So, the start of the new season is near. This means the finishing touches to the base miles that everyone has piled in over the winter. (Except for the cross riders who have smashed it every week for an hour and in need of some steadier longer miles). So with this 8 members of the team headed to Alicante and from there to a small town called Biar 800m into the mountains.
So we flew in style, from Liverpool. (Yep, Liverpool and style in the same sentence). Checking in was interesting having never flown with a bike box before, and we had some huge bike boxes from http://www.roofbox.co.uk/ which were brilliant. I had to open mine up to get ride of some CO2 canisters but forgot to take one out and so still had one!! Score. Anyway, we arrived in Alicante and then had no idea how we were getting to the house. A random Spanish lady started talking to us, but she was just crazy. Well, thats what we thought, it turned out that she was actually giving us a lift to the house, except she couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Spanish, despite Irish Stu claiming otherwise.
We arrived in an amazing place, high up in the hills after a 40 minute journey of climbing. The little citroen van struggled. We got there and it was freezing, but dry. The rest of the guys arrived with a van full of the bike boxes and the car we had for the week.
We settled into our rooms. The house was amazing, it was very very old and a maze of corridors and rooms. We were able to stay there for free due to Julian’s (one of the team helpers/managers) wife’s family being part of a Finnish Church that owns the house and lets people of the Church stay for free. It was fantastic. Due to the house being own by Fins, they had their own Sauna. That got fired up straight away and we all piled in. Great times.
I didn’t get involved with the route planning as I didn’t have a clue, so left it to other guys. First day we did 2hrs 20mins, second 4 1/4 hrs, third 1 hr 40min, fourth 4hrs40, fith 3hrs and the last day 4hrs 5mins. The final day, me and Irish Stu went up a climb that start out of the house, to spin the legs. It was a tough climb straight out of the house, and quite steep, but it did rise to 1300m, the highest peak we’d done all week. It was about a 25min climb. Then we rode pretty much straight back, with a pit stop at the supermarket. This wasn’t included in the hours, more just a spin to stop the legs stiffening up on the sardine can called an Easyjet plane. I could go on to explain the routes, but I’m going to be honest, I have no idea. I was breathing out my arse the whole time. I was ill, and so was most of the guys due it being awful weather. On the first morning, I woke up to snow. Not cool. Spain for snow, I could have just stayed at home!!
We got out anyway until we could go out for no longer due to the cold. We also took our time to get out due there being no bike shops with the correct fitting rear mech hanger and so there was a bit of a worry. Luckily Jonny’s Dad, Angus brought his bike and let Lewis ride that bike. Not quite a Supersix but running smoothly and so not really a problem.
The training camp allowed us the first time to try out some new food from Shotz (http://www.assist.co.uk/brands/shotz ) They were brilliant. The Wild Bean gels giving a real kick after of just before some big climbs (like the on we did used by the Vuelta in Stage 9, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY4D-NpxQaY&feature=related). The bars were gone pretty qucikly. They shouldn’t have been left out. I’m looking forward to getting some more!! Nom nom nom nom!!
We also all went through a lot of Formula 1 Herbalife shake for our recovery, 1 Tub between 8 guys does no go a long way!!! (http://www.targetweight.com/)
Anyway, loads of little stories, but a massive thanks Angus for sitting in the car when he was expecting a few rides for himself on his own bike and could only go out once he’d got his bike back from Lewis who left early. But the biggest thanks must go to Julian and Outi, and most important Outi’s mother who cooked some fantastic food for us every night and morning and made sure we didn’t go hungry. Julian’s family were fantastic and the hospitality was brilliant.
So having come back from Spain I’m having an easy week, then a week to get my legs back into some training ready for the first race of the season. We get all our kit at the team launch on Sunday!! Can’t wait to get all our kit, not looking forward to standing on a stage in front of some random people though. I’ll tell you all about that another time.
Tags: Junior National Series
