Red, Red Wine...

Share on Facebook  Share on Twitter

BY: Alan Banks

Published: 10th July, 2014

In recent times I’ve come to consider the Spanish as a glorious race – warm, friendly, purveyors of great food and wine – and completely insane. These perceptions were once again reinforced during Team Adrenaline Junkies latest biking adventure, The Rioja Bike Race based out of Logrono in northern Spain. The team consisting of Jan Joubert, Chris Hodgson and I had been training hard and as we approached race weekend felt ready to meet the challenge head on. We must have looked the part as upon landing in Bilbao I was approach by one of the Eurocar staff and asked if we were the Australian mountain biking team! We of course denied the claim, informing our inquisitor that were in fact the Welsh Commonwealth Games team and were heading to Logrono as part of our final preparations for Glasgow. Full of confidence we loaded up the car and headed north to the race headquarters – little did we know what lay ahead!

It was the gin and tonics that did it! They were the size of small goldfish bowls and contained far more of the former than the latter. Drinking one of these prior to retiring to our hotel would have been unwise, but it was complete stupidity to knock back two in quick succession on top of consuming copious amounts of the local food and wine. Post G&T my recollection of the remainder of the evening is less than clear, but do remember registering 3am on my watch before collapsing on my bed and slipping into an alcohol induced coma. The race was due to start at 10am…

Stage One was only 55km but had 1200 meters of ascent. Much of the climbing was tough with some of the sections kicking up to 30%. There was no rest bite to be had on the descents which consisted of the sort of suicidal single track I have learned to associate with the Spanish. This level of riding is hard enough when sober never mind whilst in an alcohol induced haze! The first half the stage unsurprisingly passed by in a bit of a blur and the accuracy of my recollections are somewhat variable! I do remember the familiar feeling of being Gulliver in Lilliput as I towered over my fellow competitors, upon sobering up this recollection indeed proved to be correct. However the perception that I outclassed the Lilliputians by using my athletic prowess to crush them on climbs and by carrying great speed down the insanely technical descents proved less accurate. Upon reviewing the stage results it became apparent that my performance was more akin to the protestations of a drunk driver weaving all over the road while travelling at 3 mph on a motorway – I wuz drivin’ werrry semsibly offisser. I eventually limped across the finish line with a stinking hangover and a badly damaged ego.

Race position 606th!

Still there was always tomorrow…

Having limited ourselves to a couple of beers and a single bottle of red wine the previous evening, day two of the race dawned with me filled with optimism and self-belief. Stage Two was slightly longer at 62Km but had 1,700 meters of climbing. The stage description read “From Logroño you head towards Clavijo crossing huge areas of wine yards. A constant climb, that adopts a high mountain landscape as it gets tougher and gains altitude, ends at the Luezas area, from where a long and demanding downhill is faced along the Bonita singletrack. The Nalda hills are then ridden, reaching the named village after having descended the Monolito singletrack. Once Albelda de Iregua has been passed, you ride rapidly towards Prado Salobre where the last stretch of singletrack is awaiting before reaching the finish line.” The literal translation from the Spanish of “as it gets tougher” is “you’ll bleed from your eyeballs on this climb” and “long and demanding” means “be prepared to be scared witless”. To add to the fun whilst pushing my bike up a vertical section of single track my stag night injury resurfaced causing my back to lock up. Unfortunately the place this happened was where the course “adopts a high mountain landscape” or in other words “miles from anywhere and no hope of escape” so I had to complete the stage at half power using my one good leg to pedal. On the plus side, distractions were numerous, when cresting one of the many mountaintops the scenery was invariably nothing short of stunning and there is a dark fascination with admiring the skills of an air ambulance in the process of extracting an injured cyclist from their mountainside crash site.

This time I literally limped across the finish line only to be greeted by a very bruised and battered Jannie. By way of explanation, he’d been wondering why the crowd at the bottom of one of the descents was unusually animated, they’d been gesticulating at him wildly and shouting in a language he didn’t understand. Encouraged by their support he sped to the bottom of the descent only to realize that they were not cheering him to fly past them at great speed as he’d thought but warning him to stop before hitting a large drainage ditch. In a spectacular display of crowd pleasing skill he’d decided to bunny hop the aforesaid obstacle, failed miserably and planted his front wheel into the ditch sidewall, thus being catapulted over the bikes handlebars and coming to halt on a gravel road in a cloud of dust. I’d imagine the crowd would have been quite impressed.

To my surprise Chris was yet to finish and we became concerned for his safety. We located a race official who spoke broken English and asked him using a combination of loud voices and incomprehensible gesticulations whether Chris’s name was on the casualty list, his response was “ch-eighty people ch-have been ch-executed”. At that moment and much to our relief Chris appeared on the finishing straight, however our relief soon turned to horror when the reason for his slow progress became clear. On a positive note there were some parts of Chris’s body that were less bruised and lacerated than others but his right knee didn’t look good. Chris had misjudged the tail end of one of the many technical sections of single track and tumbled down the mountainside being before luckily brought to a halt by a thorn bush – it took five Lilliputians to haul him and his bike back up to the track. His injury was a very similar to that Jannie sustained in Andalucía which had taken months to heal. I escorted Jannie and Chris to the field hospital to have their injuries cleaned and dressed after which we retired to the old town for tapas and beers.

PUBLIC APOLOGY: At this point I must extend a sincere and public apology to Chris. In a misplaced attempt to cheer him up I feigned a punch to his testicles – “I know how to take your mind of the pain in your knee…”. Unfortunately my judgment was impaired by fatigue and I misjudged the punch, resulting in a sweetly landed blow to his nether regions! I have to say the shocked look on the nurse’s face as some unknown guy marched into the treatment area and smacked her patient in the balls made the embarrassment I felt at the time worthwhile.

Overall position after Stage Two, 646th!

Having limited myself to five beers and a liter of Rioja the previous evening Stage Three started well, I felt strong for the first time that weekend. The initial 22km of the stage only had 450 meters of gentle climbing and I was able to put the hammer down, picking up nearly a hundred places before I crossed the first timing point. At 24km the route started to kick up viciously and at 25km my back spasmed once more. Despite undertaking a series of contortions in an attempt to ease the muscles off they remained steadfastly locked and my race was over. I made my way morosely back to the starting point where I met Chris, who hadn’t been able to start due to his injured knee, and we decided to go for a beer. By the time Jannie rolled across the finishing line we’d been doing our best to drown our sorrows for several hours, but had failed. Far from the ticker tape reception that he was expecting he was received by a couple of miserable old soaks sobbing into their beer about what might have been. Still it was good hear how much he’d suffered during the final stage…

Final Position: dnf

All in all a fabulous weekend of riding with two great guys, and the moral of the story? To reign in Spain fall mainly on the plain – and do not attempt to ride off the edge of a cliff which the insane Spanish race organizers have classified as a ‘demanding piece of single track’!

---

Click any of the images below for a larger view / slideshow