You' re ruining the race for everybody !

Come on you mothers ! Let' s get started and today I'm going to write in English so that all our friends over there understand what I say, be they spaniards or froggies (what else ?).

As the title alludes to, this is 'cross season here in old Europe but in Madrid, and Spain in general, I can assure you that nobody is ruining the race for nobody. Not that they' re trying…
So, last week saw me going north to partake in the feast that is the World Cup in Igorre. And I' m just returning from round 2 of the Copa de Madrid with round 3 tomorrow morning. Totally different conditions to those in Euskadi, as you will see : it was cold this morning - 2 degrees celsius - but the cours was fast, not so technical and the soil was firm. A kind of Treviso or Hoogerheide 2009. There were only two barriers and no more dismounts. It was all pedals and some inclines. I haven't got the pictures yet but there won't be that much.

Whereas in Igorre things were quite different. In good basque fashion it started to rain as soon as I got off from the car and the course ended up real muddy and sloppy. With some nice walls to run up on and another long climb towards the end of the course it made for a largely technical course, both fast and slow, hard and easier depending on where you were.
Let' s just take a look at the pictures then !

This is the upper part of the course : there was a long straight leading to a sharp turn on the right at the start of the long climb which ended just on the left of the picture. You then had to make your way down throuch thick mud back to the road and the start/finish line, on the right hand side.


The long climb to get there…