Background.
Every May, thousands of people from around the world gather in Ronda, Spain, to subject themselves to the grueling endurance event known as the 101km of Ronda, hosted and organized by the Spanish professional military, La Legión. A bit lesser known, this group also organize a warm-up even in March, known as the Homenaje de los 101km de Ronda. While I’ve done the 101km three times now, this was the first year that I participated in the Homenaje.
This past Sunday, we got up early–especially early, given the switch to Daylight Savings Time–dropped the kids off at the grandparents, and headed off to Ronda. I’d planned to do the 70km mountain bike ride, while my wife planned to do the 43km running option. We got to Ronda about an hour later, parked and headed to the start area.
And we’re off!
At 9:30 am, I and 1499 other MTB’ers took off from the Alameda, in what would turn out to be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever done. A half hour later, Pino set off on what would, for her, be one of her most successful races.
The route left from Ronda, made its way down to Benaoján, up to Montejaque, up to the Ermita de Montejaque, down to the valley, up to Arriate, back up to Ronda, down the famous “Cuesta del Cachondeo”, then back up to the Ermita de Montejaque (on the other side), and then back to Ronda through the same route via Benaoján on which we started the day.
The route planners packed in just about as much climbing within the 70km, as they do within the 101km. Have a peek at the route profile:
While the course would have been hard on a good day, things got terribly complicated by the weather, which is particularly unstable this time of year around Ronda. While most of the day was cold and thickly overcast, it’d occasionally clear up, becoming beautiful, but sweltering hot.
And just by the time you’d get the jacket off, the sun would duck behind a cloud, bringing back the bone chilling cold. Eventually, it began to rain, finally turning into hail.
The wet weather led to some awfully muddy conditions, and since the course was practically all climbing or descending, there were a lot of crashes. (I crashed three times, but at least the soft muddy landing helped!) And with the constant change of cold-hot-cold temperatures, the mud sort of baked into rock-hard clumps on the bike.
The finish.
All in all, a hard, unpleasant ride, much of which was spent walking up and down muddy inclines. I finished the 70km course in seven hours; 15 minutes more than it took me to do the entire 101km course last year!
On the positive side, Pino had a great running race, finishing 30 minutes faster than her time in the Homenaje last year, and ending up fourth overall, and second in her category! Go Pino!
The raced ended just in time, as the weather turned for the worse, covering the area just outside the city in a snowstorm:
The possessed car wash.
The day wouldn’t have been complete, without a hair-raising experience at, of all places, a car wash.
Just outside Ronda, we stopped to wash my mountain bike at a “high-pressure” do-it-yourself car wash. Very tired from the race, feeling mellow from a beer, my mind was in another place when I inserted the Euro, and pressed the “Wash” button. What I heard next sounded like something between a grenade launcher and the space shuttle taking off.
The little faded pictogram on the wall showing a man holding the water pistol as “Step 1″ needs to have some supplemental text like, oh,
“WARNING: This machine is driven by a NUCLEAR pump. YOU WILL DIE! if you’re not holding on to that pistol with ALL THE MIGHT YOU CAN MUSTER when you insert that coin!”
Before I knew what was going on, the rocketfuel-propelled car wash pistol was violently shooting up and down, left and right, thrashing anything in its path. I instinctively and instantly dove in front of the Jeep, covering my head, and hoping I wouldn’t get killed. Meanwhile, I could only imagine what was getting smashed to pieces overhead.
Finally, I reached up on one pass of the enraged pistol, and managed to grab the hose. The darn thing nearly ripped my arm off, but I somehow management to wrestle it to the grown (and getting soaked in the process).
In the end, I avoided getting hit, but the Jeep suffered some major dents. :-( I sure learned my lesson.
For those interested, I’ve got more photos up on a dedicated Flickr set.
