Saturday 30 March 2019

Spain => Italy

Residing in Calpe seems a distant memory now, although we’ve only spent a week on Italian soil. Forty kilometres north of San Marino, sits the seaside town of Cervia, which is our base for the next few months. The community is slowly invigorating in conjunction with the tourist flux, sunlight is claiming more of each day, and the weather is starting to become ‘hot’, at least by English standards. Living is noticeably less luxurious here, mostly due to our densely populated apartment, but I have now adapted and procedures which seemed strange now feel like the norm. We’re also attending Italian lessons every week, so before you know I’ll be able to obtain an Italian passport.

During our time in Spain, we competed in many of the local races, to hone our skills and test our legs before the internationals over here. These generally went well and I managed two top tens in my first three outings. I flew home for a few days in February to catch up with friends and let off some steam and returned with my parents to give them a brief guided tour of the Costa Blanca. We weren’t planning to race the following Sunday, but my parents were able to take me. Fortunately the three of us and and my bicycle fitted together like an unorthodox jigsaw inside a Fiat panda.

I’m very fond of these smaller Spanish races. They seems to encompass what bike racing is all about - bringing people together, creating a spectacle and challenging the riders. This weekend was no different. The race was run out of the local cafe and despite seeing very few signs of life on arrival, it seemed that the town’s entire population had come out of hibernation to watch the race. The start was fairly relaxed, but I stayed alert to watch any potential moves. In the middle section of the race, there was a timed segment, where the fastest rider would receive a joint of ham as a prize. This interested me greatly. I went fairly hard and after we finished sprinting for the ham, there were only ten of us left, so we decided to push on down the smooth, flowing descent and soon had a minute over the peloton. The gap reduced to 30 seconds and the catch looked likely but we started working again and ended up with a gap of two minutes before the final climb - five kilometres at around 7 percent. I attacked multiple times, but at one kilometre to go I finally broke free and took the win by eighteen seconds.

The delight of winning a bike race is more than just the initial rush. I was struggling to sum it up until I came across  a quote in a book last week. ‘The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.’ The victory was a great boost for morale, but the real challenges lie in the Italian races, where the level is as good as it gets. I will have to be patient, but hopefully I can adapt and grow as a rider and some big results will follow. Thanks to everyone who is supporting me, as always. Until next time, ciao.



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