Well, today was all about punctures. Fortunately not mine, but any puncture generally stops the whole group no matter who suffers it. But, let’s start at the beginning.
The weather was fantastic today, so fantastic that the Spanish riders had to concede leave their base layers at home. I opted for the trusty shorts and short sleeve jersey and not once was I sorry.
The pace today was similar to yesterday and the course was relatively straight forward. I even managed 8 miles at the front before realising that it was a stupid thing to be doing and graciously yielded my position at the front for one more towards to middle! The first puncture happened at mile 22 and it was a beauty! Somehow he’d torn a great big hole in his tyre and nobody had any spare ones. In the end it took some inventive patch work that involved lining the tyre with the old tube and inflating the new one in that! It held for the rest of the day so it can be considered a perfectly reasonable way to repair a wrecked tyre!
At breakfast I decided to try and keep it light and simple so that I didn’t feel bloated the whole way round. That was a decision that would come back to haunt me because by about mile 50 I was starving hungry and starting to get grumpy, despite the beautiful sunshine. Luckily lunch wasn’t much further down the road in the village of Sinue. Beautiful place, not that I cared once I found the café we were stopping at!
We set off on mile 57 and by mile 57.5 puncture number two happened. This one was a little more devastating as it happened part way down a really long hill. It wasn’t until we got to the bottom than the missing rider was noticed. It was a looooooooong way back up…
The town of Can Picafort is the stop off for tonight. Nice place, has a massive port. It’s also a labyrinth as it took 4 hours to get here and another 45 minutes to find the hotel. I swear I saw the same roadkill seagull half a dozen times!
So, another 70 miles in the bag and I actually don’t feel too bad. Tomorrow we hit the mountains. This good feeling might very well become a distant memory.
Darren
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