What a day! I’ve never ever felt so horrible on a bike before. After a 5.30am wakeup and bus transfer to the start we began with a parade through the narrow streets of Preigo de Cordoba, a pretty whitewashed mountain village. The locals were out in force to cheer us on and with all the school kids lining the streets there was a good atmosphere and plenty of noise.
Into a long fireroad climb through the olive groves my legs felt awful. Josh encouraged me to push on to catch a group in front and we ended up working hard to get there. After all the effort the descent was a fireroad so I wasn’t happy. I thought Sally and Kristine were way ahead of us and didn’t find out until too late that they were in fact behind – if I’d had known that I’d have slowed on the climb and maybe avoided later energy issues!
The main part of the stage was around 70km of gravel track along a disused railway with a slight uphill gradient. We set off alone and had to work really hard into a headwind attempting to catch a group and save energy. I hate the flat, I hate headwinds, and my legs weren’t happy! Sally and Kristine eventually caught us and after a last gasp effort to jump on we had to drop back and settle into a steady pace. Eventually we ended up in a group of 20 riders and it became a road race. There was some spectacular scenery through vast dessert landscapes and olive groves but I wasn’t in the mood for enjoying it, apart from anything else it was monotonous and boring.
Around 4 hours in we turned off and hit the last climb of the day, and what a climb is was. Despite taking extra food for the long stage I was running out, not factoring in the extra energy required to overcome tiredness after pushing hard yesterday. Slow and steady on the fireroad was manageable but turning into steep singletrack was the final straw. I’ve never seen so many destroyed looking people. I think normally the climb wouldn’t look so extreme but all around us people were crawling, most pushing their bikes, shoving every morsel of food they had into their mouths, stopping and keeling over. Hanging on by a thread we made it to the top with several moments of really wanting to throw the bike off the side of the mountain.
After longing for it all day it was into a long singletrack descent. The first part was great, nice and flowy with some really spectacular views. Then suddenly I just couldn’t ride anymore. I’ve never blown up on a descent before but I just couldn’t trust myself to concentrate, I could see a corner coming and my brain registered that I needed to turn but there was a big delay before anything happened!! horrible. Eventually made it to the bottom very slowly and crawled along the road to the finish, ready to smash my bike up. After 5hrs 30mins and over 2100m climbing that was my longest and least enjoyable training ride of the year, I can’t imagine how doing more again tomorrow will be possible…
But you got through it, well done!!!!
Oddly, that’s probably your best write up yet. Well done for getting through it – can’t imagine how hard that was. Keep going!
Keep going Cait, well done!
thanks guys, it’s all experience!