Day 6, AC Sparta Praha

Today I decided to get in with a group b/c I had gone solo the last two days and needed a little reprive. I did the standard parking lot wait which is where the options for rides leaving the hotel is quite extensive. I decided to roll with the entire AC Sparta Praha, a continental professional team from the Czech Republic. I had previously written of these guys inaccurately saying they were part of PSK Whirlpool, which is not the case. We ended up rolling north up to Inca then onto Pollenca then to Alcudia before returning south to Felantix then Campos then final S'Arenal. To sum it up we road across the entire island, 196km total, 6.25hrs. We stopped for a proper euro pro cafe stop about 2hrs before the finish. When you latch onto these rides you really have no idea what is going to happen. I kept on the director's good side by just hanging near the back. It was a pretty chill ride, endurance pace. It was good for me to work on leg speed as i probably spent the majority of the ride 95-105rpm. The avg on my SRM is a little skewed b/c of the large number of 0s while riding. Sitting in the slipstream today really enforced the issue of staying out of the wind in races. Despite being 196km, I still had good punch at the end. Just needed one more bar as I was beginning to run a little low.

I managed to do only ~3000kjs of work which is quite an accomplishment with the amount of time on the road.

They got it right with the fish tonight at dinner. The brought out the fish from tuesday which is by far the most delicious. There was also some other meat thing. I think it was some sort of pork but its questionable. Tasty however. At the cafe I grabbed a coke, first one since arriving in Europe. They served us majorcan orange slices and a few small cookies. The waitress was super nice and spoke excellent english which was helpful to me but I spoke spanish to her. the czech's didn't seem to get it. redemption.

Now on the ride today, I saw several riders just discard their trash on the side of the road...even throwing used coke cans into the drainage ditch! Didn't really have the cajones to speak to them about it or translate it into to Czech but its quite disturbing. I don't think its a Czech thing though. I commented to my lady that I was quite surprised about the amount of cans, bottles and wrappers on the side of the road. Its quite disturbing.

I spoke with the front desk tonight about getting laundry done. Apparently, I fill up a white trash bag they gave me with my clothes and they attach a room number to it. Then I get the clothes back in 1 day. So does that mean 1 complete day or I get it back same day. Will they split my colors and whites? What if I want a non-odor detergent? Schisse! LOL. I guess I will continue to wash some of the bike clothing in the sink. I'm running out of hand soap and it takes forever for things to dry here. I guess living in CO for the past year will accustom you to your clothes drying in a couple of hours b/c of the arid environment. Fortunately, I have been conservative with the non-bike clothing situation. For the bike stuff, I'm on a 3 day rotation. I really don't want to go through 3sets(3x3) without a proper washing.

Only planning on 2-3hrs tomorrow, very chill with a cafe or two stop. 31.5hrs thus far this week.
ciao,
Matthew