TransPortugal Day 2

Portgal: 2, Erik, 0.  Portugal wins by knockout. 

Breakfast was scheduled for 7:30 with bus departure at 8, neither really happened like that.  I'm glad I brought some cereal as the standard breakfast was white bread, ham and cheese.  Lots of long faces around the table.  My fingers and legs and such were getting twinges of cramping still, not what I'd call a good sign.  The skin around my knees/quads was wrinkling when I stretched, it usually doesn't.

Start is at 10am.  At 9:15 I survey the park and everyone is sitting in scraps of shade, especially the dogs.  The air isn't moving, and the little Portugese guy who looks like a pirate and was throwing up on trail yesterday said it's hotter than usual.  We're climbing a lot today, and they've warned us to take a full water load up the second climb.  Forecast calls for 34C, and the Portugese call that climb "the oven" because of the way the valley concentrates the heat.

Hi granny ring, pleased to introduce you to the 24km climb.  I should have brought a white umbrella. 

The first climb is steep, and starts 1 minute in.  At 18 minutes I come across the first guy I see at the side of the trail standing in the shade.

Not much to report until the descent, the first half of which is like the twisty Logan pass road, but the way cars cut corners, every corner is covered in gravel.  Actually quite sketchy.

After that we get to the famed single track section with crazy descent on old rock stairs that's death if you fall off the ledge.  I guess that works on the euro mountain biking scale.  It was fun, but I can't join the chorus on praising its infamy.  Bumpy and standard, didn't even need to slow down much.  Worst part of it was not the technical, but a monster bush that took a swipe at my left side with thorns and has my arm and leg looking like I got in a cat fight.

From there things were downhill on pavement to the Duoro river, and downhill in general.  The descent knocked my memory card loose in my GPS, once I realized I waited for cyclists, didn't see any, couldn't navigate to the route as it's held on the memory card.  Backtracked and found some TransPortugal guys to help me out.  10 mins of troubleshooting because loose card isn't suspected.  I carry on and try to find others to ride with, head into the base of valley town for water before entering "the oven".

The oven lived up to its name.  Talk from a few guys with techie watches corroborates to 39C.  Who knows... All I can say is it was hot, and my arms and body had no sweat on them, it just evaporated right away, pretty tough.  Climb up through olive tree fields, then across a high savannah like plateau - savannah like both in general landscape and the heat waves everywhere.  I kept saying I'd pull over under the first shade, but it never came.  Finally I found a tree and lied down.  I didn't recover perfectly from yesterday, and it was taking it's toll.  I'm dehydrated, but my stomach is processing fluids and foods slower than I'm sweating/burning calories.  I think the heat, time of day issues, and long racing just shocked the system.  In theory an IV would have been nice to rehydrate as my digestive tract was having a hard time with that task.

Lied down by the classic rock wall and solitary tree for a while, then made some headway to the next town, where I lied down along a stone wall in the shade.  Made it to the next town with a park with fountain... and predictably lied down.  From there it was a hike a bike up to the castle, where Cassie and Patricia were manning the checkpoint, I dunked my head under the fountain and lied down.  Things weren't going fast, I was running on empty as I wasn't really digesting.  Cassie gave me directions to the nearest cafe, where I ate a bag of spicy Doritos and sat on the porch overlooking the countryside, contemplating what I was going to try to do to get my sh-t together.  I stayed there for 45 minutes.  I felt ok but not great at the end.  The salts helped me be thirsty and drink, and my only non-chip option was ice cream bars which didn't sound appealing.

Left the town, and the slow refresh on the GPS let me go about a km down a steep road before realizing I missed the turn, so had to huff it back up the hill.  It was pretty easy terrain from there, flat wine country mostly.  Even a tiny bit of power could sustain a good speed, but I was riding 30 mins then lying down for 15... would force feed and rest.

At one point I calculated I had 55k left and 3 hours, which would need a steady pace to complete... and I haven't been a steady pace kind of guy so far, more like a crawl, stop pace.  Not even really riding, just plodding.

I spun a steady gear, not hard, but eventually just emptied myself out.  I lied down and pretty much knew that was it, even after five mins of lying down, I still had zero interest in eating.  I dozed off for a while, and next thing I knew a goat that got out of the field came up and was eating grass by my foot.  Pretty funny actually.  I got up, petted it, and rolled away. 

10 minutes later I was at check stop 3 and they said time wasn't on my side to make it.  So there we had it, DNF'd my first stage race.

On the bright side, they drove me to a villiage restaurant to chill while some others were being searched for.  I chowed down with the wine farmers who were drinking beer.  A half hour after stopping my appetite came back (a coke helped) so I had 2 chorizo sandwiches, one more coke, a mango juice, and a plate of snails... the farmers were eating them, the bartender saw me looking at the plate with curiosity (I thought it was nuts) and brought me some.  They were good - garlic butter cooked.  Had the little antennae on them and fully in shells.  All that set me back €7.

I got picked up and we did cleanup duty - northern climate whities were suffering today by my observation.  The two Russians were done, the Scottish girl, and a couple of Portugese too for good measure.  Sounds like quite a few didn't make the cutoff time.  We got back to the hotel, and I still had appetite to chow down on olive oiled and salted potatoes, bean salad with tuna, coke, and assortments of other post race snacks.  Pure glory!

Dinner was a teriffic buffet style affair.  I think Tori and I drove by this hotel a few years ago, we're right by Sabugal.

I think I'll recover better tonight, feeling decent right now anyway.  Race crew is saying tomorrow is hot again, then only 24C on Tuesday.  I'll welcome that.  I'm actually not all that bummed, in some ways it stinks, but I care less about the officiality than just turning the corner and having some enjoyably hard days on the bike, in substitute for these sufferingly/failingly hard days.