Valenciaga

Let’s see, I’m writing this Tuesday, two days after getting back from the Valenciaga Spanish Cup race in the Basque Country. Normally, I prefer to write my racing diary as soon as I possibly can after/during a race. This time, however, it really wasn’t possible. So I’ll do the best I can after the fact. Bear with me.

Day 0: Driving (Saturday, April 5)

All the Spanish Cup races fall on Sundays, so Saturdays in the near future will be spent in the car. This Saturday was no exception. The day started early, by my standards, at 8am. After waking up and eating some breakfast, all 5 of us headed over to Jose’s apartment and were shortly on our way. Two days ago, Felix and I were the only ones from the Cueva making the trip of to the Basque Country for what’s supposed to be the hardest and most prestigious one-day race in Spain, but things change quickly around here.

The other Cueva residents (Andrew and Elliot from the USA and Robinson from Venezuela), were supposed to race in Castellon, about two hours North of us, but Thursday night a spot opened up on Cafemax for Valenciaga, so Robinson got bumped up to our race. Then, Friday night, Jose called and told Elliot and Andrew that, in fact, there would be no one to take them up to Castellon, so they couldn’t race. That was a serious bummer given that they’ve been here for almost two months now and have only raced once. I’m really hoping that trend will change soon. Anyway, two hours later, Jose called back, inquired whether Elliot could drive, and then said that they could come with us to play mechanic and seigneur as long as Elliot would drive one of the team cars.

When he first called, I think he gave them the impression that he was doing them a favor by letting the come along, or somehow making up for the fact that they didn’t get to race, but, while the field trip to the Basque Country was certainly better than spending the weekend in Alcoy, I think they were really the ones doing the favor for Jose. For the price of free, Jose got a driver (Elliot), a mechanic (Andrew), and deflected the anger of the gringos over not racing. That’s the Gusano for you.

Getting back to the trip, seven racers plus Jose, Elliot, and Andrew, piled into two team cars packed to the brim with nine bikes, suitcases, food, and who knows how many wheels. I managed to snag the front seat next to Elliot, which made the trip in the car relatively pleasant. Of course, Elliot stalled the car a number of times on the way out of town, but he quickly got the hang of the under-powered, diesel Renault wagon. He seemed the chance to fly at 115mph down the freeway, and aside from thirty nervous minutes with the gas needle on E, the trip passed pleasantly. I tuned my iPod to BBC Mundo in Spanish, promptly fell asleep, then chatted and read a novel in Spanish that I had found lying around the Cueva. We even stopped for lunch on the way up, not bad.

We ended up finding our hostel in the Basque Country around 4pm after making only three or four U-turns, a record I think. And yes, I mean hostel, not hotel. I guess that teams have to pay their own way at the Spanish Cup races, so to save some money, Jose found a hostel with a room for all of us for only 5.80 euros / person / night. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but it turned out to be very very clean, situated in BEAUTIFULLY amongst the steep, green Basque hillsides, and with excellent food. The only downside was that with all of us in one room, I didn’t get a chance to sit down with my computer to type this journal entry. C’est la vie. In fact, the area was so nice, and the food/lodging so cheap that Elliot, Andrew, and I are going to borrow one of the team cars in a couple weeks and come back as tourists.

After arriving and choosing our beds, I quickly changed into my riding clothes and went outside to enjoy the fresh air and read for a bit before going out for our pre-race training ride. Once everyone finally made their way downstairs, I dropped my book off in the room and hurried back downstairs to hop on the bikes. Felix had been warning me that the weather in the Basque Country was typically rainy and freezing this time of year, so we were especially lucky to enjoy clear skies and warm sun, perfect.

We started out climbing up some hill, and Chacon, the strongest guy on our team, apparently likes to get in a pretty good effort the day before a race. He set a pretty good pace and a lot of guys were breathing pretty heavily to keep up. The first climb lasted 10 minutes or so, then we had a brief descent before climbing again. On the second climb, I decided to go with him and we ended up riding away from the other guys who were smart enough to exert themselves quite so much. But I was really surprised with how easy 400 watts felt. We climbed at a solid pace for a while, and I managed to keep my heart rate under 162, which left me pretty excited about Sunday’s race.

After getting back from the ride, I took advantage of the seemingly unlimited hot water to treat myself to an all-to-rare shower in which I don’t have to turn off the water while soaping down—glorious. Next up was some more reading, then dinner, team meeting, and finally bed. At the meeting, Jose showed us the course profile of two Cat 3’s, then a Cat 2 at kilometer 100, followed by another Cat 3, a Cat 1 at kilometer 130, and finally a Cat 3 right before descending down to the finish after 168km.

Robinson, Felix, and another younger teammate named Alejandro were assigned to cover early attacks and then pull out before the Cat 1 climb. I was supposed to wait until at least kilometer 80, and then if I wasn’t feeling great, try to get in a breakaway, but if I felt better, then just sit in until the Cat 1 climb. Chacon (the strongest), Ivan, and Salvi were supposed to wait until the Cat 1 and see how things played out from there. As usual, talking about the race made it all seem so easy.

Race Day:

For some reason, I ended up sleeping very poorly, and mostly lay with my eyes closed thinking about whatever I could to keep myself occupied before getting up in the morning. I forgot to mention that the race started at the truly-unheard-of hour of 9 o’clock am. Thus, breakfast was a 6am. Given that we’re West of the Prime Meridian, but still on GMT + 1, the sun doesn’t come up until nearly 8am, so 6am really was unimaginable. The hostel staff decided just to leave us a preset table with cereal, milk, water, bread, and plates of tortilla (Spanish for omelet), rice, and ham wrapped in plastic. Despite the meager appearance, the food turned out to be really good. Basically, that means that the rice had some flavor and the tortilla had some cheese, but it was good enough for me.

The hour after breakfast was business as usual. I got dressed, packed my backpack with everything I’d need for the day, consolidated my suitcase, which is currently a team-issue, large rolling backpack whose zipper has broken so I have to close it with safety pins, and then headed to the team car. I stepped out of the door at 7:15 into the dark, predawn mist to see Jose standing by one of the team cars with a large, towel-wrapped, irregularly shaped object in his right hand. I jogged over to discover that the keys had been locked in the still-running car. He quickly explained the situation, gave me a what-else-is-there-to-do shrug, and smashed the towel-covered rock into the smallest rear window. The first strike failed, but the second one shattered the window. We quickly removed as much glass from the back seat as we could, covered the rest with a towel, and then piled into the cars to head to the race. Through some chance, I got stuck with the rear seat next to the missing window. It was the small, triangularish rear passenger window that normally can’t be moved up or down, so I couldn't lean my head to the left to sleep, but at least it wasn't raining.

I guess this brings us to the race itself. Other than it being very cold, 4 C, all the pre-race stuff went off as usual. I sat lazily in the car for a while, got up, signed in, chatted a bit, got on my bike, used the bathroom a ton (they had port-a-potties, AMAZING!!), got a cup of coffee to warm my hands, then off we went. I absolutely froze during the neutral start, but after 10 minutes of racing, I regained control of my fingers and was good to go. As usual, there were tons of attacks, but the first 20km were pretty flat on wide, well-paved roads, so I sat in to bide my time until later. I think the day’s breakaway got away 10km into the race, so the trip up the first Cat 3 climb 20km in passed easily, same with the second at 40km. I focused on staying near the front and eating and drinking enough. All of that went pretty well.

At one point, a team car trying to move up through the pack was forced to the very edge of the road and two of the bikes on top smashed a street sign over the road. I’m not sure whether the bikes or sign survived, but the noise was incredible. I was just happy to be on the other side of the road.

I decided I was feeling pretty good, so I planned to sit in past the Cat 2 climb, but around 80km in, Jose told me to help cover attacks, which had never stopped going even though the breakaway had 3 minutes. Ivan also went with a little move, so I really dropped the hammer to try to get away, but to no avail. I spent the next 10km trying to slip into any promising move, but nothing panned out. Unfortunately, I burned quite a few matches in the process. At kilometer ~90, I was told to just wait for the climb and stay near the front. Not surprisingly, everyone else wanted to be at the front before the Cat 2 climb. I hopped on Salvi’s wheel and resolved to stay with him through thick or thin. Despite a couple of nearby crashes, and frequent brushes with the side of the road, the two of us steadily moved up until someone ran off the road in front of me, and I lost about five positions. Of course, the climb started right then, and it was absolutely flat out the entire way. I fixated on Salvi, about 15 meters ahead now, and I tried to slowly close the gap to him, all the while avoiding the scores of riders slipping backward. With an absolutely maximal effort, I led about 4 other guys over the top of the climb, still 20 meters behind a fairly large, but not leading, group in front. But I was cashed. I struggled to hang with my little group on the descent, but then slowly dropped off the back on a long, steady climb. I’m sure Paul and Phil would have a catchy phrase to describe my situation involving unanswered calls to the engine room, but the truth was that I needed a little break to recover from the climb, but never got one and got dropped. I think the group I was with caught up to Salvi’s group, which looked pretty big (25?) but talking to people later, I think Chacon was in a group further up the road. [addendum: it turns out the climb was 426 watts for 9:43, with the first 5:00 @ 451 watts]

A little bit later, Jose passed, gave me some water, and sped off. Having recovered a little bit, I decided to continue to go hard to get in a good day of training, and who knows, maybe the leaders would slow down? But about 5km later, just after cresting a Cat 3 climb with another rider who had caught up to me, I heard the dreaded, periodic hiss of my tire going flat. I contemplated riding down to the next town with the flat to try to find a wheel or tube, but quickly decided that it wasn’t worth ruining my powertap wheel. So I pulled over and hoped some team car or the neutral service car would pass with a wheel, but it was not to be. The only cars to stop were the sag wagon van and a truck to carry the bikes.

For the first time ever, I had to stop in a race, not even having crashed, and climb into the van. To recall a cliché from junior high football, it really does leave a bad taste in your mouth. I was the only one in the van at that point, and I tried to make conversation with the nice, elderly Basque driving the van, but we soon fell silent. A little later, we passed through the start/finish town, and I contemplated hoping out there, but decided to hang out in the van. This choice would prove suboptimal. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. I got to check out beautiful, steep, long cat 1 climb and watch some of the riders descend.

There was a somewhat exciting moment on the descent when we came across one of the ambulances and a bunch of officials cars and motorcycles stopped in a sharp right hand corner. As we neared, what at first looked like a stretcher resolved into a destroyed motorcycle. It appeared to have slid into the rock wall at the edge of the road, breaking the front fork/wheel completely off the bike. I’d seen cars and motorcycles that had crashed in bike races before, but never this severely. I thought the motorcycle rider must be severely hurt. We stopped briefly, and a Super Froix rider who had apparently been knocked down by the motorcycle climbed into the car. He was pretty scraped up, but seemed generally okay. He also pointed out the motorcycle rider, standing up a little ways away, so I guy wasn’t to broken.

Later, Andrew and Elliot told me that they had been right behind the accident in the team car. They said that the motorcycle slid out in the corner, taking down the rider who was moving up through the team cars, and then sliding into the wall at the edge of the road. The motorcycle official also slid into the wall, and certainly did not get up by the time they drove out of sight. They seemed to be quite shocked by the whole event. I’m glad I only saw the aftermath after all involved parties had gotten to their feet. It definitely demonstrates that the motorcycle officials need to be careful! As Michael Barry pointed out at some point, when cyclist crash in the peloton, the bikes only way 15lbs and don’t do much damage. But a 500+lbs motorcycle could kill someone! The same goes for the team cars trying to pass the peloton. In a race it’s easy to take risks, especially while in the car, but the consequences can be serious.

After the race, the van dropped the rider who had crashed and I at the finish to wait for the truck with our bikes. We waited and waited and waited. After 10 minutes, the father of the other rider found an official and discovered that the truck had broken down on the cat 1 climb! Apparently it wasn’t going to be arriving any time soon. I then headed off to try to find the team cars. After 5 minutes of walking, Jose found me, and I told him that my bike was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but he should ask the officials what to do. He directed me to the car, I changed as quickly as I could, then he came back and said that we could drive up and find the truck with the bikes since it was only about 30km away. Of course, we got horribly lost, and after half an hour, we gave up and went to the hostel. Jose claimed that the organization would put my bike in the mail tomorrow and it would arrive by Tuesday morning. It’s now Tuesday afternoon, and I’ve been waiting here in the Cueva all morning, but to no avail. I guess my bike, and more importantly, my powertap computer with the data from the race are somewhere in the Spanish mail system. Hopefully they arrive someday, maybe tomorrow.

After getting back to the hostel, I enjoyed another awesome shower, got all packed and we headed down to eat before starting for home. Once again, the hostel came through with above average food. They even made their salad without iceberg lettuce, which is a major score in my opinion. The pasta and beef steak didn’t quite match up to the post-race paella in Maestrago, but I was pleased.

On the way back home, I again rode in the Gringo car with Elliot, Andrew, Robinson, and Alejandro. This time I was in the back, and poor Elliot had to put up with Alejandro’s extremely obnoxious, 18-year-old suggestions about how he should be driving. I think we both nearly strangled him, but aside from that the trip was fine, and we arrived safely back in Alcoy once again.

Next Sunday there’s another Spanish Cup race, Torredonjimeno in who-knows-where part of Spain, so I’ll be heading off their next Saturday.