Is it kosher to open one's blog with, "wow" two days in a row!?!?!Because today deserves another "wow" and that's all there is to it.
This morning we departed our hotel in Santillana Del Mar and drove two hours southwest into the mountainous Asturias region of Spain to do some hard-core cycling of our own and then to watch Stage 13 of the Vuelta D'Espagne.
It's one thing to watch the Tour De France, Italy or Spain at home in Milwaukee on the TV. It's another thing entirely to be smack dab in the middle of all that crazy excitement, and to have the chance to ride part of the same route that the pros will ride the very same day.
Today we made the Hotel Palacio Figaredo our home base, jumped on our bikes and tooled southwestward into the mountains. The Tour of Spain pros had a 209km ride to complete today that included three Cat-1 climbs and a beyond category or "especial" climb to the stage finish.
We jumped on the same course several hours before the pros arrived in town and took just the last Cat-1 climb and then the dreaded "Alto De L'Angliru" immediately thereafter.
What an exhilarating experience! Having very little experience cycling anywhere outside of (very flat) southeastern Wisconsin, I had no idea what it was going to be like climbing up a 2,300 foot Cat-1 climb or a 4,500 foot "especial". It was very tough, but very exciting at the same time.
John Tonner and I agreed that today's experience put a whole new perspective on spin class terms like, "rolling hills", and "standing climbs"!
As a cycling fan, I've been watching European pro races on TV for some years now, but all of that pales in comparison to what it feels like to actually ride up one or two of these beasts, with gradients of 9-16% (and as much as 24%!). For those of you who follow pro cycling, you'll recall seeing massive crowds part very narrow mountaintop roads at the last minutes for the likes of Alberto Contador, Jan Ullrich or Lance Armstrong....well, they didn't part for us! These crazed cycling fans (many on road bikes, mountain bikes, or just hiking up the mountaintop) don't pay that much attention to what's going on around them, and our group fought hard just to stay upright as we climbed up a 16%+ grade at 3mph, surrounded by a sea of people!
Plenty of locals and tourists were there to ride the same course that our Trek Travel group did, and as the day got longer more and more people showed up on the Angliru to watch the likes of Contador, Sastre, Leipheimer, Bettini, Valverde and many others work their way up that famed climb.
Some of the hardier folks in our group made it all the way up to the top of the Angliru, while others (including ourselves) chose to climb one half or three-fourths of the way up before working our way back down through the crowd of 100,000+.
We watched the pros finish Stage 13 from the comfort of a hotel bar at the base of the climb, in a village called "La Vega".
There's simply no way to describe the scene - crazed cycling fans from around the world all congregating upon a mountainside to watch the best in the world compete on one of the hardest climbs in the world.
An unbelievable day - once in a lifetime!
Tomorrow we ride about 50 miles to the top of the ski resort of Fuentes de Invierno (another Cat-1 climb!) to watch the mountaintop stage finish 14...undoubtedly another day to remember!
Ciao,
John G.
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