Andorra
When a good friend suggests going to race bikes in Andorra you do what you can to say yes. At least that’s how I think it should go. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t sure where the heck Andorra was when it first came up but that’s alright adventures await. Traveling halfway across the globe for a mountain bike adventure may seem a little daunting. After some discussion with the family we made the decision that it was going to be our big adventure of the year. I’d go over early, do the race, then they’d come over and we would family adventure together!!!
Leading into the event I tried to “train” some and at least pick up the volume and intensity. It’s a tough time for that right now though (I suspect I’ll be saying that for years now). The past few months have just been a whirlwind for all kinds of different reasons. With that being said I was starting to feel pretty good and sneaking in a few longer rides. Although later I’m going to wish I had a few more…
For the most part getting over to Barcelona then Andorra really wasn’t that big of a deal. The flights went as expected, the Covid rules had been relaxed some so no big deal.
The Race
The race is part of the Epic series, now owned by Ironman. All of their stage races are a Duo format which means you race with a partner the whole time and can’t be more than 2 minutes apart at any point. This was my first duo stage race and honestly I’m not sure I’ll do another stage race solo again. It was a lot more fun with a partner.
One of the cool things about the Epic series is they’re really global events, this race had teams from over 30 countries represented. Only a few American teams were in attendance.
Prologue
A time trial style start, so we’d go off by ourselves and a minute would separate the team in front of us and behind us.
Off the line the first climb starts mellow and pitches up quickly. My partner, Wes, has in innate ability to go hard off the start line, and he’s really good at it. We hit that first steep pitch and he leaned into it, I held on for a min but had to settle in a little before hitting an even steeper grass climb. However we had a pretty good start.
The only true singletrack on the prologue was short lived but gave an idea of what was in store for the rest of the stages. Pretty raw, narrow, “old school” trails, the good stuff. It wasn’t long before we hit the road for the meat of the short course. We managed to catch a few teams on the lower grades before hitting turning back downhill.
The way down was a mix of doubletrack, old stone alleys through neighborhood buildings, wooden ramp switchbacks, and all kinds of fun stuff. Just enough to keep it kind of exciting. The recap video was pretty cool, a quick overhead shot of us at about 1:46
We came in as the 4th masters team at 47.18 which put us in Corral A for the next days start.
