The Wheelsucker In Mallorca at the ABRT Training Camp

After several years of fabulous ABRT training camps at Idlebreaks in Spain, a little north of Malaga, the team chose to go to Mallorca in 2012. So after an arduous three flight leg trip the Wheelsucker and his team mates arrived in Palma Mallorca yesterday, March 10th in the early afternoon.

I told you it was arduous!



Planes, trains and automobiles: waiting for the next flight



Wait, and wait, and wait



Most of the team riders were renting bikes from the Fred Rompelberg 268 organization: http://www.fredrompelberg.com/en/html/, but Ace wanted to ride his Dogma, Matt Albanese had his carbon Calfee with S&S couplers, while the Wheelsucker and Katy Giles brought their Ritchey BreakAways. Except Katy's didn't show up after some travel connection adventures that you should ask Katy and Scott about.

That Would Be Ace's Dogma Being loaded Onto the Plane for the Barcelona-to-Mallorca leg



Matt's Carbon Calfee Being Loaded Onto the Plane



There was no riding on the Saturday, as the rental bikes were only available in the evening. The Wheelsucker did a one minute ride to check that his bike was working and then it was time to relax.

So Sunday was the first riding day. While most of the team were trying to adjust their rental bikes, Ace and the Wheelsucker rolled out for a short ride. Ten minutes into the ride they were caught by a group of local club riders and joined them. Thirty minutes later when it was time to return to meet the ABRT group, neither Ace nor the Wheelsucker knew where they were. So riding with the local club seemed the best option. Except the local club did not start their ride from Palma, so when they eventually stopped, Ace and the Wheelsucker had to find their way back first to Palma and then to the the hotel. A short warm up turned into a 3:32:00 and 56 mile ride, with the last 6 miles or so on the Palma boardwalk at walking pace, though this was not too bad as the scenery on the beach was not hard to look at.

Dinner at 7:00, then a meeting with the cycling camp hosts at 8:30 (for English speakers) and 9:00 (for German and Dutch speakers). Tomorrow is "day 1" of the training camp.

In the meantime the view from the balcony is spectacular and Mallorca may be cycling heaven.


A desperate Wheelsucker has been wracking his brain trying to figure out how what he can do to hang with the stronger riders this week. Given the Wheelsucker's advanced age and lack of power, speeding up the Wheelsucker seems near impossible, so he has focused on trying to slow the others down.

Careful questioning of Katy Giles revealed that Scott Giles can bonk if he does not eat enough; he is very thin.

Katy herself was missing a key metric machine screw on her bike, which was unrideable without it.

The Wheelsucker rode with Ace today, bought him an espresso, and learned that Ace sometimes has bad reactions to coffee. Today's reaction raised Ace's heart rate 10 beats per minute and weakened him to the point he was giving the Wheelsucker more drinking water in an attempt to slow the Wheelsucker down.

While exactly HOW to get Scott to not eat, and Ace to OD on espresso has yet to be determined, the Wheelsucker believes he has the start of the plan to slow them down.

And if Katy cannot find the missing machine screw she may have to rent one of the relatively heavy rental bikes, which would slow her down.

The Wheelsucker has not yet considered how to slow down Jim, Matt, Stu and Mike.