Today the real adventure begins! At 6 in the morning we get up to the sound of the song “Ho Hey”. It will be our alarm clock every morning.
It’s time to get dressed, have breakfast, grab all the things we’ll need during the race, both in terms of nutrition and mechanics. Before leaving we must also load 3 liters of water, go through the signature control in order to be able to take part in the race and get to the starting line.
A dream come true: competing in the 2022 Titan Desert with my teammate, Josep Itó, in the mixed category! I’m at the starting line, no nerves. Happy, very happy! The main goal is to finish the 6 stages that the race lasts.
Yes, now! 10,9,8…3,2,1 Let’s go! 120km through the desert awaits us and it looks like it is going to be very hot.
We start cautiously. It is my first Titan and we have many kilometers and days ahead of us. We make the first 35 kilometers along tracks with spectacular landscapes with the typical desert mountains everywhere. As soon as I see this spectacular landscape, my legs go by themselves.
We arrive at the first hydration point. All the stages have hydration stations that we must go through, only being allowed to skip one, and also through all the checkpoints, or you get penalized with 5 hours!
We’re doing pretty well. I feel strong. Now we have the second section until the next hydration station, without skipping any checkpoint (It’s a strategy race. The participants try to shorten the path. That’s why they can choose different tracks although it doesn’t always turn out the way you want).
Now begins a somewhat different section than the beginning. The long endless tracks begin and you never see the end, with some planes where you only see sand esplanades and a single track where you only see bikes or nobody. We reach kilometer 65! Now we are in the middle, but the heat begins to crush, and it shows. I need to pour cold water over my legs and head, we drink some water, fill the bottles and continue. We continue along some tracks where we step on some small dunes. So lucky to have an experienced partner who guides me telling me where to go and I only have to get off the bike for short periods, but I manage them quite well. We are moving forward, but now it is difficult for the kilometers to pass. We don’t stop pedaling and it doesn’t seem like we’re making any progress, but I’m still good enough to keep pedaling, so we keep going.
We are about to reach km 90 where the last hydration point is located; after that we will have completed most of the stage, but there are still 30 km left! Once we hydrate ourselves and I refresh my legs, because they are starting to get tired, we still have 30 km flat with a lot of heat and our legs have been working for 90 km already. But we are going well and we begin to press ourselves and pick up a very high pace that we don’t leave it until the end, when we see the finish line. The smile is drawn from ear to ear! We already have a stage in our pocket and with the surprise of being 3rd in the mixed category! Not even in the wildest dreams would I have imagined it!