Paris Dakar Stage 13 to Graus, Spain

Stage 13 of 60, Day 15 of 71: 94.2 km, 1582m, 3:51, 254 shifts, ave speed 24.4, max speed 70.1

After a nice 8+ hour sleep I woke up and had over an hour to read before getting up. I started reading the new Elon Musk biography. Breakfast was the usual at 8, then we left at 9.

We rode out of the campground and the first climb started immediately. It was a bit hot and sweaty but I felt strong for once and cruised non-stop to the top, 600m up.

The descent was nice and fast and smooth and the air cooled and dried me perfectly. There was a pretty valley below, then a second, similar but shorter climb. Ype was stationed on the summit and I had a couple of glasses of water but we had a different plan for lunch today: ride to the end and eat in a restaurant!

We blasted down, through some interesting tunnels, with some great cliffs, and basically just rode fast. Wytze took over leading and continued all the way to our destination, about 40 km. It was mostly downhill but into the wind. He was holding 40-55 most of the time, so I pretty much just held on. Getting dropped would not be good. Actually this was the first instance of my new bike performing way better than the old. My new top gear is more than 10% faster which made the difference between getting dropped and not!

We looked around Graus a little and settled on a restaurant right on the route. In a few minutes we had mineral water, chilled wine and appetizers rolling. It was super relaxing and fun; we stayed for two and a half hours waving to our compatriots as they rode by. Curt had a glass of wine with us and eventually Ype pulled up in the van with a couple of sick riders and joined us.

From there it was a few minutes to camp and we rolled in and set up our tents. All the cabins were taken as it’s supposed to rain tonight. We had soup and showers and all was well. Another great stage done.

Dinner was Mexican, with mushroom fajitas for the veggie people. Lots of chips, salsa and guacamole, beans and rice, delicious. Rob gave us the briefing for tomorrow’s 156 km ride to Zaragoza, where we have our next rest day.