|
|
|
Madrid, ESP World Cup |
|
|
|
Written by Adam Craig
|
|
Saturday, 06 May 2006 |
It’s May, which usually means we’re on the other side of the pond doing some proper high end World Cup racing. This year is no different, although it is going to be a relatively short trip, hitting Madrid, Spain, Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium and Fort William, Scotland in three weekends. For this reason Carl easily talked himself into coming along for some adventures and seriously aggressive racing. I’m pretty stoked to have someone to look at and speak to in the hotel room for a couple weeks. Speaking of hotel rooms, we’re spending some quality time in them, which is actually kind of nice. Sometimes it’s nice to be off the radar, just sitting around resting up and riding bikes. The good simple life.
 | | Adam & Carl on La Morcuera |
Life got a lot more complicated when the gun went off at the start of World Cup #2 in the classic Casa del Campo, Madrid’s answer to Central Park. Actually, other than me ending up in a position to ride some other guy’s bike after he fell off it on the steepest climb of the day (which is staying a lot…) I somehow ended up straddling it as if I were going to ride off, fortunately I was so gridlocked in fellow crazed fools that I couldn’t go anywhere. I should really let Carl tell how things were a few rows back where the real action was though…
Okay, 56th position in the grid of 230 riders seemed like a decent place to start my first race in Madrid. I’d paid my dues by grunting myself to the line at the first World Cup at Curacao and now I was in front of 174 suckas that were gonna have to get by me for a change. Well, as it turns out, I don’t think they were too worried about that. After two minutes of fast and scary, but normal racing, we came into the first singletrack, where all hell broke loose. Now imagine a steep little uphill trail. Then imagine how long it would take 10 riders to ride past on that trail, wheel to wheel at 8mph. Then multiply that by 23. Not interested in math? Neither were any of the crazy Euro racers. As soon as the course marking tape was breached, it was ON! People of every nationality were storming through the bushes, sometimes parallel to the course (kinda cheating), sometimes perpendicular (definitely cheating!) and cutting off massive chunks of the course in the process. At one point I was trying to be a good person and riding on the course’s singletrack, when I noticed that 200 people were riding an adjacent road 30 meters outside the tape. The front 25 guys and me and about five other Yankees rode that section of the trail. I didn’t look back to see that they were Yankees, but I could tell that they were, cuz they all used the F word the same good ol’ USA accent that I was using as we tried to catch up! After the first half lap, the course came together and I was able to see the lead group four minutes ahead of me. We’d been riding for about nine minutes.
Once things strung out, I put my head down and reeled guys in for the first 4 of 7 laps. Then my aggression and jetlag got the best of me and I resigned to cooling down during the race instead of burying myself trying to crack the top 80. I was pulled with a lap to go, 142nd place. Possibly the highest finish of any race I’ve ever done. And I’m fit! I swear I am! I’ll have to run the NYC Marathon or something to ever beat that. Oh, wait. There are rumored to be 400 starters this Sunday at Spa. Wish me luck?
Adam had better luck on Sunday, with a decent start (21st) but heavy legs. He made the most of his start and fought his way to a reasonable finish of 41st. Nothing to write home about (other than a remarkable anecdote about a Spaniard looping out in front of him and causing him to somehow end up trading bikes for a moment) but that should reserve a good call-up for the next couple of weekends.
Our results aside, Madrid was great. The trails were fast and fun, and there were lots of excitable spectators and the occasional topless hooker cheering us on. With a little luck, we’ll get some stuff done in Spa and Scotland.
Thanks for reading.
AC 'n' CD |
|
|
|
|
; "Adam & Carl on La Morcuera")
