A quick mix

Reflections

Rarely was it a party, and when it was a party, the party sucked.*

*(I say that because people who ask how the clubbing is here don't really have a clue what Spain was about for me. I also say that because when we did go out, the party did indeed suck.)

I came searching for honor, a last ditch effort to immerse myself in an athlete's lifestyle and prove to myself I can craft my body into a machine of muscle and lungs. Air, water and food are consumed in order to maximize power. It's a lifestyle, and my life would have been incomplete if I never lived it.

I searched for what I had believed cycling to be. That epicness you feel when you watch the Tour. I craved to bring the new body and the will that created it into a race against similar souls. I wanted to put the sake of others ahead of myself, contributing all I can towards the success of a team leader.

My imagination was not without images, of course. Mountaintops with cheers and screams that lift clumps of suffering, spandex clad racers up and over the crest to plummet down the other side. Me flying up forested switchbacks with a yellow jersey in tow and the peloton spread evenly along the climb. My own sweaty, strong, shiny legs hammering away at 90 revolutions per minute.

Suffering. Cycling requires suffering, and I have gone through quite a bit. Three hour hammer sessions and 6 hour plug-a-thons. Pangs of hunger, the burn of lactic, extreme thirst, empty legs, the intersection of aluminum and pavement and skin, road rash in the shower, knee pain, strains, cramps, jams, headaches. Training mentality is one thing... racing you must be willing to stay true to that decision. When it gets hard, I'm willing to go harder. When it gets tough, I will not give up.

Fear. Be it as it may, I have long been more mindful of danger than most. In my first vuelta here, I remember thinking after the first stage that I probably had avoided thousands of possibly deadly moments in the course of three hours. Swerving through rotundas and around crashes, avoiding potholes and knarly grates, I felt lucky to simply be alive. Part of the thrill was to know you weren't dead.

Fear and suffering become facts of life, like the pieces of dog shit I walk by every day. It's just what you do. No reason to whine or even talk about it; it is what it is.

Am I happy with my time here? The same high expectations and self-deprecating attitude seems to tarnish my memory, but looking past that, I am already remembering my time here fondly. I suppose, at the most obvious level, the decisions you make in life determine how you explore the space around you with the time you are given. How much are you attune to it, and how much do you tune it out? Looking back, I may regret how much I ignored... how many times I was concentrating so hard on going fast or training correctly that I took the breathtaking countryside for granted. But that's what got me here in the first place.

But there were times where I would sit up, and take a look around. I would look back and see acres and acres of huge sunflowers, rows and rows of fat bright yellow petals. Blooming lavender fields. I would look to one side and see big rock faces and green olive trees, planted along terraces cut into the hillside. I would take a breather at the top of a pass and look to the other side and see the ocean on the other side of the plains. You seem to want to take a piece of it with you; just a handful would be enough.

And there were other times where I simply resigned myself to the passing of time. It could easily be mistaken for laziness or boredom, but I just gently shut down for some reason. Cereal becomes a meal that's always good enough for any part of the day, for days on end.

It will be weird returning: I won't have the screaming neighbors that decorate my street, I won't have the variability of Jose bringing fun and stress equally, but unpredictably. I won't have La Cueva and the honor of being a Gitano Americano and a Mongolico and a Retrasado. I won't have the amazing roads out my front door step that I have become so used to, the familiarity of each road seared into your mind from hours and hours of riding them.

No doubt this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I am fortunate. I will miss this place and always wonder exactly how it changed my outlook on where I came from and how it changed where I will go. Thanks for reading along the way.

This pic was taken from the 3rd stage of Avila when I was in the break.

Tour de France

I got to see the tour up close and personal.

With some hectic, last minute hopping from bus to metro to rental car, I got my butt to northern Spain. I crossed the border into the grumpy land known as France. Camping on a field with Basque fans, I woke up the next morning to sunshine on grassy Pyrenean mountains... the stage for an epic day in the Tour de France.

We saw early parts of the stage on the big screen. After hiking to the finish, we decided which part of the road we wanted to watch from, factoring in the number of places we could see them below us, the amount of time we could see them riding along the hillside, and the distance between security guards so that we could run alongside them.

Apparently I was on TV. If you see the footage in the future, I want you to have this thought in mind:
These guys embody athletic perfection in the sport. When I was training, there was some piece of my inspiration that came from a faint hope of racing this very race. And when you're biking there's plenty of time to think about this. All those corny sports movies, where the underdog makes it at the buzzer... that feeling you feel when the crowd stands cheering? That feeling where you can't help but burst out in a fist pumping, Braveheart cry of excitement and victory? That's what it felt like to be so close to these animals, battling towards the summit. That's why I look so excited. I am rejoicing that somebody has achieved the pinnacle, made their body into an unstoppable machine; somebody has become the best.

On a downer note: Yeah, the doping issue factors in, but that's a whole different discussion. It doesn't change how you feel when you're there. It's a spectacle, after all.

On the way back, I stopped by San Sebastian with Sam and KO. One of my favorite towns in Spain. The beaches were so packed that you could see more skin than sand. On a whim, I rented a surfboard and tried that for 3 hours. Then I went for a hike and slept in a bivy sack just outside of town near some homeless people, looking out over the ocean and the town.

 

Felix in the finishing circuit.

 

Skinny Russian punk.

Anti Doping Control Results: Negative

 

Day 3

Today started with a bang -- at the door. The so-called vampires woke our asses up at 8:00am for doping control. We had to walk down the hall to a makeshift testing center set up in one of the spare hotel rooms. Apparently 3 or 4 teams were checked, blood being taken to look for suspiciously high hematocrit. I thought the whole thing was a bit laughable, since I'm not taking EPO, ut some around here take such things pretty seriously. Most who know me would have had a good laugh watching me sign my name Carlos Hernandez on the doping control sheet, still in my boxers, just nodding to the arbiter and trying to keep my mouth shut and my eyes down.

I finally served my worth today. I felt a ton better, and got myself into the break of 10 guys on the first hill, allowing the rest of my team to sit in. I think we had a few minutes on the peloton at one point. Today featured monster ascents and monster descents -- truly epic. Hanging with the break on the descent was a proud moment for me. We didn't get caught until maybe 1/3 up the big, big climb. My job being done, I just had to set a tempo for myself until the top and survive until the end. I would have liked to stay with a particular grupetta, but they were a bit too quick. I'd like to think if I had been smarter and eaten more I would have been able to stick with them. But that's just me being hard on myself. Today was a success for me, one of the biggest days of my cycling career.

I've included a picture of my test results. Can anyone shed some light on some of the numbers?

Day 2

I started. Felt like an accomplishment after how crappy I had felt. Got through the first climb and descent, but things got split again in the winds afterward. Unfortunately, 3 or 4 of us were stupid/weak enough to be too far back and got caught on the wrong side of the split. The stage was frickin' tough, but staying with the grupetta was doable and I ended up feeling better by the end of the stage. I mean steep steep steep. You see that little bump at the end? Ya, that hurt. One of my teammates was able to grab onto the ambulance for short stints while the officials weren't looking.

Two down. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel even better.

Day 1

Things started off kinda bad, as I heard what sounded like a gunshot and a few seconds later I saw through the splitting peloton one of my teammates sliding on the ground after his tire blew. Bad first kilometer of a four day race.

I felt like a pile of poop today. I tried to help defend some attacks early when it was flat and rolling with a cross wind. If an attack had guys from three teams that we had discussed earlier, then we had to go with.

The climb today was tough. I felt like people were flying, and every turn had more climbing. I was in the red for a full 5 minutes until the end. Definition: "`the red"' means I'm breathing with practically every pedal stroke, my upper body swaggers back and forth to try and muster any energy I can, I'm cross-eyed with pain. Ugh, it hurt and hurt bad. I was maybe halfway in the pack, which was spread over a distance of maybe 500m of the hill. I was happy with that at the moment. But I hadn't saved any for the descent and quickly lost the wheel I had worked so hard to stay on. I had a hard time recovering on the descent with one other teammate, and after pushing more still, we were swallowed up by maybe 15 or 20 riders who were motivated to get back with the front group.

From then on, I was hurting. I had poured too much into the hill and against all advice, I lingered at the back of the pack hiding from the wind as much as I could. An hour later, the inevitable attacks came with a change of the winds, things got guttered (single file inches from the side of the road as people try to get as much draft as possible). I got gapped and fought back through the cars after grabbing water and getting motivated by his shaking head. But things didn't get much better as I joined up with 15 others that had been gapped in the crosswinds as well.

More suffering. The kind of suffering where you just want it to end. You want to get under the finish line, grab some of the free Coca Cola, lay your bike down in the grass, and take a nap. All the little excuses pop up.

The champions are made from those who are strong and brave enough to hammer with the best, attacking and defending and winning and coming close, not caring about how tired they are, not caring about 5 years down the line, not caring about tomorrow.

I've realized that if you are on the brink of cracking, you have three choices. This is important because you have to deal with this decision for hours at a time every day. You can: 1) Stop, get in the car, and face the disgrace. 2) Try hard and fail, just barely losing the wheel ahead of you, getting shouts from riders behind you, and possibly riding alone for the last 50km of the race. 3) Push through the pain, mustering everything you can to stay on the wheel, and get carried a few more kilometers closer to home.

When you haven't done your job, your manhood shrivels. When you haven't done your job and you know you could have, your manhood shrivels more.

After the race I felt terrible. Chills, nauseated, ready to lay down and die. Having my parents here was great, but only encouraged my self-pity. I let myself feel terrible for a full 20 hours. Wanting to hide in a bath, or in a closet full of fluffy blankets, or even crawling into a hole would have done fine. Just wanted to spend a few days somewhere else. No more Spanish, no more racing, no more anything. Just wanted to escape. If there had been a taxi outside, I would have jumped in.

Morning of...

Yeah, waking up, that bed sucks. I feel like somebody just beat the shit out of me, kicking my feet out from under me, and repeatedly kicking me in the back until I tapped out.

Went to get the free breakfast and it was a bit of a disappointment. Cafe con leche in a bowl with little packaged croissaints to dip.

Ah, part of the mystery is solved. Some of the cross bars under the thin mattress are missing.

I have to admit that things aren't off the a fabulous start. Yesterday everyone was more or less grumpy. And it's the little team things that are missing, like everyone trickling to breakfast at different times. But then again a lot of the team don't really know each other sometimes. We seem to go through the same cycle every vuelta. Lots of little smalltalk until we have the chance to get to know each other during the long hours spent on the bike and in the hotel room.

But I prefer a cycling team that is able to act like a Spartan army. Well drilled and ready to fight until death.

Things start to get nervous too. You can see all the team cars swarming around, the race officials, the CocaCola tent giving away free stuff, the dozens of police motorcycles... the whole shebang. Gets your blood going a bit, knowing what's ahead.

 

Arriving in Avila

Sitting on the hotel room bed, I just saw a commercial for Smirnoff featuring George Clooney, complete with his raised eyebrows and even saying "Magnifico" at the end -- just like Lost in Translation. While I rolled my eyes at that, I had to adjust my position so that my butt rested in between two bed springs, rather than let one spring bottom out under my weight. Yes, this may be the worst bed I've ever slept on.

The location of the hostel the team picked is pretty cool. Inside the city walls of Avila, the cobbled streets and plazas and restaurants are some of the best I've seen in Spain. We downed plates of pasta, tons of bread, salad, and after the Cuban's insistence, Jose divied up the single bottle of wine. As I sipped it, noticing it's high alcohol content, I felt myself get a bit confused; after a moment I realized they were playing a Deck the Halls instrumental as background music. WTF. Wow, Spain, wow.

The team arrived in normal fashion. One team car and the team van, hammering along Spanish freeways at 130-150kph. The rolling fields were gold with lonely trees here and there. And it was hot. The only thing that really lifted my heavy eyelids? Ayala, the assistant director, slamming on the breaks and laying on the horn until the person in front of us got out of the passing lane. Or maybe a 270 degree highway exit that slammed me either up against the window or against a fellow racer.

After dinner I had a chance to see the city walls lit up. Easily one of the more amazing sites I've seen in Spain. Huge and spectacular. In twilight, with Venus peaking over one of the walls, having cafes with team... something to remember.

Tomorrow could be really hard. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the days leading up to a race, you kind of want to chill out. No major workouts or anything, but enough miles so that you're not feeling slugish on the first stage. On Sunday, I joined Pepe and Moncho (shown above) for a good ride. We averaged 30.5 kph with some hills in there, which is a pretty good average speed for how easy we were going. We notched it up for one section (for those who care: 291W for 35 min and it felt like tempo, except for the last 2 min at 349W). As usual with rides over 3 hours, we stop for Coca Cola along the way, either at a gas station or a bar. Pepe also bought one of those packs of a dozen chocolate covered donuts. Classic.

The big news of the last couple days is that Pepe escaped back to Mexico. There had been quite a bit of tension between Jose and him. He took a team bike with him; Jose's pissed. But when you're unhappy, you gotta do what makes you happy I suppose. He had been injured, he hadn't been paid by Jose, his girlfriend's waiting, he hasn't seen his family for 7 months, he hasn't been racing well, and he's just been generally in the dumps. With a quick switch of the ticket, he was off. He is a ridiculously fast climber, so I think he'll be looking for a pro team spot in the US.

Today I did a 4 hr ride with mom and dad following along in the car. As usual, their mouths dropped in awe at how beautiful the ride was. It reminded me how lucky I am to be able to train in such an awesome place; it was also inspiring to be able to show them what I've been doing over here all this time. I think what really hit them were the cool little towns with narrow streets and neat churches, old people waving as we quickly roll through town, and the great views after a narrow winding climb.

I have some videos I'll try and post. But for now, gotta hit the sack and rest up for the race. We leave tomorrow afternoon, and I have to clean the bike, pack, train, and wash up before meeting over at Jose's.

If you're not addicted already: great videos of the Tour on http://www.velonews.com/vntv/ and live coverage on cyclingnews.com

Posing for mom during training ride

 

I'm trying to get back on a better sleep schedule before the race this weekend. My preferred method is a glass (or three) of wine around 10:30 or 11, aiming for a gentle passout before 12. Tomorrow I'll be showing mom and dad one of my favorite training rides. They've made the trip to Spain to rack up the tourist points, enjoy the sun, and catch a glimpse of all this racing business.

Last week I jumped in the rent-a-car with mom and her travel buddy Charlotte Richardson to visit the Alhambra in Granada. This extravagant palace was built about 800 years ago by Islamic people as their reign in Spain was fading. The place is awesome: the walls have really cool Escher-like tilings, the ceilings are mind-blowing, and Arabic calligraphy is carved into many of sandstone walls. The gardens were great too, with peaceful water features.

I imagined Samsonite saying, "Yeah, I could live at this house. I bet I could throw a rad party here. I'd put the keg right next to that archway, and the wet t-shirt contest would be right next to that fountain, bathing suit contest in the pool, and that pray room with the mahogany ceiling? Well, that'd be the dance floor."

I have had a couple single day races the past two weekends. I was able to contribute in small ways to the team effort, but more than anything they just let me get back in the swing of race pace. In other words, you have to try and get that Jedi awareness back in the fingertips. I slid out on one corner with only 3km to go, so I've been dealing with a tiny bit of pesky road rash. Some people are born with the ability to swerve around dusty, oily city streets at 28mph, but for me I have to get used to it in bits and pieces.

The same goes with descending. On my own, I like to take my time; I don't go slow, per se, but in last weekend's race, I was quickly reminded that racing means racing. There was one long and rough descent where my hands were getting tired of clutching the levers and my arms tired of guiding the bike around corners. Those are the moments where you really have to pay attention. All useful thoughts have long since melted in the 90 degree heat. Just get to the finish line under the protection of the grupetto, as the break has already left and the fate of the race already been decided.

I confess I perform two acts of selfishness when I am in the grupetto. One: on the hills I like to try and suggest a pace just a tiny bit faster than the rest desire; it feels fine to me, and I don't like how lazy everyone's being. Karma will come to get me though when it is my turn to be the one suffering like a dog in the grupetto.

Second, I steal waterbottles. At several points throughout the 4.5 hr race, people stand alongside the road to hand us waterbottles. I hold out my hand and usually grab one from someone who looks confused about the 40 guys coming at him at 25 mph. Other times I grab one from a kind soul who is giving them out to anybody and everybody. But in either case, I muster up a grimace that easily communicates my desire for a bottle.

Sometimes that grimace comes all too easily.

Vuelta Segovia - riding and directing

Well I have been meaning to write for a while now about that race I mentioned. It was in Segovia, and each day's stage ended with a 2 km biatch-of-a-climb on cobbles. The last day featured a circuit that included this little nasty piece of road four times. It was beautiful.

So was the city. Segovia is famous for its monstrous aqueduct and its Disneyland-like castle that housed the king of Spain back in the day. It proved to be a great backdrop for riders who are cross-eyed in pain coming into the final 20km of a race.

I mentioned I'd drop out after a kamikaze effort to defend attacks and I am happy to report I did my job satisfactorily. (Afterwards, there's always second guessing, but at the time I was happy with it.) At a stage race, if you're not the leader, you judge your performance not on place or on time, but how well you did your job. The inspiration to do it is first to not let your teammates down. Also, you hope to avoid getting yelled at by Jose in the pre-bedtime team meeting.

The main obstacle was the Russian development squad. With most of their guys under 20, there were simply talented and well-drilled. Because this is well known throughout the peloton, there were also well marked. But that didn't keep us from having to mark their attacks too. Throughout the first hour of racing I'd often find myself on the wheel of those red bastards, going full speed trying to hang on for dear life until he finally turned around to see me, at which point they usually slow up because they know their move has failed. (They're never disappointed in this. I have only seen them disappointed at dinner, when they gloomily look at their empty salad plates, knowing they are not allowed to eat more that evening.)

But come 80km into the race, the rest of the team is told to sit in and I'm told to "make a tempo until death" -- that's the closest translation I can come up with. So here I am in the wind at the front of the peloton. Ugh, it's hard. And when those little red pieces o' shit go flying up the side and get 15 seconds on you with two other guys you start to get worried. And that's when you put your head down and just keep going in time trial mode. And when you finally catch them, that's what it's all about.

At that point, I'd drift back through the peloton as they surged for a counterattack or something. And then the Cuban or Felix would give me a nudge to help me get back up to the front (and get back to work).

I finally cracked and subsequently got in the car, faking a cramp and grabbing my leg (classic soccer move?) so that the judges didn't ask questions, and happily snatching a cold Coca Cola.

Will did some great work this vuelta. He was able to help drive a select break that had the Cuban in it. In case that doesn't sound hard, it is. I'll post his diary on the race soon so you can get the details. On the last day he attacked with 5km to go and survived until 2km to go (huge juevos), doing his part for the Cuban's stage win. It was very, very exciting to watch.

The other highlight for me: I got to see this from the point of view of team director. Yeah, I've been in the car before. But on the third stage Jose was hung over from partying the night before and only sleeping 30 min and I was able to do the whole thing. He literally was passed out in the back of the car for an hour and I was driving the team car, swerving in and out of the caravan, giving out magic water bottle launches, hollering into the team radios, and enjoying myself immensely. It was priceless.

You never know...

One of the frustrations of Spain, as you may have come to understand from Will's diary, is the unpredictability that comes with anything Jose touches. When you're training for racing, it is common wisdom to plan your training based on when you will be racing. Last week, I had been planning to be ready to race that weekend. I few days before I was told I wouldn't be going, but the day before things switched. Packed and lying in bed, the assistant director called and said that needed paperwork hadn't been sent back from Madrid to the director of Viveros, so I couldn't race. Pure lame sauce.

Mental purgatory. Getting psyched up to race is a whole body experience. Switching between those two states of mind is pretty draining.

I just got a call from Jose a few moments ago. Apparently one of the Cafemax guys can't go to this week's tour so I will start the race under his name and drop out before the finish of the first stage so we don't get caught. Starting with a full team I guess looks better on paper. I wasn't going to be able to do this race because it's only for Sub 23. But now it looks like I'll be feasting like a racer and living the hotel life. Expect those plans to change within the hour.

It's kind of like that time Sam and I decided to go to Gibraltar with him (6 hour drive) when he told us he was leaving in half an hour.

While I've been taught that planning and scheduling is the way, it can be good to have something this unpredictable in your life. Keeps you on your toes. Ready for anything. It's just sometimes I feel my soul has too much mass to happily match his accelerations.

Speaking of accelerations, I'll keep you updated on how the race goes. I'll try and take some good pics... this is Art's last hoorah and I'm betting Will has some good legs after a few days of rest.