So less than 1 day after having my first bike ride, I'm on the team bus headed to a race. It's a 140 km loop that has 4 major climbs. Barely having had much sleep since I got to meet the guys and trying to recover. A very interesting thing is that these guys go to bed close to 2 or 3 AM. The reason is that we all tend to wake up around 9:30 or 10 AM to get ready for the ride that leaves at 11 AM. Therefore, in order not to be hungry we try to have breakfast as close to ride time as possible. I normally go to bed around 1 or 2 AM back home anyway, it's just that that would put me close to 7 or 8 AM here. But I'm getting used to the time change. By the way this first picture is a long boulevard in Barcelona filled with cool street performers (like the following 2 pictures which show 'human statues') and outdoor merchants and bazaars. The last picture shows a really nice shot of a neighborhood where I hung out for a bit and it reminds me of Times Square in New York...
I diverge. After getting to the race, we are told that due to some kind of Galician/Spanish regulation, the team is only allowed to start 2 non-EU riders. Jose Ramos and Dimitry Pozanov are the two guys who get to start since they are going really well. Duilio, Roman, and I don't start and ride the course backwards which means that we get to hit all the climbs, twice, since we have to ride forward before we get in the way of the race. Caputi has an Italian license so he starts. Torres just had a root canal and does not want to have any testing issues with novocaine so he also takes the day off from racing.
Lesson #1 - Pack your clothes. I rode around in thermal bibtights and a long sleeve jersey in 70 degree weather. Not a good idea. Better yet, I HAD packed my short sleeve/leg stuff but I was unable to find it in the duffel bag. Odd.
Lesson #2 - Get your food before the team truck gets locked. I had a full small water bottle that I was warming up with and then when we were told that we wouldn't start and just to ride around, I saw that the truck had closed. It being warm and having to ride close to 100km over the mountains, on 1 bottle made me sad. And worried. By the way, from now on, due to the nature of this, I'll be writing all distances/speeds in metric units. If you don't know them learn them!
So while riding, I started to realize the toughness of the racing here. Duilio and Roman easily rode up the mountains while I struggled mightily. Sure, it helped that they were between 30-40 pounds (I just use km - pounds are what I'll keep using for weights) lighter than I but they had such a fluid pedal stroke and awareness of the terrain. I have 12 weeks here, hopefully I pick up on a lot of it.
Although I did not get to race, I still got to go to the team presentation before call-ups. It was pretty cool to get up on the stage (bibtights and all) and get pictures taken. Ramos finished in the top 10 and Dimitry was in the back of the main pack, around 20-30th. He had an unfortunate fall in a roundabout, about 3 km before the finish but picked himself up and rode himself back into the lead group.
It was finally time to enjoy the mythical Spanish nightlife. David came to pick me up around 12:30 (yes, 30 minutes past midnight) to hang out. We went to his house in Vigo where I met a whole bunch of his friends, about 30 people or so in total. They were mainly hanging out outside his house drinking on the street and trying to not get too rowdy. The rowdy happened once we went in the house.
David lives in a pretty sweet attic space and among the amenities there is a big room with workout stuff, treadmill, his bike, etc. We all just hung out there and had a pretty good time drinking whiskey, rum, absinthe, Kas (it's just soda but sounds hardcore). Around 3:30 AM we decided it was time to hit the town. Normally we would drink in the town square for a couple of hours but decided that it was too late for that. Therefore we just went to a bar until about 5 and then left to go to another one until close to 7 when we decided to call it a night. The interesting thing about bars here is that if you are not done with your drink by the time they close it down (after-hours bars open at 5 AM when 'normal' bars shut down) they give you a plastic cup to take your unfinished drink with you to wherever you end up going next...
No comments:
Post a Comment