Garmin TransPortugal Mountain Bike Race
Stage 7 - Flats, flats, flats, falls, falls, falls...
Louize Hill/Agnelo Quelhas / 08.06.2008
As the racers lined up at the starting line you could already feel the heat, and tell it was going to get hot today... finally the weather is what we would expect at this time of year in Portugal. At breakfast Paul West said he was really worried about the heat, though by the end of the day it didn't seem to have slowed him down much, he is riding much stronger than last year and finishing each stage much more quickly. With the heat, water risked to be a problem today, so the organisation set up an extra water point at the third check point, just after the village of Santa Clara. Almost everyone took advantage of this and between them they filled up their camelbaks with about 75 litres of water!
The mountains in the south of Portugal are steep, with deep valleys. The first hills are in a eucalyptus forest and the terrain is loose. Between km 40 and 80 the course passes three reservoirs, Monta Rocha, Corte Brique and Santa Clara... the water must have been a tempting sight in the heat of today. There were a number of stream crossings today, including a stream just after Santa Clara that had to be crossed 7 times. Two weeks ago, during the tour, when it was cold this was really unpleasant, today it was a welcome opportunity for the racers to refresh their legs! Two weeks ago at one point the trail was also impassable because of cut tree trunks across the path that could only be avoided by scrambling up a fire cut. Today it had been cleared.
After Santa Clara the real climbs began. The first one, at Portela da Brejeira is probably the hardest climb of the whole race. It is a steep gravelly 4km, that just gets steeper and steeper. Reimert said it was even a challenging walk! The second one from the Perna Negra stream is on asphalt, but goes on and on. Jan Bear said that at one point he did think he might like to do some serious damage to Antonio Malvar, he joked that there is in fact no need for a GPS in this race, if there is a choice between two paths, it seemed the route always takes the steepest of the bumpiest! From here almost all the rest of the course is on asphalt, except for a short off road section already near the town of Monchique.
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