Our last day of cycling was upon us. The night before we had stayed in the nicest and warmest of the airbnbs. The place was massive. Everyone had their own room [ i think ], there was multiple bathrooms, towels, nice decor, it was a good spot and worth it. Looking back on it and how we[ well maybe actually just me ] are anal about documenting everything, I dont know why i didnt take pics of all the different places we stayed at. Would have been fun to look back on them. Oh well... next time. :) I was up to about midnight touching up the bikes and filling the tires with air, adjusting brakes ( i didnt count, but i would say between mine, Shruti’s and my dad’s bikes, I had to fiddle with them at least 15-20x ) I wanted to make sure the bikes were as comfy and tuned in as I could make them for the last day. It seemed to work. The brakes were tight, chain was lubed, but i should have checked the inside of my dad's tire. It seems that there was a small piece of road shrapnel, like the one i found on the outside of Matt's tire earlier in the trip, however my dad's case was that it was on the inner lining and that caused my dad to have about 18 flats between our start and Tarifa. The legend of "el flato" will live forever in the annals of Spanish cycling lore. :)
I was excited that we were going to reach the tip of Spain, but also dreading that the trip was coming to a close and it was our last day. After a good 9 months of planning we were about to finish. Even writing this blog weeks later, it stills gives me a sense of disappointment to write that the trip has come to a close. When I compare it to the India trip, i didnt feel as sad because I know either for work or on my own I will visit India again. Ive been there about 6/7x so there is a good chance that I will return. Spain on the otherhand I have only ever been to once, this trip, and I have no work relations to the country, so there is a good chance I wouldnt return, but in all honesty I feel like I have unfinished business in the country and if I can convince the family I would do a solo trip from Madrid to Lisbon one day. Just Blast through 400/500 miles in 5 days on my road bike.
The day prior we had completed a considerable ride of 93mi with our largest elevation gain of 6600ft! So after about 730miles and the previous days ups and downs we were tired. The night before I made sure to wrap my legs with bandages[tight compression] and take an ibuprofen for the inflammation. Compression of the muscles has been working for me for years to recover faster. You can read about it here: RICE method ( rest, ice, compression, elevation ) https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/tc/rest-ice-compression-and-elevation-rice-topic-overview
Getting back to the day ahead, after checking the route it seems that the very south of Spain doesn't have too many straight through road options given the mountains and coast, but it did have one road that we could take. When Shruti and I planned the original route for the tour, we made every effort to keep us off of the major roads for three reasons: safety, scenery and we thought it was against the law. It turns out that Spain is super bike friendly and their main highways and roads have a wide shoulder that bikes can ride on, but not all of them! Of course that one type of road: Autovias, or the A roads as we called them, was the one we needed to ride on. Thankfully there seemed to be a bit of a caveat, this A road also overlapped for the first 18mi or so with other N and E roads. So we knew which way we had to go, muscle it out for the first two or so hours and then we would have “clear” roads ahead. Clear with 6500ft worth of elevation gains where the highest point being 340m. ** sigh ** :) Let's get to the stats! Ride Statistics
Date ....................... Thursday January 18th 2018
I decided to be extra nerdy and keep a cumulative running total of some key stats. :)
Total Miles Cycled ......... 800mi!! Approximately :)
Total Elevation ............ 40,000ft Approximately :) I went a bit deeper on the stats analysis for the last day, and I may continue this to the trip recap blog post looking at all of the stats, by uploading the GPX data in to a few websites that create elevation profiles etc. The Strava app is nice, but the graphs it produces arent the best. I'd figured out how to get this in to CSV and then over to google sheets. I found a good one: Website: http://www.geocontext.org/publ/2010/04/profiler/en/?import=gpxthat let's you upload your GPX and it will give you a CSV of your data. I plugged that data into google sheets and came up with the graph below.
When you pull out the raw summary stats it actually has us going down hill a bit more than uphill. Compared to other days, this one was quite easy due to the distance and we actually finished the earliest all trip. It was the first day we completed the route while the sun was still up. A 6.94mph average speed is pretty funny, but this includes all stops etc., as if the clock never stopped ticking. Avg moving speed was actually pretty good.
Distance:
64.52 mile
Average speed:
6.94 mph
Total ascent:
3807 ft
Avg. moving speed:
9.70 mph
Total descent:
3848 ft
Maximum speed:
35.50 mph
Total time:
9:17:59.0
Moving time:
6:37:39.0
12 days in and the food choices are weighing on someone :)
why doesnt this cafe con leche have rice in it?
Shruti has come to be less than enamored with the golden arches.. Bah dah dah doo doo ... not lovin' it :)
come and knock on our doooooooor
GAS STATION GOODNESS
The Cheetos stock went up 10% while we were in
Spain from an unusual surge of European demand
Vanilla Spanish Oreos
After a series of stops for food and I think I had a flat going through this underpass of glass shards, we had a road side stop and had the rock of Gibraltar on our left. It was super cool seeing it from the road as we had climbed to the top previously. Looking back after these few months not only was the ride and elevations that much more of an achievement, but seeing the rock and climbing to the top was also one of those things you will probably do once in your life, if that.
Da Rock!
All of that cycling makes you hungry - so we stopped at a local supermarket and perused the pork products. I dont think there is another country in the world who loves to eat pork as much as people do in Spain. [ i wasnt complaining :) ]
The people of Spain love their ham
someone loves her juice
Argentine Empanada
post food selfie ... spirits are running high :)
extreme neck stretching
pic doesn't really capture how nice the sea looked from the mountain
nothing says nerd like an action camera strapped to your helmet
After all of the climbing... the downhill in to Tarifa was just fantastic.
The video below is one of my faves of the whole trip. At around min 5 or so we are coming down off the mountain and passing a giant wind farm. It is just amazing. I love it
We made it. The whole day all came together and ended up being the perfect mix. The mileage was a nice length, we made it during daylight, we had an amazing climb and an amazing descent, we had about 15 flats where my dad rolled down the hill on his rim [ el flato will not be denied! ], we had a nice lunch at the super mercado, Tarifa is just an amazing town and the bridge over to the lighthouse island with the crashing waves on one side, wind surfers on the other, the spray of water hitting us during a Spanish sunset at the southernmost point of Europe. It was like we were in a movie. Really amazing and really sad. A year of planning, 2 weeks of cycling, great memories coming to an end. During these long distance cycling trips with hardships and highs and more highs because of the exercise, great friends and crazy times and then after the trip it is a big crash [ at least for me ]. The last 2.5 cinematic mins of our journey coming to an end.
Our time in Tarifa was getting a nice coffee on the beach, watching the sunset, taking selfies and bike selfies and starting our ride back north. Tomorrow will be a ride all the way back up to Barcelona. Shruti and Matt leaving us and me and dad doing a tour of Barcelona... Also lots of speeding tickets await us. and Spanish Burger King pit stops :)
Finito!! First selfie after we arrived.
Shruts was trying as best as she could... it was so windy... #flagproblems
Facing the lighthouse in Tarifa.
Tarifa was absolutely amazing - we should have spent a day there
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