CX Contests
COPA CATALANA DE CICLOCRÒS
TROFEU JOAN SOLER 2014
Last Sundays was the CX race on Manlleu, the most important race on the Catalonian
Championship. If you win on this race you're the Catalonian Champion! So this time the race
was on the highly level. José Antonio Hermida was on my start line, feeling honored and
scared at the same time, it means the race was going to be super hard!
The race begans on a crazy and super fast start. The way to the mud was a super large
road on asphalt, and you can move some positions before arriving on the bottleneck.
The day was foggy, wet and cold, but when we began racing the sun rises up and
made the mud to dry. As you know, I use a PoloAndBike first model fixed bike converted
to Single Speed Cyclocross, using clip brakes and semi slick tires (because dirt tires
does not fit). So it's better for me a dry track to not get stucked.
The track was supercool, it has the super large Asphalt section on the Start/Finish line;
then we enter to the grass&mud; sometimes we ride on a walking path made of gravel;
on the middle section there was a river with a bridge and the muddy section, with a 300m of
wet wet mud, on the final of this section we got 2 barriers and a river gap, all ultra muddy;
the next section was a dry mud inclined plane that we climb like 3 times; finally the climb
section, 3 hills of wet sand and rocks, the first super difficult (Hermida was climbing
on his bike), the second was not so hard, but with a difficult closed curve. The third was the
most difficult one, with 2 barriers before it. I saw a video of Gerard Alvarez jumping
the barriers and climbing it on his bike, amazing!
I cross the finish line, super glad to finish this important and hard race on my
PoloAndBike SSCX bike. Only 2 races to end CX season! Stay tuned!
Photos by:
Arrieredupeloton
FollowFilms
HaikuVisual
Francisco Vernet