la Vuelta a Ibiza

vuelta a ibiza 2010

This year the routes of the first two days were quite different to last year. The final day was very similar to the last time.

day 1
Eivissa town - Santa Gertrudis

We knew quite a lot of this route, because at Christmas we'd done a version of it with Bartolo. The profile for this route was more or less one long climb and then a series of gradually diminishing lumps to the end.
The meet up for the start in Eivissa is great fun, full of bright colours and loud excited chatter. At the control de firma Where we all have to sign on ceremoniously, there's lots of back slapping and posing for photos. We meet up with the guys from Kandani/ Santa Eulalia CC - David, Sergio, Juan Marí, Pasqui, Fátima and others we don't know. They are all wearing the new club kit for the first time, me gusta mucho and I must get one :) We then spot Jo from the Mastergym Team, and go to say hello. We met Jo last year at the Extrem, she'd ridden with Julie for a while on the course. She's looking fit this year and says that she's been going well and enjoying in the duatló series on the island. In Ibiza the duatló is run - bike -run off road.
At the start there are more fireworks than usual and we slowly set off through clouds of smoke into the streets of Eivissa, enjoying the fiesta like atmosphere of people cheering and waving. Once into the outskirts the riders who'd got a bit excited at the start and had overcooked it, started to drop back a little bit. And the lead car turned off we were in the front group, not far behind Fátima. The climb was mostly wide tracks with little plunges into wooded singletrack but generally these were short lived and the theme was up. Toward the top of the climb the trail became much more broken up and technical and as we crested I could see that the descent was pretty technical but wide. A few people seemed to fluff the first drop off and 20 metres ahead I could see that Fátima was scooting. I got ready to dismount behind Jane, but she just rode straight off it!! Whoa :) The rest of the descent was fast and rocky and Jane was riding very well. Only baulking a bit on the left hand off- camber bends :)
We all dropped into San Rafel together where the avituallamiente was on the church cobbles. We grabbed some coke and went to sent off but couldn't find the way out. It was only then that we found out that we were to regroup before setting off again....odd! We stood around and chatted for half an hour or so before setting off behind the jeep out of San Rafel. The stop had made our legs a bit heavy so we took it easy to with the idea to save our legs for tomorrow. This area has some great trails that we know already, but nearing the end I said to a guy we'd caught 'cuanta falta' and he said 'menos de un kilometro' and at that point we hit some fantastic singletrack through the trees and we pushed hard and fast through it to' la meta' at the campo de futbol in Santa Gertrudis. The campo was filled with long bench tables and a stage for the post ride feast and the enterntainment. Art and Juan Ferrer were helping out in the kitchens so we said hello to them. Juan said he was going to race the next day. We sat and chatted and ate for an hour or so and got sun burned :)