Stage racing in Spain - yes please!

Having enjoyed the free champagne and afternoon tea on the way out (Club Europe really can make sense when it's cheap and you're travelling with a bike as you can take 2 X 32kg bags with more spares in for reassurance - often it's only about £30 more) it was time to go and check out some of the course.  Ben had it loaded on his Garmin and so we went out for a spin in... 19 degrees and sunshine.  Already this is better than racing in Britain.  The trails were pretty tame but there were a lot of insanely fast fire road descents that, in the race, I knew I'd struggle to keep up with the craaaazy euros on.  All I can see in my head at 35mph on a fire road is a rock going into my face.  That evening I changed the Burts left on after battle on the beach for Racing Ralphs (snakeskin of course to cope with the rocks) and then tried to establish what the annoying creak coming from my bike was.  Turned out Roki wasn't the only one with some broken RaceFace Next SLs.  The alloy non drive side axle insert had delaminated from the carbon crank.  Cue a frantic trip to a hardware store (Ferreteria a always makes me think it should be a shop in Rotherham selling Ferrets) to buy some superglue.  The man in the shop was confident it would work.  It didn't.  Despite best efforts, after 20m the following day the creak returned.  Praying they would last the race, I began stage 1.

Stage 1 was brilliant.  A touch short for me at 2 1/2 hrs, but the descents were fantastic.  Nearly all on singletrack and not too scary that you felt like you should take it easy.  Ideal for me!  Having been gridded 176th I knew I had my work cut out and so attacked hard off the start.  I ended up finishing 47th elite which I was happy with.  That evening, Ben was a star and drove me to a local shop recommend via Twitter by the race organisation (THANK YOU!!!) to buy

some new Rotor cranks.  The creak had got really bad.

Day 2 was the toughest stage and the duration - 3 1/2 hrs - and the climbing was always going to suit me better.  I felt great on the stage and rode well with a group of 4-5 spaniards; spanking it up the hills and trying not to lose too much time on the descents.  After more superb trails, I ended up 43rd elite overall.

Day 3 was a lot shorter at only 1 1/2 hrs, but I felt amazing and so got my best result and ended up 37tj elite overall.  There was one section I lost some time on - think Hadleigh rock garden but about 2 or 3km long...

The VolCAT was a great event and I'd love to come and do it again.  Thoroughly recccomended!!

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