Tearing up the Terra

I won't forget the start. Two and a half thousand cyclists packed into the small Catalan town of St. Esteve de'n Bas at 7am on a slightly misty and warm late Spring Sunday morning. The journey north from Girona was an experience in itself - a huge caravan of traffic slowly climbing towards the Pyrenees at 6am with a battalion of Police 'motos' weaving in and out of the traffic.

We started over a thousand back, taking around 40 seconds of walking the bike to pass the constant beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep of the electronic chip mat. And then we were off. The sun was still to break through, and there was absolute silence apart from the gentle whirring of a couple of thousand Shimano and Campag groupsets - but the place was absolutely drenched in atmosphere - and i was out of breath. The closed road to Olot was flat, smooth, and wide, and i found a cosy position behind a 6ft 13 stoner powering away on the 53-12. My new friend, oblivious to my draft, led me out of Olot towards the first climb of the day up Capsacosta. It was then i really took note of the scale of the event, seeing not just the 70 or so cyclists around me at any one time to the thousand-strong peleton still ahead, taking up the full width of the motorway. I knew that width wouldn't last long and i started moving up, and then the climbing began...

So that was the start - a tremendously successful MACstrong tour with the Terra de Remences the undoubted highlight. We took away the coveted 'furthest travelled team award' ;), improved tans, some free beer, and a thousand memories.

In other news, Ken 'the mighty atom' Craig smashed Andy Strathdee's Els Angels TT record, lowering the benchmark to a very respectable 25:12.