As every year at Devex the company takes a week long Summer break in August. August isn't really the best month to take holiday in Spain, because on the one hand everybody does and on the other hand tends to be really hot. That's why I tend to do a trip on my own, without my girlfriend. In the recent years this have been cycling holidays. ...
The year comes to a close and it is time to see what happened to my New Year Resolutions. Yoga Everyday Well, this didn't go so well. Overall I managed about every second day, though I have done most of it in the first half of the year. But it turned into a habit now, so I tend to do it a few times a week. Cycling Mini Adventures I managed to do quite a few and had fun doing them. GFNY Barcelona Gran Fondo Mussara La Ruta Minera Tour de France weekend in Andorra Long solo weekend trip around Ripoll Geocentrum 2 and a few solo rides to places around Barcelona Draw something every day This turned out to be pretty much a failure. While it was going good at the beginning of the year I just gave up after a while. It was just impossible to find the time or inspiration to draw. Blog once a month Nearly...this should be number 11 for the year. 12 Books It was a difficult start, but then I found some easy to read thriller series and space operas and ended up reading 23 books. Some more goals ... During the year I picked up a few more smaller goals and habits where I have been more or less successful. I had the cycling goal of reach 8000km for the year and achieve all Strava Climbing and Gran Fondo challenges. But an illness in December made this impossible. So I just got 11 of the 12. I also started to do Vegetarian Mondays with a 64% success rate. I found it difficult when traveling or when there were social events. I worked on my Spanish with Duolingo for most of the year and finished all the lessons. You have to keep it up though so you don't loose it again. And I reached my goal weight. The remaining fat has somehow to be replaced by muscles. Of to the next year... I haven't quite decided on anything yet, but I definitely take it a lot more easy :-)
Amazingly this is the first multiple day cycling trip that I have done alone so far. I had the weekend for myself and decided to use it to explore some new roads in Catalonia. After asking my cycling friends for some tips I decided on using Ripoll as a base. It is a two hours and €8 train ride from Barcelona and surrounded by nature parks and nice mountains. I found a reasonably cheap Airbnb, which I booked from Friday evening to Monday. I had been warned by the host that the stairs are steep, many and without much room to move a bicycle. And she was absolutely right. I still managed though and otherwise the flat was really nice, with a washing machine (!) and fully equipped kitchen. I cooked every day and basically lived on pasta. I had picked some routes before, but decided on the day which one to pick. The weather turned for the worse and it was a bit colder than I expected. I am not an early riser anyway, but in this case I waited until 10:00 to start each ride so that it could warm up a bit. In the end I only got into the rain once though. Many thanks have to go to Mauro to helping me with the routes and suggesting the area in the first place. ...
Mauro talked me into taking part in the La Ruta Minera sportive, conveniently he broke his collarbone before and didn't join. On paper this looked like a lot of fun. It is a bit shorter than Gran Fondo La Mussara and a "bit" more climbing. The event starts and finishes in Berga, which is an hour away with the car. There is no good rail connection, so I rented a car for the long weekend. I booked a hotel through the sportive organisation from Friday to Sunday, with the race being on Sunday. The Hotel HCC Ciutat de Berga was nothing special, but the front desk was very friendly and he did the sportive last year. He even checked out my gears to make sure I was not trying with a 11-25 cassette. They allowed bikes in the rooms for this weekend and also provided extra early breakfast and late checkout on Sunday. Saturday was for relaxing and sight seeing. The old town of Berga is pretty and for the nerds they have the only Free Software Street in the world. Sunday the race. I felt good. I had stuffed myself with pasta the previous days. I had water and gels. The bicycle was mostly OK (some problems with the bearings in the front wheel). All systems go. Maybe the uphill start should have given me a clue, but the temperature was nice and so was the landscape. The first climb was easy to manage around 600m of climbing. But the second one already took most out of me, 1000m of climbing with one ramp of 23% gradient. Distance wise this was only the halfway point and lots of climbing remained. Before the next big climb the temperature went up to 37C with nearly no tree coverage. On the last hill the heat took everything out of me. I stopped a few times in the shadow just to cool down again. The finish line obviously was also a climb. Overall there were only two sections that were flat and allowed me to slipstream a bit. That my descending sucks also didn't really help. But ... I did finish and it is a beautiful area of Catalunya. The organisation was also lovely, it felt like a big family. There were less than 600 cyclists taking part, which is a lot less than my previous sportives. I am probably not going to try this again, but will visit the area when it is a bit cooler :-) Some more photos in my google photo album.
Last year I attended the the Gran Fondo La Mussara, it is a great event, well organized and with a beautiful route. Sadly I was not able to finish it. I had to give up after 110 of the 189 km. I was not properly prepared due to various injuries and illnesses in the beginning of the year. And I got another injury during the ride. But I decided to give it another try this year, so I registered early as this event sells out pretty fast. Registering early including an hotel turned out to be a problem. The hotel forgot all registrations and notified the organizers with one week to spare. Luckily I found another hotel, which turned out to be a bit more expensive, but much better. It is just one kilometre from the start, has really big rooms, you are allowed to take your bike to the room and they organized a special early breakfast for the riders. So if you are in the area I can highly recommend Brea’s Hotel, maybe not for a romantic weekend, but for riding or doing anything at the Fira it works out brilliantly. Another fun bit this year was the panic about disc brakes at sportives in Spain. Luckily this got sorted out beforehand and doesn’t affect my events this year. But I won’t be registering for any others until this is settled for good. The Gran Fondo is a very well organized event. The start and finish line is at the Fira Reus. This is also where you pick up your race pack, jersey and the pasta party after the event is held. The race pack contains your start number with timer chip, a booklet with all kind of information about the race, one very useful sticker for your top bar with the food stop locations, one sticker with the height profile and some energy food. The jersey was the one let-down. I generally don’t like to be forced to use the jerseys provided by the sportive, and this time it really showed why. It was much too small for everyone and the quality was really bad. The zip didn’t work well and got stuck all the time. As this was probably the cheapest version of Santini jerseys it also only had three smallish pockets. I can’t see anyone of the 5000 participants buying from Santini in the future. The problems I identified last year were: ...