With the weather warming up, I thought it’s about time I sent you all a few pictures of this years Vuelta de Murcia.
Lance Armstrong flew into San Javier Airport on the Tuesday morning and went straight to his hotel (at Polaris World Resort) whilst the rest of the riders (including his Radio Shack team, stayed in San Pedro). He doesn’t make things easy for himself, as when Martine and I went to the time trial everyone, from all the teams were out giving interviews, photos, etc, even Kloden from the Shack was signing autographs. Armstrong had the local police pushing everyone out of the way. I did get a couple of lucky shots of him warming up, but there was no hiding when he was waiting to start the T.T. I must admit he looked ready for racing. He looked a lot slimmer than on TV and I was quite impressed with his performance and overall 7th place.
I was surprised by the amount of English out. Must be the new Sky Team and Endura riding. At the TT I went over to speak to a couple of riders from Endura team who were warming up on the rollers when out popped Guillermo Molino from the team bus. He came up to me shaking my hand and patting me on the back (he was an old friend of mine ) and rides in some races. He was working for Endura as the mechanic. He speaks no English so I don’t know how they understand each other. The team did win the blue point jersey and a couple of top 10th places. Guillermo is such a nice guy, I wonder if the Endura team know he was a past world road champion in the late 60’s. It’s great when he turns out to race, as he has the world bands on his club jersey with matching champion helmet and bike painted up as well. He probably has a pair of pyjamas in the world bands !!
I told my friends over here at the TT that Wiggins was up against it in the TT, let alone the overall, as Fran Rabon was on the same time at starting the TT and he won the TT last year and sure enough, he won it and the overall.
Incidentally, Martine is now working for the local magazine and they asked if I’d do a couple of write ups for them…..for the March issue, I put together information on what the Vuelta de Murcia is all about and the stages etc. Obviously, I was limited in space and had to write it in a format so that a “non cyclist” could read it, understand it without getting too bored !For the April issue I did a follow up piece on the actual event. If you want to check these out you can view them at www.costacalidachronicle.com (link on left hand side of page to april 2010 issue, article on page 38), March issue under the heading “back issues, and article on page 48. Martine was also asked to write a book review, so we’re becoming proper local celebrities !!
Picked up my new race kit today as I was being taken out to my first race for 5 weeks !
First Race of the Alicante series…..
Guadamar De Seguro. Sunny, 23 deg. 184 riders, 80k. Very windy today so it will be hard and dangerous trying to get past slow riders when you’re in one long line. We started off with a tail wind in one big lump of riders. 58kph so no problem, then we turned left, hard,but still no problems. Then 15 riders ride away. I could just about see them go but was too far back so had to wait. Then we turned back on ourselves into a right shoulder cross wind. This blew the bunch to pieces. I was in the 3rd group on the road with about 45 others. 2nd group had about 60 riders with about 40 riders behind my group. Juan Antonio from my team was 18th and best rider from our team, Ramon and I nowhere. Next week 10k time trial.
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