Today I traveled from Alcoy to here in Madrid to race in the Copa Espana one-day race here tomorrow. Supposedly, the Spanish Cup races are super fast with 180+ racers going from the gun. It will be my first big one-day race, so I'm a little bit nervous about how it will go. On the flip side, I've been training pretty well, and last year I managed to hang in some pretty high-level multi-day races, so in theory I should be able to do okay. But even if I ride horrifically,
I have some really strong teammates to fall back on. Actually, my job will almost certainly be to work for them in the early parts of the race, so I might not even be expected to finish. We'll have to see. My roommate, Vera, actually won one of the Spanish Cup races last year in addition to racing the track world championships, so he's certainly worth working for. Another teammate won the U23 Spanish time trial championships a couple years ago, and a third teammate won the overall U23 Spanish Cup last year. Anyway, the moral of the story is that we have some strong guys and actually stand a chance to be competitive I think. Vamos a ver.Aside from the drive, a few interesting things happened today, largely concerning our other director, Lopez. He's greying , probably 56 years old, and definitely comes from an older school of cycling. So far, he's interacted with me only twice. First, after we arrived and unloaded the bikes, he went through inspecting all of them. He apparently has decided that there should not be any spacers between the frame and thehandlebars. He informed another rider and me of this. I tried to explain that I had done a bike fitting and this was where they told me to put it. I figured that would be the end of it as our brief conversation stopped there. I went back to my room to grab my jacket. When I came back down, I saw Lopez taking the handlebars/stem off of one of the bikes. A quick glance at the rear wheel confirmed that he was in fact fixing the alleged problem with my bike, the only one with a Powertap rear wheel. I sat there and watched. He never said anything to me nor acknowledged me, but merely dropped my handlebars by ~1cm and then moved on to do the same on someone else's bike. I guess I got off lucky, 'cause on the other bike, not only did he lower the handlebars, but he broke the cyclometer wire in the process. He didn't seem to apologize or anything. I guess the racer who's bike he was "fixing" shouldn't have put the wire on so tight.... He also did something with the guys cadence sensor, but I couldn't figure out what. That was interaction one.
The second was when I came downstairs for dinner about 45 minutes later. I had been shaving my legs, so I came about 3 minutes late and was the last one down. Being late wasn't a problem, but Lopez promptly informed me that one should never shave their legs the day before the race and as a result I would race very poorly tomorrow. I guess we'll see. I really struggled with how to react to his criticism. On the one hand, I think he's totally off-the-wall crazy and wrong too. On the other, he's drastically my senior and is one of the directors of the team. I mean, Jose can be pretty bad, but he's never been quite this bad, and at least he's young enough to argue with. Anyway, I tried not to make to much of a fuss, but I fear that I came off really smug and dismissive, which was how I felt, but not what I wanted to show.
After dinner, we went out for Cola Cao (hot chocolate), but ended up following Lopez around for half an hour, passing by 3 - 5 bars, without stopping anywhere. Jose was off who knows where, so it was just Lopez, Isaac the mechanic, and the 6 of us riders. We finally got back to the hotel and decided to go to the bar across the street for Cola Cao. I think Lopez had decided to pass on it earlier because it looked to crowded, but it turned out there was a virtually empty, large back room with the Real Madrid game showing on a projector. We had a good time drinking our hot chocolate and watching the game. The other riders on the team sure like to yell a lot, but they seem like nice guys at heart.
Now I'm back in the hotel lying in bed with cleanly shaven legs watching a Jacky Chan movie dubbed into Spanish. It's time to go to bed I suppose since breakfast tomorrow is at 6:45. Que temprano! Hasta luego!
Race (Sunday, Sunday, March 16):
Remarkably, I barely struggled to wake up this morning when Vera's phone alarm went off at 6:45, and breakfast turned out to be pretty good too--some sort of sticky rice, ham, scrambled eggs, cereal, and lots of hot chocolate. After stuffing myself, I headed back to the room to relax and read a bit before getting ready to go. Ostensibly, we were supposed to leave at 8:45 for the 10am start, and I had calculated accordingly. At 8:20 that changed to 8:40, so I picked up the pace. Then at 8:28, Jose came into our room and told us to be in the cars in 2 minutes. Fortunately, I was pretty much ready to go, and just threw the rest of my stuff in my bag to take with me.
We then drove a kilometer and stopped to wait 15 minutes for someone who knew where to go. Oh well, that's life I guess.
Arriving at the start brought back a wave of memories from last year--all the team cars, the announcer, the old jefes of the local organization, the riders cruising around. I managed to be totally ready to go 30 minutes before the start, which is outrageously good for me. The key was that I had put on my sunscreen and number while in the car. I might make that a habit.Interestingly, the start was at what seemed to be the Shimano headquarters for Spain, a huge sheet-metal warehouse with well-apportioned offices and show bikes occupying one part.
As for the race, it was unremarkable for me. I spent as much time as I could near the front covering attacks. Vera, the track rider, turns out to be very good at this, so following him around the front was really helpful. But I managed to get dropped on a climb about half way into the 158km race and spent the rest of the day chasing in a grupetto, except for the first 2km of a later climb, where we actually caught back up to the pack, only to get dropped again. I was pleased though to get in a good enough group that we were allowed to make it to the finish, despite it being a one-day race. As of yet, I've never failed to finish a one-day road race, (I did get pulled from the Cascade Classic crit and also failed to finish the crit where I broke my collarbone) and I'm pleased that today wasn't the first.
Actually, I guess there was one somewhat notable event. After the climb where we had caught back up to the peleton, another rider and I found ourselves about 150 meters shy of another grupetto of guys who had gone off the back on the climb. The two of us worked well together and caught up over the course of about 5km. When we got there, to my suprise, we found two riders pulling on the front of the group of ~10, one wearing an Astana kit and the other a Saunier Duval. The Saunier Duval wasn't notable at first because they had an amateur development team in the race. But Astana? Closer inspection and then asking one of teammates who happened to be in the group revealed that they were in fact members of the Astana and Saunier Duval Pro Tour teams who were out training. How nice of them to drag us along for 10km! Eventually an officials motorcycle came up, but I'm not sure that they even said anything. In any case, before the next climb they turned off and went a different direction, but it was cool while it lasted.
The race finished in a super nice plaza of a town outside of Madrid. Being Sunday, I suppose, it was chock full of people, very very Spanish and a nice place to hang out. I guess since we didn't have the whole nightly routine of bike washing, massage, and dinner that goes with stage races, Jose was remarkably relaxed, never once hurrying us as we toweled off and changed into our street clothes.
After changing, 4 of my teammates and I went to doner kubab place on the plaza. It seemed to me that Jose and Lopez and Isaac the mechanic and everyone would come join us to eat before heading home. It turned out that Jose showed up and feverishly conveyed that we weren't going to eat at this place because at some point in the past someone had said that we would just have bocadillos (Spanish-style submarine sandwich) and drive home promptly rather than sit down for a complete meal, at least that was my impression. No one liked the idea, and given that no one else was driving back with Jose, they all decided to stay. I wasn't really sure what was going on at that point, but I decided to stay too. About 5 minutes after Jose left, the other guys informed me that I was supposed to leave and go with him, but they supported my decision to stay and find a bus back to Alcoy if Jose ended up leaving without me. Our food came eventually, I ate it. It was good. Then I left to see if Jose was still around. It turned out that he and Isaac had waited cheerfully for me while drinking coke and eating their Jamon Serrano Bocadillos. What a suprise! I had expected at least a moderate scolding, but came away with both Mediterranean food AND a bocadillo.
Awesome!!
On the drive back, I tuned my new video-enabled ipod nano to "Biography of Angelina Jolie" and "Mexican Revolutionary War" documentaries from the History Channel en Espanol. It turned out that I could follow them pretty well, and they certainly made the drive pass more quickly. Who knew that Angelina Jolie used to be nuts?
Well, that's it from my first Spanish race of the season. Though the race itself could have been better, I still had a good time and continue to be amazed by the odd happenings and interactions that seem to follow the Cafemax team whereever we go.
The next race is Vuelta Maestrago in two weeks. It's only 2 days, and the more prestigious Vuelta Cartegena is at the same time, so who knows what it will be like. Initial reports indicate that Alex Largo, an ex-racer and nice guy from Alcoy will be our director since Jose will be off with the professional team and Lopez will be at Cartegena. We'll see what happens.
Hasta entonces!
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario