The second round of the “Challenge Ciclocross” series was on Saturday in Inca. It was our first cyclocross race in Mallorca. Nicki watched and cheered (“venga!”), while I (Finn) raced in the Masters 40+ (there were 40 starters, 28 finishers and Finn was 23rd). As this photo of me shows, it was wet: there’s been a storm sitting out between the Balearics and Corsica/Sardinia for almost two weeks now, and it’s been bringing wind and rain to the island (quite unlike the usual, cool and sunny November weather). Saturday itself was sunny for the race, though rain-clouds stayed over the hills, making a rainbow for the occasion. I had thought about my tyres a fair bit in advance — and opted for Tufo file-tread tubulars. The file-tread turned out to be a bit lacking in grip on the wet bottom end of the circuit, but I was glad of the Tufo casing for preventing pinch flats. Many of the non-finishers had punctures, from the rocks all over the course. It was hard to tell whether a kiwi-sized rock on the path was a more-or-less harmless loose stone, or the pointy tip of a large underground rock waiting to pinch flat you. Tufo tubulars don’t have an inner-tube inside, but are made like a modern tubeless tyre, with the tyre-casing itself air-tight. I bottomed out onto the rim at least twice a lap (running 30 psi in a 33mm wide tyre), but didn’t flat. I’ll post more about the bike and the preparation of the wheels and tyres in a future...
24 hours to go until the Mallorca 312 ride—a 312 km “lap” of Mallorca. The route is not a true lap of the island, as it follows the north coast over the Tramuntana mountains from Pollensa in the east to Andratx in the west, but then cuts across the centre of the island rather than skirting the west and south coast. The route passes about 100m from my door in San Llorenc; by this time the riders will have 275km in their legs, so we’ll be out there to give some encouragement. From us they head east to Arta, from where the route once more skirts the coast traveling north to the finish near Alcudia. 312km is a long day on a bike: average 26km an hour and you’ll still be riding for 12hrs — and that’s if you can average 26km/h including your stops! It doesn’t get light here now until about 7.30 in the morning, and it is getting dark about 6.45pm, so there’ll be plenty of riding in the dark for the many riders who will need much more like 16 hours to complete the course (an average of...
I paid a visit to the Sineu velodrome on Wednesday; Sineu is a happy mid-point between us and Nicki’s parents, so she gets to chat to her mum in the cafe, while I can do a few laps of the track. I took my Cinelli ‘Olympic’ track bike out for a spin: it hadn’t been ridden since I stopped racing at Newport a few years ago. I warmed up a little and then settled into doing a 20-minute time-trial effort; initially I chose 250 Watts as my target power, but I got excited and did 275 or so for the first few laps, and by the end I was struggling to stay over 210W. While I was there, two different groups of holidaying roadies dropped in, did a lap or two with me and headed off: the track is open to ride around any time. Like Herne Hill in London, the track is outdoor and concrete, but it’s surfaced with a red coating that’s thicker than paint but thinner than tarmac, a bit like roofing sealant; even on this damp day, grip was fine. My guess is that it’s about 400m around. The track doesn’t make it onto Wikipedia’s list of the world’s 500+ velodromes so I couldn’t look up the exact length there (it doesn’t even get listed in the out-of-use-velodromes section). Mallorca is home to another velodrome that was once the oldest and most important in Spain: the Velodromo El Tirador. This 333m track closed in 1973, but there’s a project (funded under the Illes Sostenibles green initiative, 2019) to revive the site. It’s unclear whether the...
A few weeks ago we visited the Sencelles market. Sencelles is one of the smaller town markets: three veg stalls (one with wonderful purple carrots), one stall for olive oil, a handmade-shoe stall and a couple of stalls that seemed to be just villagers flogging off stuff car-boot style. Most notable though was a little stall with a handful of bottles of beer and a keg for serving draft. They were from Toutatis, the first (and I guess only) Belgian beer brewed in Mallorca. A year or two ago I’d noticed that something was going on in the little farmhouse at Cas Canar, just south of Sencelles, and now it made sense—a bar had opened. It’s going to be a stop for us on days when we ride from Alaro, Selva or Campanet to the climb to Randa monastery. It’s a flat ride home from the beer, don’t worry! They have a BBQ area, so if you want I could have a grill waiting for you when you roll...
Clouds coming in early North of Sant Llorenc September is a month of three parts. It starts in the heat of August, with growing humidity making it seem almost hotter than that scorching month: “31 degrees, feels like 41 degrees” the forecast often tells me. Then the second part of the month comes bringing thunderstorms, sometimes, but not always, with downpours of rain. Dramatic electric storms are possible here sometimes without rain. This year September was looking like one where we escaped the worst of the downpours, but as I write it’s pouring and the next two days look very wet. The last phase of September is after-the-rains; suddenly the temperature is 24 degrees instead of 32, and there’s a freshness that replaces the sticky humidity. The third phase of September gives us ideal cycling weather, and I would invite our clients to come at this time with enthusiasm, if only I knew when the third phase comes. It’s that pesky second-phase: we can’t say when it will come or how long it will last. This year the storms came early, but lasted a long time; each was brief and didn’t break the heat and humidity once and for all. After each storm we could feel it build again. It looks like this year, it will all be over by the 23rd, and the third phase will begin then. If you can book short-notice, come on Friday! If you can’t, I recommend October as one of the best months on the island for...
Yesterday Nicki and I did a little exploring—heading out of San Llorenc, we took the Cami des Pou and the headed north on the Cami son Drago, it’s one of the loveliest 6km of road we’ve ridden, through farmland, meadows and pine, olive and carrob groves. The little lane comes out on the Ma-15 San Llorenc to Arta road, so you can either turn left back into San Llorenc, or use the road as part of a route to Arta (perhaps coming back on the ‘Greenway’ cycle path, having ridden the wonderful road up to the Betlem monastery). The Greenway is a 2-year old ex-railway path, surfaced with a compacted clay/gravel top. We rode only three days after heavy rain, and it was firm and dry—an easy ride even on 700c x 23mm...
