It’s been a busy cycling week on the island, with the Mallorca 312 sportive / gran fondo last Saturday, and the half-ironman triathlon today. The triathletes today are competing in a steady rain, but the sportive riders a week ago had beautiful weather. The winning time for the 312km was 8 hours, 52 mins, 38 secs; while the slowest on the results sheet was 13hours 53 mins dead. If you fancy the challenge next year, drop us a line and we can build a holiday around the big day. The roads of Mallorca have never seemed so full of cyclists to me; on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I rode the climb of the Col de Sa Batala up to the petrol station and back down each morning. Perhaps because the descent is on the triathlon route course, the usual throng of cyclists going up or down was boosted by many triathletes, distinctive on their aero bikes (they were all out on their race set-up, best wheels on), and with their triathlete-dress (I have seen many sleeveless jerseys and compression socks, and best of all: sleeveless jersey with compression arm-warmers, leaving a white gap of skin on the shoulder in between). I feel a bit sorry for them; riding all week in the beautiful weather we’ve had—22-24 degrees and blue sky—only to get 19 degrees and steady rain today. Our clients here on holiday this week saw the wet day coming on the forecast and planned a rest day for today, but the racers have no such recourse. I fear there might be some riders sliding out on that Sa...
The Strada Bianche race is today, over the gravel roads south of Siena. It’s the most beautiful race of the year, perhaps, and surely the most beautiful race of the spring. I’ve compared the finishing climb into Siena with the climb out of Bunyola to begin the Col D’Honor before—a short steep climb between the houses. But this year, as excitement builds for the race I realise that the gravel roads aspect of the race is Mallorca-like too. Once, of course, all the roads in Mallorca were gravel, but steadily they’ve been surfaced, partly for the cyclists who come. But there’s still miles of gravel roads around. A recent issue of Cyclist magazine asked how many bikes you need (the answer was lots), and a gravel bike was one of the essentials they listed. Perhaps we could run gravel bike tours of Mallorca! It would take some scouting (normally I’m checking lanes to make sure they are good pavement!). Get in touch if you’re interested! These pictures are taken from PezCycling News’ excellent preview of the new sector of the course,...
The track world championships start today. If you’re in a country where the UCI hasn’t sold the broadcasting rights, then you can watch their livestream of the event here. In the UK, the BBC is showing loads online here and on TV. But the broadcast schedule won’t catch all action as it happens, so if you want to know whether the world record falls for the team pursuit this afternoon (as Wiggins says it will), without having to wait for the highlights program tonight, then the results will be going up live on the Tissot Timing...
Which picture do you prefer? The track world championships start tomorrow, Wednesday. The top picture is the 2014 Madison winners: Muntaner and Torres. David Muntaner is a Mallorca-boy, of course; he runs the Cycling Planet store in Alaro, so if you want to buy a new tube or gel from a world champ, stop in. This year Torres is listed on the Spanish team, but it seems Muntaner isn’t in the team. But of course we’ve plenty of reason to watch on Sunday afternoon as Wiggins and Cavendish ride the madison for GB. They were the world champions in 2008 (don’t they look...
The third stage of the the Challenge Mallorca pro race was the most mountainous. You can see a 25 minute highlights video here. It’s long enough ago now that I am not going to try to keep the winner a surprise: as the title of this post reveals, Cancellara won (the video kind of misses how he did it; you see him in the big breakaway group a few times, like at 14.00 minutes-in; then you see him attack just after summitting the highest point of the day, 24.10 mins-in; but you never see him overtaking the little break of three that was ahead of him—oh well). The route shows many of the best mountain roads on the island: roads which you’ll ride if you take a holiday with us. The race started in Port de Soller, and climbed south over the Coll de Soller (the climb starts 5.33 mins-in; they summit at 6.25 mins-in; and descend until 7.15; the pic is a screen-shot of the helicopter view of the descent, at 6.38 mins-in). The Coll de Soller is a must-ride route (since the cars go through the tunnel, it’s a traffic-free mountain pass), but the two most common places people stay in Mallorca for cycling holidays put it out of reach: from Port de Pollensa/Alcudia area it’s over 60km to the base of the climb; from Palma Nova in the west it’s about 50km. That highlights the benefits of not using a company that puts you in an out-of-season seaside hotel: stay with us and you’ll be near the best routes. From our hotel or villa in Alaro,...
This is a pretty long day in the saddle at 146km, but the hardest climb—the Soller pass—comes at the start when you’re fresh enough to really enjoy the hairpins. The pass is lost in a time-warp (as this old postcard image suggests), as since 1997 all the traffic to Soller goes through the tunnel, leaving the old 57-hairpin road to the cyclists (and the Brit who runs the cafe at the top). You can load the gpx file via the link at the bottom of the page. © OpenStreetMap contributors Download file:...
