Update of the last few weeks

HOLA from Spain!

An update on what's been happening over the past few weeks...

Team talk before one of the races

I have been mostly been competing in races in the spanish cup competition. In these races, I am pretty much a work horse for the Spanish girls, as it is important for them to do well in this competition. So far we have done really well, winning all 5 of the races, beating the more highly ranked Bizkaia-Durango team each time. It has been really nice to be in a team that works really well together, and makes doing your job feel worthwhile, as you know you have a strong team mate who can finish it off at the end. Starting from next week, we will start riding in the more highly ranked UCI tours, and I will hopefully get a chance to ride for some results myself there. First up on the programme is the Tour of Languedoc-Rousillon, which is a 6 day tour starting next Friday. I am really looking forward to some nice hilly stages after all the hilly training I have been doing here in the Basque Country. However, I’m not too excited about the 30km time trial- not my favourite thing!!!

Pretty awesome team lead out

Racing last weekend

Apart from cycling, I have mainly just been trying to get better at Spanish. I am improving, but it is hard work! I also had a nice trip into Bilbao, a big city about 30 minutes from here, with my team mate who is staying at the team house at the moment.  Bilbao is a really pretty, old city, surrounded by big hills, with the main attractions being a big indoor food market, and a huge puppy made out of flowers (reminded me of house flowers day back in the day at St Cuths).

Unfortunately the giant puppy was getting its flowers changed

What the puppy normally looks like

People in Bilbao seem to like giant animals

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One of the cool old streets

The weather here has also been really strange. A few weeks ago, it was 27 degrees, and my team mate and I spent an afternoon sunbathing on the beach. Then 2 days later, as we drove to a race a couple of hours away from Urduliz, it was snowing! This week it has pretty much been raining non-stop, which has not been ideal!

Beach at Sopelana

Soon after this, the bikes nearly got swept away by the sea when we fell asleep on the beach!!!

and....2 days later it snowed!!

Well that’s about all my news..but to finish off, here is a story of one of the many confusing things that has happened since I got to Spain. On the way back from a race last week, we ran out of petrol in the team van on the motorway. We were only 1km from a petrol station, so you would think this was a problem that could easily be solved. However, in Spain, you have to pay a fine if you run out of petrol on the motorway (not sure if it’s the same in NZ), so to avoid having to pay this, the mechanic of the team decided he would fiddle around with the engine and remove part of it, to completely screw it up, so that if the police came, we would not get in trouble. So, the police showed up, and saw that the van would not start at all, so they called a tow truck to pick us up, and we ended up getting towed 100km home, rather than just 1km to the petrol station. I found it a weee bit difficult to understand how this would be cheaper than paying the petrol fine…but anyway we all got home in the end!!

Emma