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Imagine a 123 -kilometer cycling marathon with 3,000 meters accumulated ascent that gives a 360 degree turn to the mountain and taller volcano in our country, at a minimum altitude of 1,300 meters and reaching levels of 2,300 meters ... In a single stage!
That is the
360 Teide Challenge, a Mountain Bike test organized by the 7raid Sports Club of the Island of Tenerife.
To these extremely attractive ingredients, now adds a 46 -year -old cyclist,
Globero For its physical level but with more than 20 years of routes on top, a mountain cyclist who had never faced a marathon of this caliber, and that had been almost 10 years without making a half marathon by mountain bike.
Well, that is precisely what I did: prepare for 4 months to participate on April 29 in the Teide 360. Despite the 13 hours, of the 123 kilometers on the legs and the very long climbs up to a total of 3,000 meters of Ascent, it was a unique bicycle experience.
Preparing the test
It all started with a gift from kings. "Honey, look, the registration that made you so illusion." And one begins out there, by the dream of achieving a sports challenge, a priori and clearly, logic and reason, unattainable.
But at that time, when your commitment is already a reality, you begin to be aware of what you face and stress makes an appearance. So I went to my friend Ale, who is a sports coach, to help me prepare.
The routines began: 2 days of strength, 3 days of pedaling, 1 day of track series ... and also the excuses: "This week I only train 4 days or 3 for this or that, for the family and work commitments that result inescapable ", etc.
But also by the head, you know: that if I am fatigued today, that if I do not feel like it, that if today it rains. A battle that was only the beginning and at all the goal. Until reaching the last weeks, still without handling the times with food and drinking, still without sufficient bottomless, still without being as you would like to be. And you never get to be. Now you understand me.
The day of the race
It is 6:30 in the morning and although the test does not have great institutional support and is still a great unknown, in this second edition 650 runners are re -joined, covering 100% of the inscriptions, in this personal challenge for each of us.
Most are
Bikers From the island of Tenerife, but also from the rest of the islands and, it seems to me, some come from Peninsula. The estimated time for the first to finish, 5:30 (which would later be 6:19 for the 2016 Canary Islands champion, Sergio Flores, who took the test as training). Estimated time for the last, 14:00 hours, which would be about 15 in some cases.
The orography causes the Teide 360 marathon to 2,300 meters of altitude are reached in the National Observatory of Izaña. In total, in these first 37 kilometers, an ascent that faces an altitude difference of almost 1,000 meters.
There are the first abandonments before even facing the long and funny, but very broken, descended to the place of Ramón Caminero, in the municipality of La Orotava, which puts us again at 1,500 altitude.
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Image credits: Esther Álvarez.[/caption]
At this point you have already reached 50 kilometers of travel. The legs, but also hands and arms, begin to resent. And the battle begins with his head: "In the next provisioning I retire." "I'm hungry". "Why do I get into this." "Who I have to show what, nobody."
My strategy was to take my partner and my daughter, who were waiting for me at every point where the earth crossed with the asphalt, in the supplies of water and those of food. Seeing them was the motivation, the deception that I needed to advance another little. Key was also Ale's advice, I remember it right now as a maximum in the long distances: "Drink every 10 minutes even if you are not thirsty and eat every 20 minutes even if you are not hungry."
From Ramón Caminero and to the place of Chío, where we would reach 90 kilometers of travel, it is time at 1,750 meters of altitude and ending at 1,600 before facing the last great slope ... by asphalt!
This section is the most beautiful and the one that is practically done alone. The delegation of
Bikers It has stretched to infinity and beyond. You end up forming a group with those who left the last provision at the same time and go to the same pace. No more than 5 or 7 of the 650. The rest is forward or backward, but you don't see them.
Every few kilometers the volunteers of different groups and groups of 4x4 fans monitor us and pass information to Civil Protection and the organization. I have never felt more alone and at the same time more careful and spoiled at a challenge.
An incredible experience dotted with a slide of emotions in which at times you wanted to send everything to shit and at times you were riding euphoric over the bike. Russian mountain of emotions that when arriving in Chío ran straight ahead with the last great challenge of the test, resume the 2,200 meters of altitude in long, tedious and overwhelming 17 kilometers of asphalt.
It is curious that something that, one day in a training seems to you little, that day with 90 kilometers of earth and stones in the legs becomes an almost insurmountable goal that most of us faced on the basis of
grinder.
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Image credits: Esther Álvarez[/caption]
Arriving at Las Lajas, in Los Altos de Vilaflor, with 107 kilometers away traveled was, without a doubt, exciting. He had done it (or almost). I had never pedaled so much distance, although another 15 were still missing. And what 15, my God, what 15! The first 10 kilometers in a brutal, beautiful, dangerous descent, in which you passed from 2,200 to 1,300 meters of altitude for, such as icing, taking up the altitude of the town of Vilaflor in the last section by ravines, galleries and a landscape magical.
At this point the head was no longer for aesthetic assessments and the legs refused to push the bike in the short but hard slopes that took us out of each ravine. Those last 5 kilometers were long, suffered, hard and at the same time funny, exciting, because each corridor with whom you stumbled, each
biker that you advanced or advanced you, I had some words of mind or you had them with him or her.
The joy of knowing that we were at the gates of overcoming the challenge was noticed, chewed, despite strong fatigue.
And almost at 7:30 p.m. I went through that finish line, they put that medal
Finisher And I breathed deep. He had done it. What if I had done it! And I was convinced that it was not going to be the last cycling marathon, but, if fate leaves me, the first of many marathons with dignity with my hole
Globero in the most senior categories (+40, +50 and, if I arrive, +60).
So, for all that, if you live in Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona, Seville, Lugo ... for all that, I insist, you have to ride a plane and come to experience a 360 Teide, because tests like this one are going to live few , in terms of hardness and distance, in our homeland territory. You are all welcome!
