Bicicleta de Montaña Murcia

This week I am on holiday on the South East coast of Spain, approximatetly 20 minutes south of Murcia City Centre and am staying with my in-laws.  I had been in contact with one of there friends Neil about doing some Mountain Biking in the area, which features a number of rather large mountain (Sierra Carrascoy).  Neil lives close to my in-laws and is planning to ride a fantastic challange in the Alps taking in a lot of the Tour de France climbs.  Instead of bringing my bike with me, I was lucky enough to lend a bike which was a full susser from Decathalon (I will be doing a review of this bike later).

As I woke up at 7am the sun was shining and the temperatures were already getting up as i jumped on the Rockrider and headed to the meet point at 8am.  We set off and straight away I noticed that I wasn't feeling great.  One thing I know about this is that there is a lot of hills and using what I had learned at Roughride I wasn't going to give up on any of the climbs.  As we climbed up the service roads it became apparent that this ride was going to be tough, the temperature was rising, I was sweating and was drinking quite a lot. 

Once we got onto the mountain paths the scenariy was stunning and I can honestly say is some of the best sceneroy I have ever seen on a bike.  We carried on climbing and I started to feel worse, I seemed to have a large amount of phlem on my chest and was stopping me from breathing properly which was making climbing hard.  I stopped and started to cough and my breakfast decided to leave my body.  I was a bit dizzy and throwing up on this mountain path feeling like a complete idiot for eating breakfast too late.  Once I settled down I felt great and resumed the climbs and suprisingly climbed really well.  I must point out at this stage that while I was riding the hills ina  granny ring Neil, my tour gide, was climbing up in the middle ring very impressive. 

As we climbed to the very top of the mountain I felt great, the sense of achievement was there as I had ridden every step of the way.  Climbing up there were a number of local riders out on the same routes and seeing how the Spanish climb in this heat shows why they are successfull at this sport. 

Once up it must come down so we covered a large amount of distance on the decent before getting onto a road and climbing back up for a cafe stop.  A bit of cake, a can of coke and a lot of water and we ressumed the ride now onto my kind of surface - rocky and rough.  This gave me another boost of energy as I love riding on this kinda surface.  The trails upto now had been wide forest routes similiar to the surface at Llandegla's fire roads but now we were onto single track and I could really let loose on the trail.  It was undulating but was fantastic and flowing.  We then hit the road back to the villa's and I was enjoying the cool down but Neil had another idea as we started to climb back up the resort Neil decided he was going to push me to my limits and we climbed up really quickly.  As I climbed off the bike my legs hurt, my chest hurt and I wanted to climb into a freezing cold shower.  After thanking Neil for the ride I quickly got changed and dragged myself into the pool which acted like an ice bath.  Legs don't hurt today thank god as Im off to play 18 holes of golf shortly.

Stats from the ride:
25 miles;
2,000 feet of climbing
Temperature 8am - 25 degrees climbing to 33 by the end
2,500 Calories burned; and
Ride time 3 hours 28 minutes (we did take a lot of photos)

Below are some of my favourite photos from this ride: