Day 3: Sunday dawned pretty miserable: so much so that some of the RCS team supporters who were also out here, booked an early flight home the next day! Not built from granite, more like shifting sand.
We took the van across the mountain range to Marbella to the start of the climb. 20 minutes later and I wished I was back in the van as we got stuck into the foothills of what we later learned was a 25k climb. We probably climbed it too hard, driven by early camp enthusiasm and an act of stupidity by yours truly (trying to climb on the front the whole way: I really should know at my age). we made it safely over the top and descended into Pozzaro where we lost Dan at a traffic island…we are really good at that sort of thing. 5k later he was back with us and we started to climb back over the mountain to El Burgo (not the Spanish home town of our beloved Race Director). We had to do this whilst avoiding Marcos increasingly daring attempts to capture film from a mini camera..ultimately this consisted of him placing the camera in the middle of the road, urging us to ride as close to  it as we could whilst avoiding the oncoming traffic. He got really friendly waves from the local drivers as they showed their appreciation for his art.
Arriving in El Burgo we decided a coffee was in order and stupidly thought we could purchase one at the local bar. However we had activated our cloaking devices and therefore could not be seen by the waitresses we were standing in front of for 15 minutes. Only one thing for it, get in the van and drive to another bar.
Fully coffeed up (this can never be truly said of Richie, but can be absolutely said of Marco) we dragged our bodies out of the van, onto the bikes and blasted back for 30k.  
Total for the day was approx 107k.
More stretching and a sauna followed (spot the pattern) followed by too much to eat in the canteen.
Tomorrow was another day and we were all beginning to feel slightly sore…
         

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 6:36 pm and is filed under RAAM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.