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Whew! Ten days racing portuguese style. I will remind you now that the terrain in this unobtrusive country is NOT for the faint of heart, or in our case legs...This race is very well put together and it is "Le Tour" for the local pros. The hotels are excellent, the food is not. Our hosts all adamantly agree that pasta, shredded carrots, tomatoes and watery sauce is what we want to eat, EVERY DAMN NIGHT. Actually, that is the only disappointing part of this race, otherwise, it is unbelieveable training for us Estados Unidos types whose focus is on Nationals in a couple of weeks, and the fans are crazy, drunk and three deep on the climbs, which there a plethora of. I must say that in the past seven days I have probably smashed all of my peak power values at every interval, up to an hour mind you...and surprisingly I am feeling better every day. We have one more day of rolling, 60k an hour hills, then on the final road race day, the finale, pardon, is a 30k hors catagorie climb to the finish, and voile' the hardest, longest, hottest, and sketchiest race I have ever done will be in the books.
The funniest part that I have neglected to fill you in on is the breakaway suicide. This is skill that requires your utmost attention and nerves of steel. If you do happen to get the gap after five minutes at 500 watts, it is then on to 10 minutes of racing in the first 30k of the stage that you would think you were coming into the last turn at the finish....after the guys get comfortable in the break they proceed to attack each other until only the strong survive. All week on the radio, 50k in to the race Jonny comes on and says that the break is down to three guys and the rest are exploded all over the road, still 130k to go, nevermind that! Gotta shed that dead weight! Total craziness. Good experience, probably won't do a race this hard the rest of my career. Thanks for reading my start-stop thoughts, next time I write I will be at home with my wife, dogs, totally recovered, relaxed, and thinking about Greenville. Peace.
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whitey says:
Hope you're having a party when you get back. It's been awhile.
Louise says:
A well deserved rest for you in the comfort of home! Good job on such a long tour. I've enjoyed your postings.
brad says:
Sounds like a little hell on earth. You wonder how they're going to keep doing that day after day. Or more so you're wondering how you're going to keep putting out your max watts up a 12K climb. Keep biting your handlebar on those climbs. It'll really pay off for nationals. I'm going to be at nationals racing under Discovery Channel/Marco Polo. See you there.
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