Training Log Archive: Charlie

2nd race, this time at Montjuïc, billed as long distance, but had the feel of a really long sprint, with 28 controls and very difficult map reading. I spent a lot of time at the start looking for the triangle, backing up from 3, finding 2 after a while, then 1, but just not able to track down the triangle, eventually the group one minute after arrived and passed, and then I found it. I wasn’t the only one with problems, as I caught up to the guy who had started 1 minute ahead of me about 2/3 of the way to #1, only a 200 m leg! A lot of difficulty finding gaps in fences, etc. the first time I have ridden escalators in a race. They were marked with red arrows showing the direction of travel, but I didn’t know that until later. Just hugely surprised by it. We had a map flip part way, as we moved to 7500. Flipped the map and studied it for a while before finding any course overprinting at all, and there were 15 controls! Very small circles and numbers, light grayish purple course overprinting. Not optimal for me. But it was a fun place to run, and I was thoroughly trashed after the run and the walk back to the event center. Maps and track later.

Stage 2 Part 1 Monjuic Nord 23/40 M65
Stage 2 Part 2 Montjuic Sud

C • Overprinting 1

Dinner in a tapas bar a few blocks from the hotel. Culturally interesting. At 8:15 or thereabouts the place was empty, by 9 it was starting to fill up and by 9:30 it was bustling. Very nice, very inexpensive. I was using a lot of google translate to puzzle out the menu, and overcame my initial lack of success when I figured out it was not in Spanish, but rather in Catalan.

So what we had: glass of white wine, grilled shrimp, large with the heads on, some excellent fried sardines, a plate of grilled vegetables, sautéed potatoes that came with some little sausages that didn’t interest me, and some fried eggplant that came dusted with sugar, which was strange, but tasted fine. Also some good bread, toasted, with a garlic clove to rub on it and some olive oil to dip it in. Quite excellent. 12 euros. All very good, but the sardines were my favorite.