Another first… that was the most intense rain I’ve ever experienced on my bike :)

Today was 10x easier than day 1 though.

When I woke up at around 7.30 am it wasn’t raining and was nice and cool. I needed that. After the intense heat of the day before as I might have had mild heat exhaustion. I took a while to get going and treated myself to a shower and a hot breakfast of 4 eggs and salt. Five minutes before I was set to leave it started pouring. I got my rain jacket and booties on and off I went…

It was great until the map wanted me to turn left on a 20%+ gradient that it called a “road” but was asphalt for 4 feet and then turned into a rocky stream bed and what looked like a waterfall. It is a bad sign when you loop back twice and still don’t see a “road”. So… I tried to get out of the rain to replan as the current path is not working for bikes. I was next to one of those alter shack things they have everywhere, but Mary or whoever was inside wouldn’t let me in the room. She was nice and dry with her candles and crosses and I was outside. Maybe instead of building little shacks for religious alters we should build shacks for people :)?

Anyway… it was pouring rain… and very hard to use the touchscreen on the GPS (thank Jebus the name of my destination was 7 letters and not the normal 15 to 25 the Portuguese like for their town names!). In the process, I broke a little hook on one of my bike panniers but it will be fine. Anyway… I got rerouted and had a good time.

After about 1.5 hours in heavy to light rain the sun came out (once I was over the next mountain). That was really nice and it was a beautiful day. Some really cute towns and I love Lamego (tons of festivals going on).

Other updates…

• Sad news… I lost a single sock to the wind when I was changing and drying clothing. It jumped right off the stone cliff and fell 15 feet to a new future in the bushes. It has served me well and I believe it was from a sock batch that was over 10 years old. I wish it luck.
• I found out that the Goretex jacket I got from Joel’s dad in my 2nd year in college has no Goretex left. At least it is water repellent and kept me a little warmer. I love this jacket and I’ve taken it everywhere (not a scratch on it). Maybe once I get to Santiago I can look for a new one for the ride back. I remember Joel got one at the same time and he hilariously wore it into the shower to show off the Goretex.
• Today the route took me on stairs which was silly. Amazing views but humping my bike up even 15 stairs that were uneven and rocks was rough.
• Wow! There are some amazing mountain people here in Portugal. The Romans were so insane, who else would try to conquer people living up here? It made me remember a story from a tour I was on in the Serbian/Croatia region. One of the town names was called (in Croatian) “Where-Wolves-Fuck”, which brings me to TWO important rules, #1 never fuck with Serbians/Croatians/etc and
  #2… don’t fuck with any mountain people.
• I had a glass of green wine, Portuguese sausage starter, garlic bread and break, then lamb chops with potatoes and cabbage, and then homemade Gelato (cream). All for only 21 euros.
• I ate all 3 cans of pate I found at the last house, all the cheese I bought, 5 bread rolls, ~200g of homemade mac and cheese, and a nectarine by midnight last night. Pate is a food of legend and I felt great today. I could have biked far longer.

Stats?

I rode somewhere between 36km to 39km over 3.5 hours. I changed some settings on my bike GPS and forgot to set it to log when I kept switching maps from the Camino walking path to a path along roads. I also switched from the Camino path to road and then back for a bit. Maybe 700m in ascent but it could have been more since my GPS was off for a good chunk of that.

Tomorrow I’ll do ~40km with 1,170m in ascent. I redid the map so we shall how this version goes as it should stick more to roads and no more path. If that goes well I’ll probably start pushing to some longer distances.

Not as many pictures today with rain:

Well, that was the hardest bike ride of my life so far. What a fun day!

I left Viseu around 9.15 am and I arrived a little after 3 pm to wherever I am. So about 5 hours and 45 minutes (which matches my bike GPS for total time). I stopped for a total of ~30 minutes to eat snacks and drink water (went through 4200 ml and pee was way too dark). And, then I had a fair bit of mini stops to talk to God about the mountains and the swarms of bugs around my face.

Why was this ride so hard?

#1 – Crazy intense altitude gains while pushing a bike. The map says ~1,450m of gain (~5000 feet) which isn’t too bad until you see how intense they are. I had to walk up most of these while pushing a heavy bike/bag setup… which leads me to reason number 2…

And, here is what it looks like just when I was riding. The huge sharp leaps are because I walked up those parts while pushing the bike and then the bike gps came back on when I started moving fast enough.

#2 – Insane trails that were harder than anything I did in Colorado on my mountain bike. Many of them just looked like stream beds with 18in drops in the middle of the path, loose rubble, huge rocks, some sandy, etc… And, some were fairly overgrown. Many times I had to walk down the steep parts to ensure no tragedy (pictures below).

Stats?

Note, my bike GPS auto stops when I am not going fast enough, aka biking very slowly or walking (something I will turn off shortly).

So it says I biked for 3 hours and 14 minutes. During which I covered 39.25km and ~700m of altitude gain. The map says I biked ~51km and did ~1450m altitude gain. So that means I walked or I was riding very slowly for ~10km, 750m, and 2 hours on top of that. That seems likely. It might have been a little less distance as at the end I jumped on a road instead of more of the insane path.

Pictures in order of my day… 

Tomorrow?

I scaled back the distance as a lot of altitude tomorrow too. But, I am going to keep trying this path :)

We shall see how it goes…

Fuck you Strava :)

I did not get as much training in as I would like for this upcoming September bike tour.

Part of that is because I didn’t know when Lindsey and Calico were heading for a grandparent visit and partially work. Work was very intense as I tried to get everything in place and it is always hard to leave when you are a small team of 2. I also hurt my back about 10 days before leaving… and had to get a lot of rest in (partly due to a huge screw up by a bike shop, they installed a part backward… and partly me as I had a fun day at the beach and was throwing Calico and his friend Benjamin in a way that was bad for my back injury).

I do think that I am better prepared than on my first bike tour though. This is good as this is going to be a MUCH harder route with a ton of climbing.

I am planning to bike up a Camino Interior route to Santiago, then back down along the Camino coast route, and then a “quick” hop over to Viseu. The route is around 900km, not counting the missed turns, and kilometers to find a hotel or campsite depending on what I do. The route also has 15,000 meters of altitude gain. Most of that is in the first stage. The Camino Interior route is known to be rough, so there will be times I’ll have to walk my bike up 20% grades, and hopefully, the path isn’t so overgrown. It will be an adventure which is what I am after :)

On the bike tour I did in 2018 I averaged 65km a day at a pace of 3 hours and 20 minutes of ride time (over 18 days with 2 break days). But, I also didn’t have much climbing as a huge part of the ride was on a canal path. I only climbed 2,800m versus 15,000m on this upcoming trip…

On this trip, I am blocking out 21 days and seeing how it goes. My little Komoot bike planning tool estimates if I spend 4 hours in the saddle it will take 19 days… if I bump my rating up to “Athletic” on their little tool it goes to 15 days. So we shall see :)

Training plan?

For my first bike tour here are the 3 months leading up to it:

Apr – 9 biking days / 173 km / 11 Hours / 0 rides over 30 Miles
May – 12 biking days / 400 km / 25 Hours / 3 rides over 30 Miles
Jun – 13 biking days / 508 km / 26 Hours / 5 rides over 30 Miles

Here are the 3 months leading up to this current tour:

Jun – 18 Biking Days / 320km / ~28 Hours / 3 rides over 50km
Jul – 17 Biking Days / 324 km / ~28 Hours / 3 rides over 50km
Aug – 13 Biking Days / 554 km / ~32 Hours / 7 rides over 50km.

I feel pretty good about the long rides, as I ride much further than I did for the first tour which is going to help. For example, here were my long rides in those months:

Jul- 67km, 70km, 81km…
Aug – 47km, 63km, 70km, 50km, 71k , 72km

What would I change if I could go back? (and for next time)

In June/July I would have like to have been doing 3 rides a week, each 3+ hours long. That would have helped get more time in the seat. And, then in August, I could have bumped that up to 4 rides a week, each 3 to 4.5 hours long (as then the leap to aiming for 6 to 7 days in the seat doing 3 to 4 hours would have felt easier). Oh well, that is also part of the adventure :)…

I got a Tout Terrain Outback Xplore 29! I wanted a touring bike that could do a LOT of trail and gravel roads here in Spain/Europe.

I’ve done 3 rides on it so far and the 4-hour ride was amazing. The internal gearing is so quiet and smooth and I am so impressed. The geometry is better than the other touring bikes I’ve ridden and I like being a little more upright.