Here's Ayala in the car impersonating and NBA commentator. I liked this because I always have wanted to know what English sounds like to people that are not native speakers. I would write more on this subject but Chris is a computer tyrant and my alloted time for the day has ended.

A Gitano Family Meal

Sam's Gitano Style Meal. The video also features the initiation haircut before we shaved the rest off. Pretty awesome. Video taken at our outside dinner table in our patio.

Fearing Insanity

The Long Pause

I haven't posted for several weeks because my computer has broken and news from Chris has in any case been far more thrilling than anything I can recount. The life of the injured cyclist in Alcoy involves a lot of time staring at the wall.

The knee situation, in summary: I have been diligently following my physical therapy exercise regimen, in addition to icing and stretching three times daily. For the first month in Alcoy, I rode from one half hour to three hours six days a week, for the most part easy spinning rides, usually alone. All seemed to being going well until last week when I began to notice an acute muscle pain in the vastus internus, the inner quadriceps. Luckily, my services were conveniently required starting on Thursday as mechanic for Jose's team at the Vuelta Cartagena in Murcia. Since the muscular pain is a result of building muscle too quickly and intensely, I needed a week of rest (translation: boredom). The tour provided the perfect distraction for me. On Saturday and Sunday I returned to light training without any trouble. Today I went to the physical therapist and he looked me over. The pain I still have around the entry points of my surgery is still noticeable, and that is normal. The slight tendinitis I have at the base of my knee cap is a result of the quadriceps being overstressed and should go away, so long as i can 'walk the tightrope' as they say, between under-activity and over-activity. The PT has been doing some variation of acupuncture needlework which seems to be helping as well.

The next ten days' forecast calls for rain and more rain. One day of rain is frustrating because typically you spend an equal amount of time cleaning the bike as you do training on the bike. Ten days in a row is rather fun because you can say the hell with it until that last day of rain comes to pass, in the mean time playing in the mud and road grit like a little kid with goulashes. A messy, cold wetness heightens the ever-present sense of abandon and letting-go you feel training through small olive grove roads and mountain passes, even in hot and dry conditions. There's a thrill to indulging in the basic mythical fantasy of sport, to withdraw into the sub-world of athletic metaphor where lactate threshold becomes your capacity for brute-like survival and the mountain is the dangerous predator. The rain drizzling stirs up this fun of pretending, though coming back to a cold apartment without a warm meal prepared or a hot shower isn't quite as romantic.

Other than that, not too much to report. A lot of my time is taken up by reading. Here's what I've made it through so far:

"In The Absence of The Sacred: The Failure of Technology and The Survival of the Indian Nations" by Jerry Mander

"Waiting For The Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee

"Steppenwolf" by Herman Hesse

"Walden" by Thoreau

"The Sweet Hereafter" by Russell Banks

"The People of Paper" by Salvador Plascencia

"The Tao of Architecture" by Chang

and currently, "Absalom, Absalom" y Faulkner

-Sam

Team car, director style

Cafemax on the front

The yellow jersey and two of his teammates, Rocco and Quim
My team car
View from my hotel room



On Sunday I got to ride in the Cafemax team car and see the racing from a whole new angle. I saw Jose shouting orders to the team through the radios, spying on other team's radio frequencies to know when they were going to attack, handing out extra water and food, deciding when to pull back breaks, deciding when to push it, and by the end of the day, securing the yellow jersey for the entire tour.

What was really great is that I got to see one of the greatest moments you can have in the sport of cycling, up close and personal. All day long the team had been drilling it on the front with the peloton stretched out behind; you see 6 green jerseys and a yellow jersey tucked in behind. A great image. With only 6k to go, the unbelievable happens: the yellow jersey flats. I immediately panic because I'm the one who's supposed to pull out the yellow jersey's extra wheel from the seat next to me. My heart's racing as Jose starts screaming and we pull up to Rafa (in yellow) and he's screaming and quickly looking from his wheel to the disappearing peloton. Back in the car, Jose lays on the horn for a solid minute and we see green jerseys popping out the back of the peloton, heads turned looking for their team leader, legs nervously getting ready for the effort. When Rafa catches up to them, each one starts hammering, pouring their hearts onto the road, and peeling off 30 seconds to a minute later when they can't do any more, yellow just going from one wheel to the next cross-eyed from the pain. Only two teammates left (one of them the Cuban) and I finally get to see the Cuban's pain face, in control but going faster than I thought possible, Rafa in tow. As one director later described, they were racing "with cajones" to catch back on. They almost lost the tour in the last 6k, but were able to keep it. It was an epic moment and I saw it from only a few feet away.

I also saw the bad parts of cycling: crashing bikes as handlebars got tangled or someone riding off into the countryside after being nudged a bit too far off the road. The Russians had a rough day, with two crashes I think.

Mañana, el tren...

My body is deteriorating. I am tired, my knee hurts, my throat is sore, my appetite left, my legs are cashed, my eyes burn.

Today was rough. Racing here is scary as shit. This "flat" stage was so fricking fast because people were attacking and the Cafemax team was defending to protect their leader. So things would just pick up all of a sudden, and if it was into the wind the peloton would immediately straighten out and you'd be in pain central, eyes on the wheel in front of you, for minutes of burning. Attacks would come up along the side of the peloton, teammates launching each other out front. I was flat out as hard as I could for several parts. We did 45k in the first hour of a 4 hour race. After about 65-70k, I got dropped with a few other guys and was able to weave in and out of the caravan of cars and motorcycles, pushing myself off of rearview mirrors and briefly holding onto bicycle racks and drafting inches behind cars. By 80k, I was officially dropped (symbolically noticed when the ambulance drove by) and left to do a timetrial home, a 60k solo effort, with only my motorcycle policeman escort for company. Oh man it felt hard. I joined up with another teammate for the last 15k.

I'm a lil tanky because I haven't eaten dinner yet, so I'll be in a better mood after that (and maybe even better after some anti-inflammatories for the knee).

A few things I've been meaning to write down. Racing life exists in three places: the hotel, the car, and the open road. The main excitements of the hotel for most racers include eating and catching a glimpse of the trophy girls. Some enjoy a massage or use of a Compex (electrical stimulation thingy). One of the most commonplace things is to see racers waiting for the elevator because they (I think) are superstitious about walking up stairs. Even if it's two flights, they'll stand and wait 5 minutes for their turn at the elevator. I don't get it. If you look around at people´s conversations about races, often times you´ll see them mimicking someone on a motorcycle, huddled behind their windshield, revving the engine whenever they describe a moment where they were really hammering.

I've been reading the Ender's Game series, which I have in full on my computer. Also, one thing rapidly eroding my patience is the GPS unit the old men use to (try and) not get lost, which invariably they do. It has a woman's voice that is constantly saying "rotunda, derecha, izquierda" and all that. And they're driving is atrocious; they have no concept of gradual deceleration nor the idea that curves are not successive straight sections of 100m pieced together.

After dinner: Careful what you wish for! Looks like I was outside of the (shortened) time limit by 3 minutes. I am not extremely disappointed because I know I did pretty much all I could. I am a little embarrassed in conversations with teammates and the Cafemax guys, because there's always an awkward silence and there's not much to say. You just weren't fast enough. You're not strong enough. You race like a little girl.

So, I ate a bunch of dessert. Mmmm... and I found out what one of the sauces was that was placed near the salad: Alioli, or something that sounds like that. It's like a spicy mayonnaise and it's awesome. I'm pretty sure it's what they put with patatas bravas.
I have another vuelta next week, so I hope that I can rest up enough between now and then to have this race put me in better shape for it.

All in all, I´m not too disappointed in the week, because I put in some good efforts. I just didn´t measure up that highly against these ridiculously fast guys.

Surviving

There's something to be said for senile men who have been around a sport for decades. I'm trying my best to get myself prepared: finding the nurse so that i can get some good bandages for my arm and hip, also asking for ibuprofen from her and asking for ice from the bar downstairs in order to treat the achy knee and the goose-egg on the hip bone. But once I'm outside and loading my stuff into the team car, he asks me how I'm doing, I say I hurt a bit, and he slaps me on the back with a smile and says, "You won't feel in the race!" (in Spanish/Catalan, but the meaning was clear. I guess this is just how they do it here.

Yeah, he's right. Somehow these injuries only affect walking, sitting, standing, and going up stairs. Once on the bike, they disappear. But before the stage I decided I'd award myself "Sack up" points if I finished the stage with the grupetto and that was my motivation throughout the day.

It started with climbing and we were going up one of the steady, long climbs we do in training, but instead of just mosying along, we were in our big rings going so fast we had to break around corners sometimes (going uphill, mind you). I rarely had a chance to look at what was happening in front, but I'm pretty sure there was a break of 10 or so guys and that put one of the other teams on the defensive, so they were tempoing at the front. I dont' know because I was just trying to hang on for dear life. Apparently it was a very exciting race. I did stay with the main pack long enough to see some of the things I've always wanted to see: team helpers moving up the pack to bring water and food to their leaders and other stuff like that.

I was a lot more cautious today, often tell myself, "Don't F*CK this up now, you've come this far." It's as if there are 1000 dangerousmoments (both physical and tactical) , and if you screw up on any one of em, it will ruin your day. Although in between the two big climbs there were some "rolly" parts, which translates to minute long sprints with the field stretched out single file as people try to hide from the wind. I almost fell back several times, but was able to draft for a moment behind one of the mechanic's cars for just a moment to spring back into the field. I looked at my odometer and realized I was only half way done with the stage, that I had 65 more kilometers to go, and I let out a whimper. By the second climb, I was cashed, and said goodbye to the field and joined a few guys in a grupetto to finish the stage with. A big part of that decision is that I saw one of the Superfroix guys fall back, and since that's one of the continental pro teams, if you can stay with him for the rest of the day you're sure to make it under the time cut. And there were plenty of guys behind me to help form the grupetto throughout the rest of the day.

So, although yesterday was just a bit better as far as pure power output goes, I am happy that I survived another day. I was also happy to do it while ignoring my little injuries. I was able to swindle a massage tonight by hanging around the Cafemax guys. I am still a bit starstruck at the little things... looking outside the hotel window and seeing the professional team mechanics work late into the night washing bikes and cars, the size of everyone's legs... I don't know, the ages range from 18 to 32, but people are only measured in how fast they are. Although I do have suspicions that directors also consider the size of a cyclists' testicles as evidence of potential, as my dad tells me they do with bulls.

power file

Ups and downs

I had a reason to be nervous for the start of this stage. They just went off, hammering up the hill. I did my best to stay in contact for the first 20k or so, with the front group of 50 or so. Then a small gap of 100m opened up and I pushed until I wanted to cry to get back on a wheel, but things were moving fast, and I couldn't. I felt that "give up" moment come and go, hope coming back and breaking my heart as it left again. Then Jose came by and yelled for me, whipping me forward a few times, then once seeing there was no chance, yelled "Groupetto."

This meant I should slow up and wait for the second group to form, which would ride together (not easily, but steadily) to make it to the finish within the time cut. It still took a lot of hard work to stay with these guys the rest of the day, and we picked up a handful guys throughout the day. I looked down and realized we were only halfway and said to myself, "Good god." It's a good, epic day. Four hours, 130k. There were some murderously steep parts, around 18% grade. But I felt pretty good throughout the rest of the mountains.

And then all my confidence went to shit on the descent of the last big climb. I had been riding #5 or #6 for an hour, staying near the front. I let my attention go for just a moment, and before I knew it there was a sharp left hand turn in a small town. I couldn't stop in time, skidded out on the inside corner and went down. Major suckage. Good day to bad day just like that. Got up, put my chain back on, and pushed hard to catch the grupetto before the final descent. It took all my strength to get them in time and some screaming from my team car behind me ("Venga! Venga!"), and I barely did. In times like that, the mental talk is not positive. It's not "Oh, think of how great it would be if you catch them!" Instead, it's "Think how much you'll hate yourself if you don't." You keep forming in your head how you'll explain to people what happened. Instead of pride, embarrassment.

So I write this just before I get in the shower to deal with the road rash. I'll be in a worse mood afterwards. (Note from later: it didn´t hurt as much as it did last time, which was exciting.)

But the battle continues tomorrow.

Here´s the power file from today. power file

Loss of innocence

Well, people race their bikes here really fast. It's pretty exciting to roll up to the town for the start of the race and see the other 15 teams preparing themselves; it's quite a spectacle and I think it's meant to be. Everything from the 25 police cars lined up one the sidewalk, complete with Guardia Civil in their high boots and aviator glasses, and then the large stage blaring music you might find on a 7th grade girl's iPod, and the Coca Cola and Powerade stands giving out their products to racers.

My team's director is about 75 years old; the distinct difference between his white-knuckle car driving and our breakneak bicycle racing makes sitting in the backseat tough for all of us, especially as he gets us lost for the third time on the way to the race. At least the scenery is beautiful.

A few notes from the race. My goal was to stay in the main pack if I could and not get dropped by enough time to be cut from the race. To do this, you have to try and stay in the middle of the pack: the back is for the people attacking and the teammates defending, the back is a no-man's land where you suffer from the extreme whiplash and rubber band effect of every corner, every rotunda, every speedbump as people slow up, sprint ahead, swerve, and bunny hop over obstacles. In other words, the probability of something bad happening increases exponentially the farther you are from the front. And there are plenty of bad things happening as water bottles explode the moment they fall from someone´s hands onto the ground, or the green traffic dividers that come before rotundas...

I had a pretty good time trying to stay out of the wind, and I took advantage of a few dozen good moments to move up a few dozen guys throughout the race. I saw the Cuban a few times, cool as a cucumber. I was right behind him, saw him move into the wind and get up to maybe 30th position. So I folled suit, but quickly realized how fricking strong he must be to be able to move in the wind at that speed with such ease and carelessness.

If you check out the profile, you see a few ripples. These are small hills, but good god we were flying up them and they didn't feel so little. I'd be hammering, sprinting, looking down at my legs hoping there was more, and I'd look up to see a hundred guys in single file with painfaces going around the next corner. I lasted through most of the hills, but broke with a handful of other guys before the end of the ripples, and we worked together to the end.

People race their bikes here really fast, but at least I survived to see another day. In case you can have software to see power files, here´s the download from today... power file

I had a chance to look around a bit more today. Our hotel is in the city of Torrevieja, overlooking the Mediterranean. There's a dock with a few hundred sailboats and beautiful empty beaches. I'll try and take some pictures, but I am preoccupied by fear and nerves for tomorrow's stage, which promises to be one of the hardest days of my life. If I'm not with a fairly large group at the top of the first climb, I am pulled from the race. If I survive past that, but finish after 119% of the winner's time, I'm pulled from the race. It's gonna be grueling to say the least.

Eye opener

I'm at the hotel and will be probably posting this a day late because the Wifi doesn´t work and there´s only one crappy internet terminal in the lobby of the hotel. This whole situation is a bit intimidating: this is kinda a big time tour.

I'm in a pretty sweet hotel room with two other guys on the team I'll be racing with, Viveros Alcanar. They were all very nice from the start, when the two directors met me at the hotel doors and ushered me up to my room before meeting the rest of the guys at an all-you-can-eat buffet where all the other teams were too. The food was a highlight for sure after living in Gringolandia: fresh salad, as much pasta as you want, yogurts, deserts, fruits, olives, lots of good stuff. Even jello was exciting.

But as soon as you look up from your food, you're not sure whether to laugh or be nervous. Have you accidentally walked into a mullet festival? No, there's only a few dozen amazing mullets, and they're scattered in a room of athletes. The darting eyes signal that people are sizing up the others in the room; the confident come in two forms, either laughing and enjoying their food and setting the tone for their team, or quiet and ready to let their legs do the talking. Both intimidate me because I know both forms will be causing me pain in only a few short hours.

The directors gave me some team clothing, including a skin suit and a sweat suit (hilarious corduroy-style getup, retro at best). After dinner they gave me my racing numbers. The team's from Barcelona, so their Catalan (especially that of the director's) was way over my head and might as well have been jibberish.

The Cafemax guys (the Alcoy riders that include the Cuban) came to say hi during dinner, and rub my head for fun. A few days ago, I lost all the hair on my head as part of an initiation ritual and to the great pleasure of Jose and the guys. It feels pretty good under the helmet, but I look like a fat Rasmussen (if you know cycling) or an underage marine recruit. Regardless, it reminds me I'm about to go to war.

Back to riding

Finally back to riding. This is a pic from one of my new favorite rides on an easy day. After that unfortunate few days last week, it's been good to get in some more miles before my race this week. In case you're interested, I'll be trying to survive a tour that's way over my head called the Tour of Alicante. It goes up a lot of the epic climbs I've come to love, but after this week, I might hate them forever.

Here comes the pain. Eat lightning, crap thunder.

A slight turn of events...

Today, my timing was impeccable. I turned back 30 minutes into a ride with Sam and Chris to get to the apartment just in time to have an unexpected visit with my ceramic friend who shares his room with the shower and the sink.

Yeah, that's right. We got diarrhea. Lots of it. Today's weak, measly ride was one of my hardest to date, since all my stomach muscles are regularly tightening and providing more than general discomfort. Duffy had it worst over the weekend, putting in 16 hours of straight sleep with some vomiting beforehand. Sam had one memorable night, and I've been under-the-weather for a few days now.

Sometimes we'll be off in separate parts of the apartment, catch a whiff of something truly awful, possibly dying or rotten, and scream out for confirmation that someone is still alive in the bathroom. Or things will be quiet (maybe we're reading) and all of a sudden you wonder if a faucet somewhere has broken (not far from the truth), or somebody has dumped a gallon of water onto the patio floor. The sounds and smells emanating from this particular restroom are horrifying.

I would have spared you such vivid descriptions, but it's become such a large part of daily life here over the past few days, it warranted a post and partially explains our lack of updates. Conversations about biking are replaced with conversations about Pepto Bismol. Emergency shopping trips for toilet paper have been successfully executed. For Duffy and I, diets have been stripped to bread, apples, bananas, and bottled water. Productive training has come to a standstill.

Our best theory to date is that Duffy and I were exposed to unexpectedly terrible tap water during the race weekend in the quiet resort town of Calpe, Spain.

Budget

My weekly allowance for expenditures is 8.5 Euros until July 21 when KO comes to visit.

First (Little) Race

Today was my first race. It was short (distance) and sweet (pain). You go as hard as you can and afterwards think, "Ah that wasn't so bad" as if you have immediately forgotten how your legs had been burning hot with pain for 5 minutes.

I'm not sure how I placed, but it was a good way to get the feet wet. I won't be racing tomorrow (something to do with license problems) but I will be racing Sunday under the same false name I used today.

Here are a few ways to know you're racing in Spain:

> 3 hours before the race, you are driving along the Mediterranean through beautiful resort towns, probably with beachside bars and the like. (Could we just pull over for a bit?) Your director is pointing out houses that are well-known in the porn industry.

> 2 hours before the race. You still don't know where the race is, what time you start, where your new team clothing is, or where a bathroom is.

> 1 hour before the race. You're drinking a coke, sitting watching your director each lunch as he talks with other directors, and you have no idea what's going on. One of them is showing his cyclist a porn video he has saved on his cellphone, laughing that the guy in it was last year's champion of Spain for cycling.

> 40 minutes before the race. New team kit has white shorts; leaves nothing to the imagination.

> 30 minutes before the race. Oh wait, just found out the race isn't for another 1.5 hrs.

> 30 minutes before the race, you find yourself asking strangers "Donde hay una carrera ciclista? Sabes?" Yeah, you got lost during the warmup.

> 20 minutes to go. You've found everybody.

> 1 minutes to go. The loudspeaker announces you to the start line under a false name.

Sorry for no pics. Also, new feature: I have posted my training log as a link on the right hand side. If you're really bored.... check it out.

The Pros on Home Turf

Duff and I joined the dudes on the team for a 5 hour ride. There's a professional cycling race in the area, the Vuelta a la Comunidad Valenciana, and they told us we were going to go watch the peloton climb on of our training climbs. Perfect day for it: blue sky and hot. We thought it was gonna be a "tranquilo" day, but they informed us it was "at rhythm" or something. This was made clear when one of the Cuban's friends, Ruben Plaza (3rd in the world at time trialing), joined us on our ride out to watch (and to make pace at the front of our group with the Cuban).

So whenever we hit a climb it was hard.

Watching the race was cool. We had a great vantage point on the edge of a cliff with miles of curvy roads in view. First you see the police and the officials, then the 3 man break, and then the bright peloton as it trucks its way around the steep, banked corners.

As they ride by, they take up the full road, so after a few moments of cheering I realized I was about to be run over by none other than Vinokourov, and I had to lean back as far as I could without falling off the side of the road. Up close, you can see that these guys are machines: their legs look enormous when they're on their bikes. They're of the species that led Roman armies to battle. Testosterone-filled (and overfilled?) men.

Some Saunier Duval pro joined us for the ride home. He had the team bike and was super nice and I enjoyed talking to him. I didn't bring enough food and cracked on the last moments of a big hill, catching up with the guys on the downhill, before cracking again on the last hill home. I limped my hungry body back to the flat before devouring my week's supply of food and falling asleep at the dinner table.