Test/Media Day

Today was the first time we would intentionally go hard as per the directors request. I was a bit nervous not knowing what to expect would happen when the hammer went down, but I survived! We did the test on a climb called Pego (the town it stands over/behind) I believe. It was about 8km long and had a nice gradient to it. It was a good tempo and I was in the first group when we summited. I feel good about that and am happy to say I felt generally comfortable.

From the top we split from the one big group back into our two training groups. Our group descended off the summit into a beautiful valley where I really wish I had my camera. The road rolled and dipped and twisted along. We descended into the valley where some houses were, crossed a little bridge with a sweet mountain stream passing under it and started to work our way back out the other side of the valley. We hit a climb shortly afterward which was marked 18% I believe and it was about 1km long. Not so nice on the legs. After making our way through some beautiful country we came down another long valley and came into Pego from the other side of town. Then we returned back to Calpe on some familiar roads. Our small group had some fun on the final climb of the day playing a little cat and mouse; attacking and following. It was a lactic acid filled kind of fun. Great stuff.

I think tomorrow we will be breaking up into three groups to do some pacelining and rotation work. I think this might be worse than the test today, but that will be ok. This is all great preparation for my first race.
Oh! The title says media day, too. Indeed today was the day the media was granted full access to the training and the riders. I did a brief interview with VS tv prior to the training and then this evening I did some photo shoot for I don't know who followed by a more extensive interview with VS. It was nice and followed the general format of everything thus far for my interviews: tell us your story, how does it feel, etc. I didn't have good answers this time however because I hadn't been practicing! It is all good though and I hope it comes out ok. Until next time, ciao!