Still Alive!!

So, the keen eyed amongst you may have noticed that the Blog entries dried up 2 days into the Mallorca trip & despite returning on Sat night, we have only now managed to actually write something down!

Day 2, as previously mentioned was a big day in the saddle for us & was followed on Tuesday by even more - 120 miles with more climbs, decents & fast flats. It became increasingly clear that our club doesn't appear to be like anyone elses. Loads of big teams & clubs out there from all over the world, biking round in big organised bunches - cruising along in tidy symetrical lines. Not us though - every opportunity to blast the group into pieces was taken - the only time we were all really together was on the plane & at dinner! A very hard day - the long climbs don't seem to bother us too much, but what seemed like a never ending drag aroung the 'undulating' northern coast road into 25 mile hour head winds was as near as I came to being broken. I stopped in a layby to take on some nutrition & Gen caught up & gave me a good talking to which gave me a kick up the arse to get through to the lunch stop.

Wednesday was a slightly gentler 'neutralising' day, a slower pace into & through Palma with a fantastic long cycle path right along the seafront & beyond. A couple of bike shop & coffee stops thrown in. Nice to go slower but still high mileage & our butts by this time were really feeling it. Could go into more detail but probably best left alone, thank god for chamois cream is all I'm saying.

Thursday was more of the same, not helped by the Weds night post dinner walk turning into several pints of Amstell & dancing in a late night bar in Magaluf. Not very sensible & felt very weak & shaky for the first couple of hours!

Friday saw many of the guys easing back but us two & a couple of others fancied more mileage & more climbs. We retraced lots of the climbs we had done over the last few days over a steadier but pretty arduous 80+ miles. Good ride without the pressure of constantly chasing all the others.

Another evening featuring Mr Amstell saw a trembly & slightly nauseous start to Saturday & after the first climb some of us stopped for a coffee & never really made it beyond that. Only 2 hours was planned anyway as the bikes were being returned so not much lost there.

So to summarise the week.............
1) We were worried about the mileage and it wasn't too bad, in fact we didn't need a rest day & did an additional long day too.

2) We were worried about the climbs but we actually weren't too bad at these & neither of us were last up the mountains as expected.

3) We hadn't really considered the descents but we are both crap at them (steep banked hairpin turns are not for us). Some guys were hitting 60 mph going down them, the only thing we were hitting was the brakes!

4) What I thought was a long bike before is now not & we are much more confident about what we are capable of.

5) Palmanova, where we were staying is somewhere I would NEVER go for a holiday. So noisy & untypical of the rest of the island with rows of English bars full of fat tattoed burnt idiots getting paralytic at 10 am. Fortunately we were out of there in 5 minutes on the bike. The rest of the island was stunning.

6) We bike for a club that tried to destroy us, each other & everyone else in front at every opportunity. I think that they were surprised that we held in there & will definately go back for more of the same next year.