Andorra Stage 1
Based on how we did in the Prologue we were assigned to start in Corral A, the first of the “mortals” groups. All the professional teams would start in front of us, which makes good sense. Starting in Corral A is nice most everyone in there is relatively strong in some way and for the most part you don’t have to deal with too many early race shenanigans.
This course had a big climb with a lot of time to sort things out before we got into any narrow trail, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. The day started with a 9-mile climb that gained over 3200 feet. Context for folks familiar with Pisgah, the climb on 276 to the parkway from just below Looking Glass Falls to the Parkway is about 9.5 miles and 2250 ft, so this was for real. Fortunately, things stayed paved for a while before it started to alternate between doubletrack/singletrack/Pavement. The kicker for this was that at the top when we got into the ski area, we came out onto this exposed gravel road for about a ½ mile of 15% plus grades. Pushing hard, feeling good, maybe let that good feeling go a bit too long. This climb did help me realized why people run smaller chainrings and bigger cassettes in Europe. So much steep climbing, I’ve never spent so much time in my easiest gears just grinding it out, even when I still felt like I had some legs.
Finally, we turned off the climb onto to some traversing singletrack, just to have things stack up on a few technical bits. From here we turned into what might have been one of my favorite descents of the week. A lot of singletrack, some if it looked like it was sort of just “a way through the woods”. Some of it was just fall line trail, it was steep, raw, and amazing. It felt like old school singletrack that had stayed in good shape, being from Western NC where we have so many heavy rains this kind of trail doesn’t last long so it was fun to be able to ride so much of it. I was having a blast. It wasn’t long before we bottomed out and started the next climb up.
As we started to put in effort again, I could tell I dug a little too deep on that first climb. It was management time, in hindsight I should have eaten/consumed a lot more calories/carbs. Fortunately, this climb was relatively mellow for the most part. Through some gnarly mandatory walk (which was good because there was no way of even attempting to ride it anyhow), through an active cow corral…(the cows really didn’t care at all), and up into the ski area again for aid 2. At this point I thought the climbing was over, most of it was, except for a handful of super steep pitches on the Traverse over to the top of the bike park. I made it through most, until on the last one I had no go left. I had to step off, two teams went by. Turns out one of them was a master’s team that ended up beating us by 35 seconds on the day and took the 3rd master’s spot.
Anyhooo…into the bike park. So many berms, so many jumps, so not my style…I’m more of a wheel on the ground, ride through the woods kind of rider. It was fun, we were descending, but honestly, I so much prefer the singletrack. After a while I was tired of seeing more berms. Finally, we got to the bottom and hit some more amazing singletrack before we popped out on the road for one more punch of a climb. It was short, and unnecessary in my mind…, but we rolled into the finish area as the 4th master’s team, 27th overall and smiling. So it was a good day. Stage 1 Video
25.25 miles, 5,456 ft of elevation gain – 2 hours and 43 mins – it was a strong day, one that I’d pay for I think.
Andorra Stage 2
Stage 2, they referred to as “The Queen Stage” which typically means it’s the hardest and most rewarding. This stage would have us starting in the nearby Parish of Canillo and riding back to La Massana for the finish. The Epic folks really have some things dialed in, the transfer to the remote start was spot on. All we had to do was show up with at a certain spot for the bus, we had been assigned bus numbers so there was no fighting for spots, or anything like that, just easy peasy. The bus ride over helped us realize that there was a lot more to Andorra than we had thought, there were a bunch of Parishes all with a few cities/towns scattered in these mountains. The landscapes were like something out of fantasy world. It was so cool.
The start had us on a paved climb to get things going once again. I tried a little harder this time to keep the effort in check and it worked out. This climb stayed a little more mellow for a while and mixed in some gravel bits, some rolling bike path, even some singletrack, it was all over the place. At one point as we’re riding the rolling bike path, Wes starts telling me about the “European Attack” on the rollers, right at the top, they’ll put in 5-7 relatively hard pedal strokes to pick up some speed and momentum for the downhill. At first, I thought it was just an observation and hey that’s interesting, looking back I think he was trying to tell me something…Anyhow, the climb ended up taking us into a ski area. When we studied the profile for the day, we noticed this “wall” right before the 1st aid station. When we got there, it was obvious, it turned straight up…I had no legs I had to walk on this gravel road. But hey, what are you going to do? Sometimes it just isn’t there.
After a bit I was able to re-mount, get into the biggest gear and grind up the rest. I felt like I was going backwards, hot, dusty, people passing, I managed to keep a smile for the most part, after all we were riding bikes in Andorra. Finally got to the aid station, coke, pastry, fill water, it was good. But…still more climbing. Finally, after a bit we hit a downhill, which was so good. Other than the team that had just passed us wasn’t the strongest descenders. We got around the first guy cleanly, the second one was a little more stubborn. Wes made a move around the right side in a little bit of a turn, and I saw the opening too, so I went left….I felt bad, it was kind of a sketchy pass particularly since we both went around at almost the same time. After the way I was climbing though I wasn’t too worried, I needed something exciting. We got a bit more trail descent before we started the next steep gravel climb back up. This one wasn’t as steep but still got pitchy in a few places and I was still head honcho on the struggle bus.
One more aid station, more coke, I tried to eat more but just couldn’t take in as much as I probably needed to, but that’s how it goes sometimes. After Aid 2 we had a pretty good descent all the way back down to Canillo, it was steep and awesome. It was more established than yesterday’s trail but still raw, steep, it wasn’t excessively fast and chunky, or crazy, but just the right amount to make it awesome. Before long we were back in Canillo riding by groups of kids at schools who were cheering us on, random town trail cut throughs, and people just going about their day. It was exciting.
The climb out of Canillo was largely paved, it felt like part of the Tour De France, switchbacks up the face of a mountain, exposed all the way and you could look down and see switchbacks for miles. Now, it was only about 4-5 miles up but it was very cool. At one point I was so distracted by the scenery and whatnot that I ran into a road sign, fortunately only hit it with one hand and managed to keep it upright. Near the top we started hitting side trail, which had I not been totally blown probably would have been much more exciting. At this point though I was ready for that last descent. We finally made it to the last aid, and once again had to stop, this time more coke, gummy alligators, and maybe more? Knowing that it’s almost all downhill from there can really do a lot for your psyche. Now I wasn’t setting any records but smiling and letting loose was a lot easier.
The descent back into town was once again…amazing…it was dusty, it was wooded, it was tight, it was steep in a lot of places, it was awesome. So much fun, chasing Wes’s dust cloud smiling, hell even laughing at times. I almost forgot about the fact that we gave up a ton of time and not an hour or two earlier I was contemplating all the life choices that led me to this spot.
Anyhow, we ended up 6th Masters team on the day and somewhere around 32nd OA, with a time of 4:24 for 36.25 miles, 7200 ft of elevation gain. Not exactly the stuff that I was hoping for but hey, fun was had and nobody got hurt.
Check out Sycamore Cycles in the video at about 2:46 –
