Rolling along

There's just one stage left for us in Castilla Leon and we're sitting well with Dave Z. in 3rd place overall. Today was one of the longer 3.5 hour races I've done in a while. It was on from the first climb at 70k. This one was for real. I was glad to have on a 25 and wasn't exactly spinning on up it. Both today and yesterday were fast from constant attacking in the beginning. It took 90k for a break to get away yesterday!

This really turned out to be a nice race. For sure, its a shame that Lance crashed out on the first day. The start village that day had easily 2-3 times as many people as recent days. Although I'm sure anyone who travelled here to see Lance saw an exciting race take place regardless. An American fan has to be happy looking at the results so far.

These are gluten-free!

Croissants are the doughnuts of Europe. They're everywhere. Maybe a little healthier, until you add in the chocolate filling. I did ride 6 hours to burn them off.

New roads

When the road goes from this:



To this:


after 1.5 hours on the same road with no turnoffs, you start to get a little nervous. Luckily, the road did go through. Another 10k of descending down the rocky dirt road and we got to a town and paved road back home. We were never really lost, as we had our Garmin's with us, but when you've already had a cut tire that required a boot, the thought of finding a dead-end road was a little worrisome to say the least. That would mean having to ride/hike back up a 10k hill and another 2 hours to a town. It turned out to be an awesome loop. An off-the-map concrete road in the middle of nowhere for hours.

Moving along

First of all, I was unaware of this until the start this morning, but yesterday a woman was hit and killed by a police car part of the race caravan. From what I heard, she was with the team from Murcia here. That was a terrible bit of news to hear. What a tragedy. There was talk whether to even race the stage today, but eventually the racing continued on.
I don't have much to say about the race yesterday. It didn't go great for us, but that news above overshadows all that happened that day.

A 10am start in Spain on a Sunday?!?! It was unbelievable, but we actuallý started today's stage that early. We were riding to the start a little after 9 and we were pretty much the only ones on the street. For those that haven't been to Spain, they start the day about 3 hours later than a comparable day in the US. The good thing about it is that it makes the jet lag easier to deal with. Its like a 5 hour time difference instead of 8. Anyway, the race... it was a short and fast tailwind-accelerated 145k. A strong duo went away on the first category 3 climb. It was too strong of a break to get a long leash from the peloton, so they were caught as the peloton rode in to the final climb at warp speed with 10k to go. Christian made an impressive move to open up a gap on the climb. Then Huub made a valiant try with 2k to go, but it all came back together for a sprint out of a reduced field. Timmy... poor dude crashed on the downhill in the last few kilometers. It looked bad. He is just fine aside from some cuts and road rash, but man, it had me worried.

Murcia is in the books and now its on to Castilla y Leon in a couple of weeks. There'll be some good training time in Girona coming up. That's it for now. Thanks for reading!

Windiest tt ever

It was a howling yesterday. Riding deep dish wheels in the wind and in the tt bars nonetheless is a skill to be learned. Throw in some corning and speed bumps and you've got a Murcian time trial. It was a pretty damn good course somehow.

I'm ready for a bit of change and I think the rest of the peloton is too. A full 155k of racing ahead has me pretty excited. There are some serious climbs on the route so there's no doubt today will be full of action.

Christian mentioned a couple days ago how the landscape reminded him on Tucson, Arizona. Exactly! Its pretty remarkable, actually. There's desert, mountains, palm trees. Its like Tucson on the sea.

If you happen to see a Garmin rider in a "brown" kit, they probably did California. Fingers crossed my kits only come out of here with a slight hint to tan to them. Ewww.

Wind and Rain

Hmmm. A team mate told be to pack my board shorts for Murcia. However its been a little different here once the bike race came to town. Its all good though. The racing is good and I've had more than my fair share of racing in the sun.

Stage 1 of Vuelta a Murcia was a shocker. Starting out into a headwind, the pace was creeping after a break of 3 riders established itself. However with about 40k to go, we crested a climb in the trees and were completely exposed to the crosswinds. Game on! It wasn't such a suprise though, just a contrast. We all knew something had to happen after the slow start. Tom, Lucas, Huub, and Julian all were in the front split, so we're still in the hunt.

175k today for stage 2 and one big climb in the middle.