First Tour Completed!

I've survived what I consider to be one of my rites of passage as a bike racer: The first multistage tour. Granted, by multistage I really mean two-stage, but to me, it's all the same. I'm just as happy. The weekend's suffering began early Saturday morning when Mr. Matas and Diego from Murcia (the province to the south of me) passed by the apartment where I live with Isaac (from Venezuela) to pick us up. The weather hinted at what was to plaugue our poor trembling peloton for the next 48 hours- rain, rain, and more rain. In typical fashion, my luck played out so that we enjoyed three weeks of beautiful sunny skies and then two days of non-stop rain during my most intensive, important days of riding. They say here that Saint Pedro pees down from heaven and that's rain. He peed a lot this weekend. In any case, the four of us left Alcoy and drove up the coast three hours to the city where the race would begin, Castellon. There we met with the team director "El Viejo", the massuese, and the other team members. The first day looked intimidating on paper, and proved to be just a difficult in action. The route consisted essentially of one large circle, with three seperate climbs. Climbs are categorized into 3 categories, based on their length, incline, and location relative to other climbs and other parts of the race course. The first climb was at a failry gentle pitch and roughly 2 miles long (category 3), but the following two were both long and painful category 1 climbs, 4 and 7 miles, respectively. That means, for example, about 30 minutes ascending continuously during the third climb of the day! This difficulty in terms of climbs added to the 100-miles of total distance left me with the sole goal of making it through the first stage without dropping out. And basically, for the handful of my other first and second-year teamates, this was the plan outlined for us by the director. The idea being that if we couuld survive the first day, we would be able to work for our team leader for the first quarter or so of the second stage. In any case, the first day I surprised myself and made it over the first two climbs in contact with the lead main group (known as the peloton). Eventually, when I could no longer hang on to the tail of the group over the rolling mid-race hills, I dropped back into a seconday group of riders in a similar predicament. Little did I know, the true suffering of the race was about to begin. As we began climbing the second main climb, gradually the temperature dropped lower and lower with the increase in altitude and the rainfall intensified. To make matters worse, the thick fog made it impossible to see more than 30 feet ahead of us. I could put on my glasses and be blinded by the accumulated water drops and mucky build-up or take them off and be blinded by the stinging rain showers against my unprotected eyes. Descending those 7 miles was a surreal experience- i felt almost sleepy with the numbing cold and blindness. I had the kind of eerie feeling you get when you know you're on the edge of losing control, but your fear is masked by mix of adrenaline and unshakable fatigue. My hands were so cold that I couldn't pick up a water bottle or change gears. In short, I was mighty happy to see the finish line 4.5 hours later. I finished the day 41 out of 106- not fantastic, but it certainly was enough to please me. Our team leader ended up placing third, so we workhorses had a busy day ahead of us. Stage two was basically the same type of race, with two cat 1 climbs, only the climbs were longer and the racecourse itself was shorter. Our job was to chase down every single break (or attack) that went off the front of the main group for the first 15 miles. Those first fifteen miles, our goal was to let mr. team bigshot rest his legs until the road kicked up to a nasty grade and the race progressed into the first main climb. Luckily, I still had enough gas left over to pull at the front just until the base of the climb, and then BAM!, like clockwork, I dropped out the back, cleanly used up like an empty cartridge! The rest of the race I continued with a secondary group at tempo pace until the finish. In the end, Mr. Bigshot didn't finish the race- only three of us out eight did so. But for me, it went well and I was just happy to be able to finish. You can even see my name posted on the national results page if you follow the link I've attached! Clearly on the way to stardom is what I say...