Santa Vall - Season Opener
Incase you missed it, the European gravel season started over the weekend with Santa Vall, and if you paid any attention to it you would have seen the mud covered edition of stage 1.
Santa Vall is really the start of the season. Everyone is here, all the teams come and want to show off their new outfits and everyone is assessing each other a little bit to see what the competition is like.
You don’t want to be flying yet, but you also don’t want to be bad. So how good is good enough?
Stage 1 - 120KM
This year the format flipped with the longer day on stage 1. Girona has seen a lot of rainfall over the winter but for the most part the last week or so was dry and sunny, which was promising a dry race. Until the day before which decided to rain non-stop for 24hrs which would have a big impact on the course conditions.
I want to say that I felt great and excited for stage 1, but to be honest I didn’t. It felt like a lot going on in the lead up to the event with everyone in town and all eyes on the weekend, then with the conditions, I just wanted the weekend to be over, to know a bit where I sat physically in the European company and to have my take-aways to work on.
But obviously we have to do the race to have those take-aways and I just hoped for good sensations.
I have spent 12 weeks in Australian summer. I almost forgot what rain and mud was. I love Girona gravel riding. I don’t love mud. My last experience with it was the 2025 Hills edition and I didn’t mind if I never encountered these conditions again.
I felt physically great for the day, I felt technically shit house, that’s the only way to describe it. And with the first part of the course mattering a lot technically I put myself seriously on the back foot to have to spend a day chasing down the front and minimising time loses.
I am not sure how I managed to claw back a 4min deficit to find the main ‘front’ group, but 10km to go I caught sight of them and managed to finish in 8th place.
Pros; physically good.
Cons; my result could have been a lot better if I have some more confidence in the mud. I felt like a bus turning corners and this was where I lost myself the race.
Stage 2 - 85km
Redemption day. We go again. The course is dryer, no more rain. This can be a good day. I didn’t change my set up. I did change my mindset. We would fight harder today and have some confidence from yesterday’s physical condition.
I took a good warm up, and I pushed myself to the front for the first climb. I wasn’t going to let myself be boxed in up there.
Specialized were pushing the pace hard and I crested the top with Karo of PAS and Sofia of Specialized. Annoyingly the day would be like this for some time, with splits coming from hard climbing but no one really willing to push the pace hard and keep the momentum going.
I guess I had the most to gain in GC compared to those I was riding with, as long as they held each others company their GC placings would stay the same. Karo worked hard for her teammate Morgan who was in GC contention, and I worked hard just to keep us separated from a returning bunch all the time.
We came to the line with 5, sprinting for 2nd place after Sofia had broken away to take a solo win, Specialized had played the game and we had let them, a strong ride from them, chapeau to them. I fought to 3rd place and jumped myself up to 4th GC. A nice finish in the end, but I am going to do some technical training. Because truthfully it never hurts to do.
Set up
44 chainring / 10-48 cassette
Continental Terra Speed tyres - 45mm
