Back on the Blogging Train!

Wow – I can’t believe how long it’s been since my last blog! My only consolation lies in Marcos and Nan (who’ve been out longer!) and that I’ve been really busy recently with work, training, and traveling – so it’s not been because I’m lazy :o) Still, it’s been about 1 month – a bit too long of a hiatus (I’ve been feeling it).

So what’s been happening? Well, my last blog mentioned a training camp trip to Barcelona that was a blast – I went from Saturday to Saturday with a friend who used to work at Trek. He lived in Barcelona for 2+ years, so he knew all the good roads to ride. To sweeten things, he also had some good friends at the biggest bike shop in town, so they hooked us up with some Kona MTB’s and we were able to hit the single-tracks a few days.

In short, Barcelona is an ABSOLUTELY amazing place to ride! For MTB we’d leave from the center of town and inside ½ an hour we’d be at the top of Tibidabo, the largest mountain (ok – it’s a really big hill, but it’s nothing like Nose Hill in Calgary – this is covered in forest with steep slopes and is connected to a whole network of hills – so really it’s a small mountain) in Barcelona. From there we could HAMMER on some wonderful technical singletrack or swoosh along the doubletracks that criss-crossed the hills. Whatever our hearts desired, this place had it. Including one roller coaster downhill that was built by BMXers, so all the corners were banked, there were rollers all over the place, and it dumped out onto a BMX course! Super cool! I was pretty out of practice with my technical skills (both up and down hill), but after ½ a day I was back in the saddle so to speak – and lovin life!!!

And the road riding wasn’t too shabby either ;o) We hit a bunch of cool places, from Garaff (coastal mountains just south of the city) to Montsarat (touristy mountains a little bit inland with lots of convents and abbeys scattered throughout) to Montserey (the tallest mountain in the area – we ran into some snow and REALLY cold weather up there, but stellar riding throughout) to Girona (we took the train north along the coast and rode with Leah Vande Velde, wife of CSC pro Christian). Actually the Girona trip was a real blast as we got a tour around Girona from Leah, and she was pointing out the houses of Levi Leipheimer, Michael Barry, and others all within 2 blocks of her place! We met Christian after the ride too – he seemed like a really cool guy, and he’s pretty pumped about the start of the Giro in Belgium coming up in about 2 months. So I’ll have to make a trip down there to check out the action.

Barcelona = one of my favorite towns on earth. I’ve had nothing but fun there, and special thanks to Marc Llado (aka Marquitos aka Rocky) for his hospitality and the guys at ProBike for their help and fun time.

Ok – I’ll end my post there (apparently I write long posts, or so some people have said ;o) But I’m back up and running (er, I mean riding), so I’ll be posting more regularly now.

Keep on rollin