Cycling in the Catalonia region of Spain - Until 2016, this was no where near my bucket list. Come 2017 September, I am totally hooked to cycling, thanks to the group riding done in Catalonia with 9 other riders from UK and Netherland.
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| Group 5 on day2 |
My company conducts the charity bike ride every year in Europe. When I heard about it for the first time, my first thought was "wow, this is cool, let me give it a try".
And so it began.
Bike ride enrollment - How did I get in? -
It was sort of a big deal to get yourself to the other side of the fence. What I mean by this, is that the charity ride was not a free for all event. On a certain date and time, the entry application was opened to all Colt employees. Selection was going to be the first come first serve. In order to ensure I get through, I kept all my personal details ready in a notepad, kept the application page open and as soon as it was the entry time, I clicked the refresh button. Once the deposit payment screen displayed, I knew I was in. Having honed my event entry skills for many running events up until then, this was the easiest part. Later I found out that all the slots were filled within the first 5 minutes and no other riders from Japan had gotten in through the front door application process. The other 4 riders were also in, albeit via slots reserved for Asia.
As this was a charity bike ride, all the riders were required to commit to raise a certain amount of money for a local charity that was selected by the Colt country office. All riders who got in were committed to this cause, besides spending for other expenses from their own pocket.
Buying a road bike -
After an assured slot in the 2017 Colt charity bike ride, which I named "tour de Catalonia", my next task was to buy a decent road bike. Despite everything else the fact was that I was a runner, and not a rider. If you ask me anything about running, I am reasonably confident I will be able to advise you few things and you might be my happy customer. But, when it comes to cycling, this was not the case. I decided to consult Steve Tallon. You may ask, "Why Steve?" And to that I would say, "why not Steve?" After all, for what other reason has he successfully done London to Tokyo bike ride in 6 months. In April just before the golden week holidays, I joined Steve for lunch in order to extract his knowledge about bikes. And oh boy! He introduced me to this whole new dimension of the English vocabulary! For the most part, I struggled to understand a lot of what Steve explained about bikes :( Fortunately for me, I had visited couple of bike shops before talking to Steve and had some idea about the prices and how high they can go. While Steve was sharing his knowledge of 20 years of riding, I was worried that it may cost me good deal of money and I may not get permission from my wife to buy an expensive bike. After an hour long lunch and a walk back to our office, I understood that the minimum factor I need to check while buying a bike for this 470km ride was the Shimano105 group set. This was still an entry level spec, according to Steve. Shimano Ultegra group set was his first choice. It took me a good deal of time to understand that 'group set' means a gear set. And a lot more time to understand how I can assemble/disassemble the bike.
Couple of days before Golden Week I placed my order for the bike. It was a Giant tcr sr2. It's price was almost double than my initial budget. With few more mandatory to carry items like repair kit, spare tube etc when you go on a long ride, the overall expenditure so far had already reached a level that had not been anticipated by me. The Scicon bike bag was my last shopping and also something that totally excited me. Because of all the money I had spent, I started hiding the details from my wife, but eventually shared everything with her, and also got her to rally behind me because I really did want to do this bike ride.
Training and reaching a start line --
My road bike giant-tcr-sr2 got delivered during golden week and I started my training.
Despite of strong advise to buy cycling shoes that comes with clips, I decided against it for the fear of collapsing and injuring myself which was not uncommon among first time clip users. The value of clips was yet to be understood. Overall I did around 1200km of riding before the event. Longest ride I did was of 130km on weekend up to Sekiyadojo on Edogawa river and back. Though I wanted to do few hills, my entire training was on the flat surface along either Arakawa or Edogawa rivers.
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| Giant TCR SR2 |
Despite of strong advise to buy cycling shoes that comes with clips, I decided against it for the fear of collapsing and injuring myself which was not uncommon among first time clip users. The value of clips was yet to be understood. Overall I did around 1200km of riding before the event. Longest ride I did was of 130km on weekend up to Sekiyadojo on Edogawa river and back. Though I wanted to do few hills, my entire training was on the flat surface along either Arakawa or Edogawa rivers.
To reach Barcelona from where the bike ride was going to start, I had booked a Swiss Air flight from Tokyo to Zurich to Barcelona rejecting two other options of BA and Air France. Going by BA means I needed to take transit visa for UK on top of Shengen visa from Spanish embassy. I can deal with one visa processing pain and ideally would prefer none but being Indian we need a visa for most of the countries, at least for now. 2nd option was Air France but they were charging additional 30,000JPY for a bike. Overall Swiss Air deal was cheaper. After an 11 hr flight to Zurich and another an hour and a half to Barcelona, I reached FC Barca's home on 18th Sept with three days to acclimatize. On Barcelona airport I waited for an hour in front of baggage belt for luggage to arrive only to found out later that my bike bag which was an oversize baggage was going to come to different belt. In an hour long wait before noticing that freaking notice board, I had already started thinking that Swiss Air has lost my bike and I will have to say good bye to the ride even before reaching the start line. Luckily bike had arrived and was moved to separate location as I had not picked it quickly enough. Everything was set now.
The day before the ride three other riders from Tokyo reached Barcelona. We opened our bike bags in our hotel room. Confirmed nothing was broken. Assembled the bikes. Adachi san who is a bike freak, oiled the chains, inspected and certified that our bikes are fit for the ride for over next 4 days. I and Nari had decided to do normal route as against adventurous and longer route. Adachi san and Yoshii san were up for adventure. In the dinner time briefing session that evening, after detailed presentation by event managers our CEO Carl made his simple two line speech - "All the best. Keep safe".
Day 1 - 110km (Barcelona - Tarragona)
After a healthy breakfast in the morning I took a look at my office emails for the last time using hotel wifi. There was a "good luck" message from Masato my boss on behalf entire CTO team in Asia. I hoped I will make them proud as none less was expected.
I kept a goal before me to finish a day at a time and be safe. The real meaning of later was yet to be understood by me in its true sense.
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| Ready to hit the road |
I kept a goal before me to finish a day at a time and be safe. The real meaning of later was yet to be understood by me in its true sense.
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| Group 5 on day1 |
The bike ride got flagged off at Colt's Almeda campus in Barcelona at 9:00am on 22 Sept. I was in group 5. Rob Churchard, project manager in our London office, was our group leader. I met him and other 7 riders for the first time at the start line. Unsure who they are and what kind of riders they are, all of us started riding through city of Barcelona. There was some traffic at that time of the day but nothing compared to traffic of Tokyo at the same time of the day. A day before the event, I had scanned through the safety guide given by event managers. As per the guide, if I was to overtake any rider ahead of me, I was supposed to give a shout "on your left". Why left? It should right! Rob reminded me we are in Spain that has right hand drive system. So to overtake you need to do that from left side :) Hola! "On your left" it is.
Soon we left the city traffic and reached coast of Mediterranean. 5km ride along the coast and we were at the bottom of our first hill. All 10 riders regrouped, headcount check done, resumed the ride what was our first hill climb. For me it was my life's first major hill ride. Soon I was out of breadth and was drifting away from the group. A savior came in the form of flat tyre.
It was Sushant's cycle, the rider from our Amsterdam office. Entire group stopped. Waited for tube replacement. Rob Churchard took the charge of replacing the tube after sensing the difficulties Sushant was facing to finish the job. So each group was responsible for safety of riders as well as taking care of stuff like tyre punctures. In my mind I was relived for the fact that I got some space to gather my energy and also a time out to pee. Meanwhile, other Colt riders passed waving hand at us. In 15 mins we resumed. The spectacular view of Mediterranean coast was always on our right for next 5-6km.
Soon we started the down hill. It was here I had my second trouble. I was neither used to up hill nor down hill. I was facing difficulty to control speed. At one turn for a brief moment, unable to control speed, I went into opposite lane. Luckily no vehicle was coming from opposite side. Saved! Safety first, safety first. I reminded myself again. Seeing the difficulties I was having on down hill, Rob approached me and advised to ride safe and don't bother if others are going fast. Soon we reached our first pit stop. Support staff was ready with protein bars, energy drink to refill water bottles and our day bags. We resumed after 10 minutes of break. After that it was mostly flat surface. I was comfortable on the flat surface which continued until lunch point for an exception of hill right before lunch break. Sandwich bread, three types of hams, variety of vegetables, fruits, mustard, ketchup was neatly arranged on a long table.
Eat as much as you like. Support staff was taking extremely good care of all riders. I met all Tokyo riders and my boss Ramona at lunch spot. After 30 minutes we continued our ride but this time with a new leader. Dean Melish. At lunch spot half the group went to longer and adventurous route. Rob Churchard our group leader was one of them. So Dean Melish led us and he did it with an ease of seasoned riders which he was. Post lunch we left motor road and started riding on a narrow, stony road. It wasn't bad but speeding was not possible as much as we would have liked to go. On this surface also I had difficulty catching up with other riders. It took me some time to recover the gap that was created due to my controlled speed on down hill. Finally I regrouped with rest of them and stayed together till last 7-8kms. We passed through many small Spanish villages and farms. The olive farms were fenced and guarded by dogs who barked at us till we are out of sight. We entered Tarragona. Around 7-8 more km to go and I started drifting away from the group. I was fatigued and couldn't stay together with them. It was here the entire group waited for me at the next red light. I regrouped, apologized to them and tried to stay with them for the rest of the distance which wasn't much. Ours was perhaps 2nd or 3rd group to reach the destination out of 10. With days efforts all of us were game for beers and that is what we did. Marc H bought beers for all of us. Then someone or other kept bringing more beers. Soon we consumed all chilled beers in the hotel. Yeah, hotel in Tarragona was not prepared for beer consumption speed of us. In a typical never give up spirit, Dean got us few more beers from a neighboring shop :)
I would have liked to take more photos than I did while we were on the road earlier in the day. I asked Dean that night why nobody stopping to take photos. He said if you want to do that then this is not the group you want to ride with. This made it clear to me -- when you are riding no distractions please!
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| working on a flat tyre |
It was Sushant's cycle, the rider from our Amsterdam office. Entire group stopped. Waited for tube replacement. Rob Churchard took the charge of replacing the tube after sensing the difficulties Sushant was facing to finish the job. So each group was responsible for safety of riders as well as taking care of stuff like tyre punctures. In my mind I was relived for the fact that I got some space to gather my energy and also a time out to pee. Meanwhile, other Colt riders passed waving hand at us. In 15 mins we resumed. The spectacular view of Mediterranean coast was always on our right for next 5-6km.
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| other riders passing us when Rob & Ivana were taking care of Sushant's flat tyre. |
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| me taking photos and struggling to catch up with other riders |
Soon we started the down hill. It was here I had my second trouble. I was neither used to up hill nor down hill. I was facing difficulty to control speed. At one turn for a brief moment, unable to control speed, I went into opposite lane. Luckily no vehicle was coming from opposite side. Saved! Safety first, safety first. I reminded myself again. Seeing the difficulties I was having on down hill, Rob approached me and advised to ride safe and don't bother if others are going fast. Soon we reached our first pit stop. Support staff was ready with protein bars, energy drink to refill water bottles and our day bags. We resumed after 10 minutes of break. After that it was mostly flat surface. I was comfortable on the flat surface which continued until lunch point for an exception of hill right before lunch break. Sandwich bread, three types of hams, variety of vegetables, fruits, mustard, ketchup was neatly arranged on a long table.
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| our caring support staff colleagues |
Eat as much as you like. Support staff was taking extremely good care of all riders. I met all Tokyo riders and my boss Ramona at lunch spot. After 30 minutes we continued our ride but this time with a new leader. Dean Melish. At lunch spot half the group went to longer and adventurous route. Rob Churchard our group leader was one of them. So Dean Melish led us and he did it with an ease of seasoned riders which he was. Post lunch we left motor road and started riding on a narrow, stony road. It wasn't bad but speeding was not possible as much as we would have liked to go. On this surface also I had difficulty catching up with other riders. It took me some time to recover the gap that was created due to my controlled speed on down hill. Finally I regrouped with rest of them and stayed together till last 7-8kms. We passed through many small Spanish villages and farms. The olive farms were fenced and guarded by dogs who barked at us till we are out of sight. We entered Tarragona. Around 7-8 more km to go and I started drifting away from the group. I was fatigued and couldn't stay together with them. It was here the entire group waited for me at the next red light. I regrouped, apologized to them and tried to stay with them for the rest of the distance which wasn't much. Ours was perhaps 2nd or 3rd group to reach the destination out of 10. With days efforts all of us were game for beers and that is what we did. Marc H bought beers for all of us. Then someone or other kept bringing more beers. Soon we consumed all chilled beers in the hotel. Yeah, hotel in Tarragona was not prepared for beer consumption speed of us. In a typical never give up spirit, Dean got us few more beers from a neighboring shop :)
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| after day 1 ride |
Day 2 - 103km (Tarragona - Tortosa)
We were told it is going to be mostly country side narrow road on day2. We realized quickly as 8 half gelled riders started their journey towards Tortosa. I sensed James Brown did not even know I was part of the group on day1. Sushant checked if I will be really riding with the same group on day2. Going by my day1 performance I can understand if they thought they are better off without me. I wanted to be part of the same group and more importantly I had no day1 fatigue left. I joined the group and we started sailing through farms and hills and mostly hills. 103 km were going to be mostly hills and we learned it in our own way. I did not let them down and did my best not to veer away from the pack. After a while James Cadogan told me I am a much improved rider compared to day1. It sounded sweet to me. Hills continued and there came a sharp hill out of no where. "shit" and "wtf" were used rather generously by many. Yeah you read it right, many, and not just me :) I heard a loud shout from the back, "no foot on the ground, no foot on the ground". It was James C. It did the trick. We did climb that little beast without getting off of our bikes. We were sailing so well that none of us realized we missed the lunch spot. Our support crew brought the food especially for us at a non designated spot. One of the support staff said the sweetest thing I heard in that entire day and may be in a very long time. It was "we will never let you go on empty stomach!".
Day2 saw us reaching the destination ahead of everyone and we did enjoy it as entire pool of the hotel was to 8 of us. We made the best use of it by heading straight into the pool followed by, yes, beers.
I ventured a bit into Tortosa town to buy a water bottle and that now we had reached almost an hour earlier than other groups, also to see Tortosa as much as possible.
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| after day2 ride |
I ventured a bit into Tortosa town to buy a water bottle and that now we had reached almost an hour earlier than other groups, also to see Tortosa as much as possible.
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| river l'Ebre passing through Tortosa - 1 |
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| river l'Ebre passing through Tortosa - 2 |
Day 3 - 139km (Tortosa - Castellon)
It was going to be the longest ride today. After too many hills of day2, flat surface of day3 was going to be the welcome change. Without any problem we sailed entire distance.
Rob was back to lead the group as he was not doing excursion today. On the way we saw Nari had a flat tyre. As he was alone doing replacement I asked Rob if we should go and see if he needs any help. I was right. He needed the different kind of pump and Rob had it. We gave it to him and started the 2nd half of our day3 ride. James C told me again today that I am a much better rider compared to even day2. They were really encouraging words for me. It might be James's way of keeping me motivated.
Day3 distance was some distance to cover and I was not sure if it was going to be a good idea to do excursion on day4 as I was having some pain in my thighs. Rob wanted me to do it and he said I will have no problems. He too echoed same line as James C that I am a different rider on day3. I decided to take the decision in the morning.
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| most of the day3 ride was like this |
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| and long but gentle climb |
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| only hill of significance on day3 and this is how it looked from top after climbing it |
Rob was back to lead the group as he was not doing excursion today. On the way we saw Nari had a flat tyre. As he was alone doing replacement I asked Rob if we should go and see if he needs any help. I was right. He needed the different kind of pump and Rob had it. We gave it to him and started the 2nd half of our day3 ride. James C told me again today that I am a much better rider compared to even day2. They were really encouraging words for me. It might be James's way of keeping me motivated.
Day3 distance was some distance to cover and I was not sure if it was going to be a good idea to do excursion on day4 as I was having some pain in my thighs. Rob wanted me to do it and he said I will have no problems. He too echoed same line as James C that I am a different rider on day3. I decided to take the decision in the morning.
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| View of Castellon from hotel room |
Day 4 - 124km (Castellon - Valencia)
Unfortunately my thighs were hurting a bit in the morning. I dropped a note on WhatsApp group to the rest of the riders that I am not doing the excursion and went for the breakfast only to realize everybody in the pack are doing it except for Dean and Kevin. I changed my mind and decided to do it. It was the last day of the ride anyway. I knew my thighs are hurting but not as bad as they would after a full marathon. Breakfast with Yoshii san that morning was also one of the contributing factors that helped me take the decision.
We started as usual from our hotel for the final destination Valencia. Out of 124km, 15km long hill with 1100m elevation was waiting for us. Martin, the rugby player in his past life and a gem of a man, was our second in command. I had some trouble staying with the group in first flat 20 kms. I had to try hard not to widen the gap. Martin was on my tail making sure I don't fall behind too much. As we approach the hills, it was a game of nerves. As advised by Martin who was always with me I got into my rhythm, tried to maintain the cadence and ignored the speed. Soon I started feeling comfortable. Martin gave another tip to change to high gear, rise from the saddle and do some hard paddling. I did it as instructed and it helped gaining some blood circulation by changing the posture. I repeated that few times as I was feeling better due to that. The couple of riders from other group had joined me and Martin on the climb as their cadence was matching with me. Soon we reached the peak where rest of the pack was waiting for us. We grabbed our lunch quickly, took some photos with fellow riders and hit the road again, this time on a long down hill.
Rob Churchard came to my rescue again when I started drifting away from the group due to my down hill troubles. Rob made sure the reunion and thence we sailed 70km together as a well gelled pack, all the way till our final destination Valencia. A little detour for a quick swim in Mediterranean sea was the only distraction before reaching Valencia.
Total riding time of my group was 19hr 58minutes and the distance covered was 476km with an average speed 23.6km/h. On the scale of 10, I would rate my performance as 6, 7, 8, and 9 for each day starting from day1 to day4. Besides contributing to noble cause through charity, it was a great team building event. I thank all my colleagues, friends and family for providing immense support. Muchas gracias :)
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| Adachi san, Yoshii-san and me with Ramona |
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| Nari and me |
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| and the best group of the ride :) |
Rob Churchard came to my rescue again when I started drifting away from the group due to my down hill troubles. Rob made sure the reunion and thence we sailed 70km together as a well gelled pack, all the way till our final destination Valencia. A little detour for a quick swim in Mediterranean sea was the only distraction before reaching Valencia.
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| quick swim in Mediterranean sea |
Total riding time of my group was 19hr 58minutes and the distance covered was 476km with an average speed 23.6km/h. On the scale of 10, I would rate my performance as 6, 7, 8, and 9 for each day starting from day1 to day4. Besides contributing to noble cause through charity, it was a great team building event. I thank all my colleagues, friends and family for providing immense support. Muchas gracias :)
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| @Valencia after completing 476kms ride |
Did we do any charity after all?
It was the charity bike ride after all. Besides riding a bike for 476km, 4 days in a row and not injuring our self, the main goal for all riders was to raise funds for the local charity selected by local Colt office team. In Japan we had tied up with LivingDreams who provide support to children of various ages in Japan. we up setup online fund collection page on GoGetFunding.com, I acted as anchor to collect all the funds. First online donation came from Masu Yosuke who himself had had to drop from the ride due to his knee injury during training. The funds started rolling in slowly but were still no where near the target of minimum donation amount for us to proudly declare to event organizers in London that we achieved the fund raising goal. In our weekly 30min sync up, after some brainstorming we agreed to do three main things to reach out to as many friends and colleagues as possible and raise the funds.
a) do the fund raising at BBQ organized by our ambassadors group.
b) setup a facebook page and invite all friends to like it and keep informing them about charity bike ride.
c) send email with an update so far and make a donation appeal to all Colt Asia employees.
We saw an increase in the donations when every appeal email was sent out. Be it 10 days to go, 5 days to go or live update from Barcelona. Three email appeals, our reach out efforts on Facebook, and a massive reciprocation by our colleagues and friends in the form of generous donations, we surpassed 500,000JPY target by a decent 180,000JPY. In next few days we will meet the LivingDreams team to decide the details on how they want us to support their charity causes.
a) do the fund raising at BBQ organized by our ambassadors group.
b) setup a facebook page and invite all friends to like it and keep informing them about charity bike ride.
c) send email with an update so far and make a donation appeal to all Colt Asia employees.
We saw an increase in the donations when every appeal email was sent out. Be it 10 days to go, 5 days to go or live update from Barcelona. Three email appeals, our reach out efforts on Facebook, and a massive reciprocation by our colleagues and friends in the form of generous donations, we surpassed 500,000JPY target by a decent 180,000JPY. In next few days we will meet the LivingDreams team to decide the details on how they want us to support their charity causes.
Hope more riders take part in the bike ride next year and also participate in the charity activities. Till then ciao :)
