Training in Spain

This is the mountain goat, with some mountain goats

Spain didn't turn out to be quite the training extravaganza I had in mind. My flight from London was delayed by 3 hours so we didn't get to Girona until 5.30 which didn't really leave much time for going out on the bikes. So instead decided to do a longer ride on the Saturday with the mountain goat. And I'll tell you what, I'd forgotten how funny that girl is to ride with. The ride she chose is a 60km loop with lots of uphill bits including a 6km climb. At the base of said climb we decided, rather stupidly, to eat our energy bars, which we're cookies and cream flavour and peanut and toffee flavour. Now, trying to eat, climb, breathe, talk and laugh all at the same time is not easy, and the more we tried the more we laughed, weaving around the road, chewing with our mouths open getting slower and slower with toffee, peanut, cookies and cream dribbling down our faces. It's at time's like this you realise who your friends are, cos man it was not pretty. Anyway, once the hysteria had subsided I had what I can only describe as a seminal moment. Or to be more precise a seminal 6km. I actually enjoyed the climb, we kept a good steady pace and I was actually able to talk, and although wasn't able to achieve my half-wheeling ambitions I did feel like for once the mountain goat wasn't wishing she could ride at her own pace. It's a miracle. Turns out losing weight and training more really does help.

In total we did 62km in 2.35mins which considering the amount of uphill involved we were both quite chuffed with.

I haven't been riding my trusty Dolan on my last 2 trips to Girona as both have been short and I couldn't be bothered to lug it back and forth so instead I have been borrowing one of Slipstreams Team issue Felts. I have to say I never thought changing your position on a bike would make so much difference. My left butt cheek hurt for the majority of the ride and then for the entire evening after it. Which worried me. So I decided to skip the planned short loop on Sunday - which sucks as it's so far my favourite ride in that area. Never mind, next time.

On an entirely separate issue, I rode to and from work yesterday and then did my first Turbo session. I will save turbos and commuting for another day though.