In a country where there are a lot of jokes, Alberto Estrada, who always had tremors in his hands, was shamelessly hesitated by his friends. “You ready to steal tambourines, asshole.” Everyone was laughing. His tremors became serious when stiffness, pain and falls were added. And then the diagnosis came. “You suffer from Parkinson’s disease,” a doctor told him one day, somewhat coldly. He knew nothing then about this disease against which he is now fighting. He doesn’t run to escape. On the contrary. Run to face him.
At Alberto Estrada, there are four. His wife Ana Montero and his children Darío and Ángela. But two years ago, a man broke in without permission. “Suddenly, Mr. Parkinson sat down at our table. There are days when you don’t even notice it, it doesn’t seem to be there. Other times it turns everything upside down for us and we want it to go away. Most of the time it’s there and we’ve learned to live with it. »
Alberto, raised in Santa Ana, the upper area of Chiclana (Cádiz), where there are huge slopes, has always been a sporty child. “I played football, basketball, handball… whatever they threw at me.” Some of his relatives had taken up a sport, new at the time, called triathlon, combining swimming, cycling and running. And they encouraged him. “I didn’t even know how to swim at the time, but they taught me and I was hooked. It was a very little-known sport, until 2000 it was not Olympic in Sydney, and there were people who confused it with motorcycle trials,” he remembers with a smile.
He became a triathlete in 1998. He was only 15 years old. He is now 41 years old. “Doing sport in nature, in the open air, in the mountains, it’s incredible. I have always been passionate about endurance sports. He has several championships in Andalusia and Spain behind him. And, among his exploits, having completed an Iron Man race: three kilometers by swimming, 180 by bike and 42, like a marathon, on foot.
He combined his work as a lifeguard with sports and met his wife within the gang. “It was in 2007,” Alberto remembers, “I saw her from behind and I fell in love with her at first sight,” he admits with her in front of him. They have been together for 17 years already and, in their joint career, they are accompanied by two children, Darío, 13 years old, and Ángela, about to turn 11 years old. Both are also athletic. “They’re swimmers.” Just what his father resisted the most at first.
“Being an athlete’s partner is very sacrificial. It gives a lot of satisfaction, but also disappointment,” explains Ana, his wife. “We always try to be a team, to be there in the good times and the bad times, when there are successful days and when there are not.”
“At least I have the one in treatment.”
One of the hardest days was not trying to achieve a goal. It was during a consultation at the Puerto Real hospital. “I had always had tremors on the left side, which is the most affected. My colleagues attacked me. And they told me you were ready to steal tambourines, asshole. “They’ll get you right away.” Then began the insomnia, the nightmares, the nocturnal spasms, the aches, the falls. That’s 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 have the one in treatment,” he sighs.
On September 15, at the Puerto Real hospital, he was told. “Alberto, you have Parkinson’s disease.” They gave him the treatment and took him home. He felt somewhat helpless. “In the end, it is you who must seek life. You have to find the way. I had to check if the sport was good or not. And that’s when a man who no one had invited sneaked into the house of the four.
“In the worst moments, you wonder what wrong you did to make this happen to you. But then you think there are people worse than you,” says Alberto. His wife agrees and defends how sport has helped them cope better. “The body has memory. He took care of himself, he learned to tolerate the pain of racing, to cope with it, and we realized that we could share this lesson. And after accepting what was happening to them, they understood that they had a mission: “to be an example to encourage others”.
That’s why they created the Facebook page “My way with Mr. Parkinson,” where they share their thoughts on the disease and the sporting events they continued to participate in.
“Sport gives you the dopamine that Parkinson’s disease takes away”
Because Alberto Estrada, with his sponsors Scott and Nutrinovex, has not stopped running since September 15, 2022. He participated in a 166-kilometer race through the Sierra de Grazalema. 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 disease takes away. 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 will follow him in this 27-hour race. And he is already planning a cycling trip from Chiclana to Galicia to do the Camino de Santiago, where he will try to help the Degén Foundation, based in A Coruña, raise funds for Parkinson’s research . “With a number, I transform.”
Every message they receive on their Facebook page, every video they request to encourage others, they see as an incentive to keep running, to keep fighting. Alberto has just received an award at the Town Hall Sports Gala in his city for becoming a reference.
Alberto’s family created t-shirts with a lightning bolt as a symbol of his energy. They often see them on the street and are proud of them. “We created an army,” Ana explains with satisfaction. Mr. Parkinson is still at home and Ana tries to normalize him as the one who snuck into a neighbor’s house that no one invited. “It’s a roller coaster, there are times when Alberto is well and we forget he’s there. But other times it happens badly and we have to deal with it. And while Alberto continues to run. But not to run away. He runs towards Mr. Parkinson.
