Watching the Australian road national championships while in cold, wet and windy Oudenaarde, Belgium makes it pretty easy to miss the sun and warm weather. It is hard to keep the motivation high to train when you can’t enjoy the ride due to bad weather.

Cold, wet and windy ride for our introduction to Belgium this year

During the European cyclocross, there is a gap from the 6^th January to around the 20^th where there is not much racing to do (for a non-European). For all Euro riders, they race their national cyclocross championships on the weekend in between (13/14^th). This means for me that I have 2 weeks of no racing to try and keep motivated, only training sessions. This is where my dad came up with a great idea, drive to Girona to get some sunshine, hills and just generally nicer riding.

 

I had never been to Girona and only heard about what a great place it is for cycling. Many professional road riders live here since the weather is never too harsh so they can happily train all year round. So off we went after my race on the 6^th in Brussels. After 2 days of driving we passed the sign for Girona. I jokingly said to my dad “how long do you think it will take for us to find a pro rider”, and sure enough not even 5 minutes later a pair of cyclists rode by, one being a Mitchelton Scott rider (Jack Bauer) and the other wearing Aqua Blue kit. This began a common theme of spotting professionals while roaming around the city.

 

After driving around and getting lost in small alleys and one-way streets we finally found a parking spot and settled into our apartment. One thing that was a bit of a shock to the system was how late everyone in Spain do things. We went out to look for some dinner around 7pm (this is late for us) and no restaurants were even open yet, they all opened at 8pm or even later. We finally found a place that were serving food and had our dinner. We quickly adjusted and tried to make all our meals a little be delayed so we could last until 8pm for dinner.

 

The Riding

Our first ride was a 53km loop with two hills in it just to get an idea of what Girona is like. We quickly got out of town and onto the quiet roads and then hit the first climb. Being based in Belgium for the season, the biggest ‘hills’ there are only about five minutes long and on cobblestones (not very pleasant), so it was a nice feeling to ride up a climb that was smooth and went for more than 5 minutes. We descended down and into a country area and then began the second climb to head back into town. The next day I had some step efforts to do (starting off moderate then getting increasingly harder) and dad thought that the Rocacorba would be a good hill to do these on. The Rocacorba is a pretty famous climb for professional riders. It is THE hill they use to see how fit they are at the time. On a quiet road that only has one way up and down it is pretty uncommon to see cars here and it is long enough for a 20-minute effort (standard fitness test effort). The climbs here are a bit different to what I am used to as they are not particularly steep but they are long so you just need to find a rhythm and then just keep it ticking along. This was an awesome feeling instead of grinding your easiest gear to get up a steep hill. It was an awesome climb with a nice view at the top that unfortunately we could not stay to enjoy due to ridiculously strong winds.

After a few easy days and short sessions we set out for our big ride. This ride took us down to the coast just south of Girona. This also had two big hills in it but we had to go about 25 kilometres before they began. Once again the climb was a steady and winding road. It wasn’t until we got about half-way down the first hill that we saw why this loop is one of the favourites for anyone living or visiting the region. The views along the coast were amazing and the descents packed with just enough corners to enjoy but not so many that you can’t gain some speed.  We stopped in a town along the coast for some food and a coffee but were limited in shop choice as not many places were open. We had an average coffee and croissant and then set off to climb the second hill then descend into Girona. After 98.9km or so we made it to the café near our place to have some much-needed coffee (good coffee) and food. Of course, once we were done, we took a long way home to get the distance up to 100km because it would be silly not to.

The view from the bottom of our first climb

The Cafes 

There were two cafes that we went to about 20 times while we were but for good reason. La fabrica is a small café owned but ex-professional Christian Meier and his wife, so it is pretty well known for being the place to go for cyclists. In fact, Julian Alaphillippe posted on Instagram that he was there, but we unfortunately had bad timing and had already left before he got there. La fabrica is part of a trio of shops in Girona all owned by Christian. Service Course, a nice bike shop, and Espresso Mafia, a coffee shop that mainly does coffee with only a small selection of pastries. The other café is Federal. Also owned by a professional cyclist but this one is still riding, Rory Sutherland. This was more of a food focused place but still had nice coffee (can’t be a bike rider and owner of a cafe with bad coffee). Both highly recommended places if you’re ever visiting Girona, great coffee, good food and nice staff (who can speak fluent English).

 

After almost two weeks it was time to leave and head to France for the World Cup round in Pontchâteau. It was awesome to get away from the bad weather in Belgium but after two weeks of no racing it makes you eager to get back to the harsh weather to race and get muddy for some strange reason.