Marika's Tour de France

Barcelona Rest Day

June 10th, 2009

Our first rest day. We were pumped. Even though we didn’t manage to get to bed till 2.00 the night before hand we didn’t get up till 10.00. The night before we had been joined by Damian’s friend Jason

who was going to be our support crew for a week, as well as Damian’s friend Robert

who was riding the first set of mountain stages with us. It was really good to have a different dynamic to the group.

That day we’d planned to have a chiropractic appointment before making up the 30k’s from the day before. Damian’s friend Brock is a chiropractor in Barcelona and he’d kindly donated his time for the whole team to give us an adjustment. It was perfect timing because I was very keen for him to check out my leg.

Our motivation for riding was quite low and we decided we’d make up the 30k’s the next rest day. Given that the next day was the biggest day of the tour we wanted to be fresh.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with trying to sort out my leg. We found a chemist who was very keen to help and who spoke English. In fact he spoke English so well that he spent about half an hour showing us the different areas of Barcelona that spoke Catalonian (to the point where he drew us a map). I walked away armed with products to help me get through the next day. I had a leg brace and muscle cream and I was certain that that was the end of my leg upsetting my little apple cart.