way.

“It was a beautiful experience. A period without competition — but full of great sporting moments.”

On the 28th of August 2020, they completed it for the first time. Seventeen hours and twenty-one minutes.

The Integral Sierras del Noroeste now exists on the map. It began in his imagination.

Solitude and Space

The long races have hours when nobody is there. No crowd, no pacer, no conversation. Just the sound of footsteps on rock and the mountain doing what mountains do — existing, indifferent, immense.

Antonio seeks those hours.

“It's the ideal moment to disconnect from the noise of daily life and feel the peace the mountain provides. That's where some ideas and future projects emerge.”

Solitude, for him, is not emptiness. It is space. The kind of space that has nowhere else to come from.

The People You Meet

And yet the solitude is not the whole story.

One of the things Antonio values most about ultra trail running is what happens between strangers when they share hours of effort on the same mountain. The particular kind of bond that forms when two people who have never met find themselves side by side at kilometre seventy, both exhausted, both still moving forward.

“The camaraderie in ultra trails is something you don't find in any other type of competition. Here you don't mind losing a few minutes to help another participant, or easing your pace to share a few kilometres with someone you've connected with.”

After crossing the finish line, he says, they usually wait for the other runners they shared kilometres with, to congratulate them when they come in.

The Last Metres

After months of preparation. After a hundred kilometres or more. After everything the body has been asked to give and everything the mind has been asked to hold together.

What does Antonio Jaén feel in the final metres before crossing a finish line he has been imagining for so long?

“It's like passing the exam you've spent so long preparing for and seeing that you've done it. Everything passes through your mind — the good moments and the difficult ones from the preparation.”

There is no way to describe that feeling with precision. Only those who have been there understand it.

Coto Real, Burete, Lavia

If a runner from another country came to Cehegín for a single day, Antonio knows exactly where he would take them.

Not the most well-known trails. Not the ones that appear in the guidebooks.

“I really love the Coto Real, Burete and Lavia area — precisely the trails that are least known to the trail runners of the region.”

The paths that only reveal themselves to those who run them. The ones that don't appear on tourist maps. The ones that exist, quietly, for the people who live here and love this terrain.

He knows where they are. He knows where they go. He has run them hundreds of times.

That knowledge is not something you can find online. It belongs to a person, in a place, after years of showing up.

What Matters

Antonio Jaén no longer looks at the numbers. He doesn't choose races by distance or elevation. He chooses them by the places they take him. New mountains. New terrain. Ground he hasn't covered yet.

“A long time ago I stopped looking at the numbers. I'd prefer to be remembered for the way I lived and enjoyed this sport.”

Not the distances. Not the finish times. Not the list of races.

The way he lived the kilometres.

At 5:00 AM, before the Sierra de Burete catches its first light, Antonio Jaén is already on the trail.

He has been doing this for twenty-four years. He has no intention of stopping.

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Antonio Jaén — Cehegín, Murcia, Spain Ultra Trail Runner · 24 Years Running · UTMB Finisher · Tenerife Blue Trail by UTMB 2026

Instagram: @antonio_jaen_ultratrail Blog: antoniojaenultratrail.blogspot.com