In a land with a lot of jokes, Alberto Estrada, who has always had tremors in his hands, was shamelessly hesitated by his friends. “You are ready to steal tambourines, dick.” Everyone was laughing. His tremors became serious when the stiffness, pain, and falls were added. And then the diagnosis came. “You have Parkinson’s,” a doctor told him one day with some coldness. Then he didn’t know anything about that disease he’s now fighting against. He doesn’t run to escape. On the contrary. Run to face him.
At Alberto Estrada’s house there are four. His wife Ana Montero, and his children Darío and Ángela. But two years ago a man sneaked in without permission. “Suddenly Mr. Parkinson sat at our table. There are days when we don’t even notice it, it doesn’t seem to be there. Other times it upsets everything for us and we want it to go away. Most of the time it is there, and we have learned to live with it.”
Alberto, raised in Santa Ana, the upper area of Chiclana (Cádiz), where there are huge slopes, was always a sporty child. “I played soccer, basketball, handball… everything they threw at me.” Some of his relatives had started a sport, new at the time, called triathlon that combined swimming, cycling and running. And they encouraged him. “I didn’t even know how to swim then, but they taught me and I got hooked. It was a very unknown sport, until 2000 it was not Olympic in Sydney, and there were people who confused it with motorcycle trials,” he recalls with a smile.
He became a triathlete in 1998. He was only 15 years old. Now he is 41. “Playing sports in nature, outdoors, in the mountains is amazing. I have always been passionate about endurance sports.” He has several championships in Andalusia and Spain behind him. And, among his achievements, having completed an Iron Man race: three kilometers swimming, 180 cycling and 42, like a marathon, on foot.
He combined his work as a lifeguard with sports and met his wife among the gang. “It was 2007,” Alberto remembers, “I saw her from behind and I fell in love with her at first sight,” he confesses with her in front of him. They have already been together for 17 years, and in their joint career they are accompanied by two children, Darío, 13, and Ángela, about to turn 11. Both are also athletes. “They are swimmers.” Just what his father resisted the most at first.
“Being the partner of an athlete is very sacrificial. It gives you a lot of satisfaction, but also disappointment,” explains Ana, his wife. “We always try to be a team, be there in good times and bad, when there are days of success, and when there are not.”
“At least I got the one that has treatment”
One of the most difficult days was not trying to reach a goal. It was in a consultation at the Puerto Real Hospital. “I had always had tremors on the left side, which is the most damaged. My colleagues picked on me. And they told me you are ready to steal tambourines, dick. “They catch you straight away.” Then the insomnia, nightmares, night spasms, stiffness, falls began. That was when they made an appointment with the neurologist. And they painted it badly. He had symptoms of ALS, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s. “At least I got the one that has treatment,” he sighs.
On September 15 at the Puerto Real Hospital they told him. “Alberto, you have Parkinson’s.” They gave him the treatment and took him home. He felt somewhat helpless. “In the end you are the one who has to look for life. You have to find the way. I had to investigate whether the sport was good or not.” And that was when a man who no one had invited sneaked into the four’s house.
“In the worst moments you wonder what wrong you have done for this to happen to you. But then you think that there are people worse than you,” explains Alberto. His wife agrees and defends how sport has helped them cope better. “The body has memory. He has taken care of himself, he has learned to endure the pain in races, to cope with it, and we realized that we could share that lesson.” And, after accepting what was happening to them, they saw that they had a mission: “to be an example to encourage other people.”
Hence they created the Facebook page ‘My way with Mr Parkinson’where they share their reflections on the disease and the sports events they have continued to participate in.
“Sport gives you the dopamine that Parkinson’s takes away”
Because Alberto Estrada, with his sponsors Scott and Nutrinovex, has not stopped running since September 15, 2022. He has participated in a 166-kilometer race through the Grazalema mountain range. 27 hours non-stop. Another of 130, two weeks ago, in the Genal valley, in Malaga. 21 hours straight. “Sport gives you the dopamine that Parkinson’s takes away from you. Without him, I think I would go crazy, I wouldn’t stop crying.”
Alberto will star in a documentary, which will be released in January, in which they follow him in that 27-hour race. And he is already planning a bicycle trip from Chiclana to Galicia to do the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, where he will try to help the Degén Foundation, based in A Coruña, to raise funds for Parkinson’s research. “With a number I transform.”
Every message they receive on their Facebook page, every video they ask to encourage others, they see as an incentive to keep running, to keep fighting. Alberto has just received an award at the Sports Gala of his city’s City Council for having become a reference.
Alberto’s family created t-shirts with a lightning bolt as a symbol of his energy. Many times they see them on the streets and feel proud. “We have created an army,” Ana explains with satisfaction. Mr. Parkinson is still at home and Ana tries to normalize him like the one who sneaked in on a neighbor who no one invited. “It’s a roller coaster, there are times when Alberto is fine and we forget that he is there. But other times it comes bad and we have to deal with it.” And while Alberto continues running. But not to run away. He runs to face Mr. Parkinson.
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