I love cycling. I love road trips.

There are few things  in this world I love more than a cycling road trip, the longest so far has been a 570km, 7 and a half hours drive to Madrid to see the Vuelta a Espagne in 2009. On Wednesday, myself and Olive drove for 5 hours to get to the finish of Stage 3 of Volta a Catalunya in La Seu d’Urgell. It was 275km and looked easy on the map. The first 100km was fine, it was mostly motorway, the rest was up and over the mountains, the highest pass was 2075m with lots of snow, ice and fantastic scenery. The southern side of the Pyrenées is very different to the north, much drier with lots of pine trees, the slopes of the mountains are gentler due to the lack of glaciation on the Spanish side, but the climbs are longer.

Port-de-la-Bonaigua 2072m altitude.

We got to La Seu d’Urgell mid afternoon and checked into the hotel, the staff for Cervélo, Columbia and Lotto were also checking in. The lobby was stacked high with cases, bags and food boxes. Headed straight to the finish line about 200m from the hotel and got a coffee in a café which was full of race staff having a break before the arrival of the riders. About 10 minutes before the finish we took a position at the barriers 20m from the line, the commentary was in the Catalan language so it was a bit hard to follow, but I understood enough to figure that Xavier Tondo and Joaquim Rodríguez were 1:30 in the lead, with a chasing group that included Irish champion, Nicolas Roche. On the line Tondo took the win, there was no sprint as it had obviously been agreed out the road that Tondo would win the stage and Rodríguez would have the race lead. Luis Sanchez came in about 1 minute later on his own and another 30 seconds later came the chasing group in which Nicolas Roche took 3rd in the sprint, 6th on the stage and moved up to 4th overall 1:20 back. The remaining riders finished in small groups looking very tired after what had been a very hard stage.

Xavier Tondo wins stage 3.

View the photo gallery of Volta a Catalunya, stage 3 in La Seu d’Urgell.

We ate late (22:00) which is usual in Spain, the teams had eaten earlier and had already gone to bed, only the mechanics from Cervélo were in the bar having a drink. In the morning when we came down for breakfast the dining room was full of riders and team staff. Each team had their own reserved table and their own cereals, although the hotel had cooked rice and porridge for them. It is a bit surreal being in the queue for the coffee machine along with Carlos Sastre and Mark Cavendish. Most of the Columbia team were leaving when we came down, only Cavendish remained having a chat with his DS. One of the Columbia team had eaten their breakfast from a Mickey Mouse bowl, you know it’s true, you should never meet your heroes or at least don’t examine their tableware! Had a brief chat with Irish rider Philip Deignan of Cervélo who told me to go to the Cervélo campervan at the start and he’d get me some hats and bottles.

It was a 35km drive to the start of stage 4 in Oliana, we got parked about 50 metres from the line and went for a wander through the start village. The great thing about a race like this (unlike the Tour) is that you can mingle among the teams and riders taking photos and chatting. Only cycling can offer intimacy between the stars and the fans, for soccer you will pay €100 just to get into the stadium to see the game, in cycling it is free and you can get right into the action.  All the riders were getting photos taken with fans and signing autographs, though some were clearly more popular than others. Tondo the winner the previous day was especially popular as he is a local lad, but the favorites along with Mark Cavendish and Jens Voigt were Oscar Pierero and Carlos Sastre, both winners of the Tour de France. Sastre has the status of superstar in Spain only bettered by Contador and Indurain.

Carlos Sastre.

Philip true to his word delivered the goods when we went to the Cervélo van, there was a large crowd waiting for Carlos Sastre to emerge and I could feel their beady eyes examining the merchandise. We then went to look for Irish Road Champion, Nicolas Roche. I have only cycled with Nicolas once in 1999 at one of his father’s training camps in Majorca, he was about 15 at the time and clearly had a talent for the bike. Philip Deignan I had raced against in Ireland many times when he was a junior with The Four Masters and I a 2^nd cat with Navan Road Club. I was always impressed by Philip, although at the time he was somewhat overshadowed by Mark Scanlon. I believed Philip to be a better rider; simply put Scanlon had it too easy while Deignan had to work hard for his wins. You learn nothing from winning but there are a lot of pertinent lessons to learn from defeat and these have stood to him in his pro career while Scanlon faded away. He was a class act then and last September he proved just how good he can be by winning a stage in the Vuelta. There was one other rider in the race that I have also raced against, Steve Cummings of Team Sky.

Steve Cummings' Team Sky Pinarello.

When the riders set off on the 200km stage to the south, we headed north on a 6 hour drive back across the Pyrenées to France.

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Tagged as: Carlos Sastre, Cervelo, cols, Cycling, Le Tour de France, Nicolas Roche, Philip Deignan, pyrenees, spain, Steve Cummings, Team Sky, Volta a Catalunya