PR

Borrowing some story and photos from Jason here - since he's done a good job with both...


http://www.teamjamis.com/wp/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonsager/4454196194/







my Puerto Rico

After smoothly cruising through 10hrs of airport travel time I hit Puerto Rico time immediately upon landing in San Juan…

After a 1hr delay for bags in San Juan I had no idea who would be giving me a ride out to the town of Florida where I would be meeting the others. Luckily the municipality had a couple guys there who immediately spotted me – sweet! Uh bad news one said – we need to wait for another rider arriving at 9pm… It was 8. So I asked if we could get something to eat and through some not so great English they could only suggest Wendys. A couple chicken sandwiches and 90minutes later, we gather some details on the other person, who is actually the UCI official, but we don’t find him or hear from him so we take off….on Puerto Rican time.

After at least 30min figuring out where my room is we finally meet up with the rest of the group, Jason, Adam, Blake Harlan, and Troy. Viva la Motel La Roca! I won’t go in to too many details but at this motel rooms are rented for 6hrs and you pay by cash through a little door to the outside. The rooms are ok though, with good ac, and we’re taking some extra precautions to stay clean. After getting out today I see there are NO other hotels in the area, so I guess it’s a good location?. Everything is kind of a crowded rural layout, not really open land, but not really any towns either. After a late breakfast of giant pastries and small but strong coffees we made the ride to the course. More figuring things out – where to register, “riders meeting” and we finally get a couple fast laps on the course. 19min and 17min of twisty trails in the jungle / woods mixed with open sections along the road and through some fields. Not much climbing but a pretty physically demanding course. The weather is hot and humid, but not terrible.

Dinner time was my first time on the “banana boat”, which everyone else was lucky enough to experience the night before. The town's old school bus picked us up and chauffeured us to some other random area to a random pizza place. We tried ordering Pico Queso, and I don’t know if they got it or not but the pizza was pretty good. We were lucky to have a rare grocery store just down the road so we got some proper breakfast food for the morning rather than some snacks from a gas station. Should be interesting! Florida Mtb Classic = fast hot race. The technical course suited me well and my pacing worked out just right in the end as I moved into 3rd and barely held off major leg cramps on laps 6 and 7 to hold the podium spot through to the finish. More details later.

The training is paying off and I'm having a great time. We're now staying with a good friend of Jason's on a really nice area of the Island near Rincon. Looking forward to some very hilly riding and getting to the beach,