See Day 1 here:
Day 2 El Reto del Quetzal
Upon arriving back at the hotel from day 1’s journey. I was in such a distorted state I could barely function. I quickly cleaned up and hit the hotel for lunch. I had to eat. HAD to eat, so much so that I couldn’t actually function until I ate a giant plate of pasta, bean soup, couple of cokes and multiple baskets of bread. There’s hunger and there’s ravaged hunger! After that it was simply time to sleep and wait to eat again. The hotel was gorgeous with an amazing view overlooking the lake
I felt pretty hosed after the prior day’s efforts and day 2 was looking to be another epic day. While short in stature it had plenty of vertical, taking us up above 9500ft!! With all the climbing on tap I was wondering how the legs were going to possibly feel and would I be second guessing my 26/36 dual chainring?
The first 10k was a road climb, right outta the gate tires started on the incline. Surprisingly I actually felt really good. I like the long climbs (as much as you can ‘like’ a climb), especially when you’re not running full tilt with such a long day on tap. As usual the front teams took off the front leaving us gringos to grind away till we hit the village at the top.
I was feeling pretty good and sat out to ride some nice tempo up the climb, Todd who had a great day prior was suffering a little bit with effort out of the gate. So I yo-yo’d up and back for a bit with a few small groups. As cool as it was (mid/low 70’s) it was extremely humid. I made the right choice to go pack-less and even had to fully unzip on the climb as I was dripping in sweat. I woulda been dryer had I jumped in the lake.
We continued to climb till we hit the top and blasted down a dirt/concrete road. Only thing with blasting down a super fun fast switchback road, is the locals are still driving up and down the single car wide/blind corner road!! There were more than a few close calls of descending at 65kph and slamming on the brakes around the corners so we don’t collide head on with truck!
After the first descent it was time to go up a bit more (see above). This time we paired up with the Green Machine. Trisha and Steve, a canadian team who were leading the mix category race and gave us a beat down the day prior. Trish is a crazy good climber and spent the day bolting off the front every chance she could, while I gave chase and Todd/Steve were stuck behind yelling curses at us while we climbed away. We had some good laughs and great chats up the climbs together and spent a good majority of the race and after each day hanging out (there were only 4 anglophone teams).
Once over the top of the 2nd climb we had an amazing descent into the valley. Some nice cliff edges and beautiful views of the gorges and surrounding mountains. But as had been par for the course it meant a nice long climb out. The climb out was actually fun as it had some nice steep sections and some good rolling recovery sections. Todd was ready to roll at this point and we flew up the climb passing a few team and making up some ground. As far out as were were from any village, there were still locals kids here and they even were running along side and pushing me up the climbs. I got a kick out of it cause they were all too far gassed to offer any help to Todd!
Though once out of the valley climb it was back onto a long grind dirt road climb. After the fun of the previous singletrack climb, it was actually kind of hard to really get ourselves into a rythmn and get moving. And lo and behold the Green machine like the crazy robots they are churned away and pulled us back in.
A quick stop at aid station #2 for a refuel and were off to make the long singletrack hike a bike to the top. This trail seemed to go on forever and with all the climbing we had done mixed in with the elevation, it was gnarly to try to get moving and just put down any efforts. There were more than a few pit stops to catch my breath as I felt like I was just going to black out from the fatigue and the elevation.
Once we got to the top things opened up a bit and we were able to get back on the bikes and rolling.
I tried out my trials skills on a very tiny off-camber rock section. Got the front wheel up and across the gap, but the rear wheel slid and some big consequences. Off the side down into the ravine I went. A good 20 foot fall, somehow I jumped off the bike landed on my feet, but was moving so fast I had to jump again and again each time going down about 5-10 feet and finally slowing down by jumping into some bushes. I came out unscathed, but had the adrenaline flowing now!
Another pit stop at the aid station for some more of that delicious watermelon and still had 45 more minutes of climbing!! As we topped out at 9580ft of elevation it was time to do nothing but go downhill!! A super fun long descent all the way down the other side of the mountains we had just climbed. The descent was super fun singletrack, rocky, rooty and even got some crazy greasy clay sections with loads of ruts.
At one point were flying down the descent and came across a group of locals carrying firewood. Generally a good Ola! gets em moving out of the way, but for some reason this time they didn’t hear or decided they weren’t moving! Well it was a super greasy clay descent with loads of ruts everywhere and we were descending around 50+kph and they happened to be walking the best line. I moved off the line across some ruts and suddenly my rear wheel came sliding around and was now pretty darn even with me and within my peripheral vision. Seeing your rear wheel at that speed isn’t usually a good thing. I started to think about how damn hard the crash was going to hurt as the wheel was sliding around and then, BAM! the wheel caught the side of a rut, straightened right out and I was on the move again. Todd who was descending right behind me could barely believe I pulled out of it, I jokingly bragged it was all in the skills (the chamois stains proved I was scared though).
Once off the singletrack it was onto some farm road descending for what felt like a good 20-30 minutes. Super fast 50 kph, slightly downhill banging it out at full speed flying along riding. It was the best part of the day, just churning the pedals away feeling like you had no chain. The road was pretty buff as far as no rocks or whatnot, but it was still dirt and bumpy making you really pick your lines at that speed. But it felt great to just punch it as hard as you could and feel like you were really flying. In fact the descent was so much fun, it made you forget about all the pain and suffering of going uphill the whole day.
Day 2 was in the books 5:45 of time on the bike. Grabbed our bags, showered up and grabbed some lunch as quick as possible. After the long lunch, it was back to the room for an hour of naptime and then right back to the restaurant to eat a 2nd lunch. We were quite famished and the first one barely touched us. Our 2nd lunch gave us some incentive to rest some more and then head to the dinner buffet where we gorged ourselves on anything we could find to fit in our bellies. Stage racing,,, ride, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep. What’s better than that?
Day 3 to come soon…we’re almost there!
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