toogreytogrind

We went to pick up my mountain bike and the guy was just putting a new inner tube in it. A bit last minute! Well that's not all. I gave the bike a bit of a test ride. I just need to say that I have not ridden a bike in the last year so the bike felt ok to me for a short test ride. I paid the 30 euros for the two days and set off. It was only until I got to the steep hill out of Monachil when the gears started to slip. Streached chain symdrome. I headed off back to the shop.

I finally got to the lads' hotel and got ready for the ride. Neil was having a rest day, but Tiger looked keen. We have a long history of riding together and even a small ride will turn into a race. At the start of our riding history I was the fastest mainly due to putting in a lot of training. Tiger then got the bug for time trialing and started training big time and is a bit of a speed merchant. I'm was still hoping that my down hill skills would still be what they were and I could whoop ass on the down bits.

It was not looking to good as far as the weather was concerned, but the cool mountain air was a nice change to stuffy Madrid. I was more then keeping up with Tiger and managed to pull away on some of the climbs. Probably due to what he had been doing in the previous days and what I hadn't been doing. A restaurant was a welcome site when the wind got up and even more so when the rain started. After sheltering for a hour or so there was a lul in the weather and we made a dash back to the hotel. So I got my chance to test out Tiger's downhilling and to see if mine was still what it was. I was a bit rusty on the bike but not too bad. It's still the thrill it always was and I want to keep up with doing more biking for that reason. We got back to the hotel and it started to RAIN, and I mean rain. The road was like a river.

Day 3 Granada:

Well day 2 was in the end just a warm up for day 3. One thing, sorry two things about the bike I rented: 1 - riding from the shop to the lads' hotel I did notice that the saddle was not that comfortable, and I just couldn't get a good possition. 2 - I just had flatties (flat platform peddles) good for technical riding but not so good for uphill and turning circles. Both the lads had step-in peddles. A big advantage for efficiency on the uphill section. OK that's my excusses out of the way.

The first section was familiar tarrain for myself and Tiger, not so for Neil. Both the lads seemed in better spirits today we went out the night before and they had managed to eat some food the previous days they had not eaten much and they had been feeling run down. I was keeping up with them and we got the the restaurant surprisingly quick. We decided to push on without stopping. OK this saddle thing was getting to not quite so an uncomfortable stage but more a painful stage. For none mountain bikers: when climbing off road you sit down a lot more than when climbing on road. If you stand up you loose traction and go nowhere. I think I was fit enough to keep with the lads from doing my skating but with using different muscle groups my legs were feeling it and I kept loosing them. Also I was finding it hard to just concentrate on riding when I was in so much pain from the saddle. I finally got to the stage where I was walking. But the good thing was there was that there was not much more uphill to do on the track we were taking and I found the lads around the corner at the col.

OK, more or less all downhill now. I knew I could smoke Tiger but what about Neil. Neil's an ex-motocrosser and now has a Yammy 600 sport, ie 165mph, so 40 mph + is would be just quarter speed for this guy. Gulp!

Although I was knackered on the uphill, I felt back to normal on the downhill and especially more so on the technical sections.

Just as the uphill seemed to be going on and on, the downhill just kept giving and giving, and with the odd surprise. Anybody riding around here will encounter, not sure what they're called, thorny vines and bushes. I now had a bloody arm and Neil soon would have his head scratched up.

Down at the bottom of the vally the track now turned into some very nice single track and I had a few moments. I knew I could do the sections it's just that you sometime bottle it at the last moment. "OK from now on I'm going for it!" And it does work, it's almost like the terrain knows, and if you attack it, it lets you go. The lads were being more careful, with their step in peddles and were pushing some of the sections. In the picture to the side you can make out the line of the track which is rideable. A bit past this section and we arrived at a restaurant and we stopped for some food. I did my traslator bit with the menu and the barman said the fastest things to cook were the tortilla and musaca, so we went with that. After this it was a shortish road ride back to the hotel. After a shower and a rest we went to town for some cervezas y tapas.

# posted by Si @ 5:17 pm