Saturday, February 4th. I am at the starting line in Solsona, in a MTB race, where my Titan partner, Josep Itó and I have been invited, along with 8 of the country’s best runners.
At 9am we are in front of everything, with the female elite, Núria Picas and Ramona Gabriel. To tell you the truth, I thought… “I don’t know what I’m doing here”, but as Itó told me, “Big smile in the photo because this doesn’t happen every day!”
We start with a neutralized start, but at kilometer 1 everyone starts at full throttle, as if it were a world cup. I can see that we will have a tough time. We immediately start to climb, leaving Solsona to enter the forests of the area Itó has decided to stay with me throughout the race. We keep going up! In fact, they make us climb up to kilometer 12, taking some technical downhill trails, but almost all uphill, and we have to go to the Lladurs Castle, which is 1000 m high So tough! I was there with the third girl, but once at the top, I didn’t see her anymore, and I could already see that I couldn’t fight for the podium positions because the course was challenging and I hadn’t trained hard enough to be there at the front with the elite
When we arrived at the top of the castle, 2 characters dressed as cows were waiting for us and made us throw some balls at a goal as well as a “black pata” refreshment, as the organization says, and it was a sliced ham, accompanied by fruit, muffins, cake, chocolate, isotonic… The truth is that this race is different from the rest, very “top”. Once there, a long descent awaited us with cyclable paths, some very technical sections and dizzying descents, until kilometer 20 Here you could decide to take the short route, but it was not our option From kilometer 22 to 32, we encountered some very technical downhill trails with some uphill, through beautiful forests and some places with stunning views. I had so much tension in my legs for fear of falling, they were about to collapse.
From kilometer 32 to 38 we had to go up again. The race was going great, but my legs were already very heavy and it was getting hard. During these kilometers, I asked
my partner to do the middle route, since it could be chosen during the test, and it was 39km, 6 less than the long one. He insisted that we do the latter, and told me that it was the only one where they had a podium, that there were none on the other routes, although, to my surprise, I listened to him, and we decided to continue the long journey
OMG, such last 6 kilometers! We still had about 200m of elevation gain and my legs were feeling heavier and heavier. The end! Race finished with 3h 50′ and 4th position!
Conclusion: If I had done the slightly shorter race, I would have reached the podium and would have achieved the 1st position.
Next year, I will be there again!