Winter cycling in Almería: why riders come here from half of Europe

Why here and not somewhere else

The combination is rare. There are places with kind winter weather and flat roads, and places with excellent climbs and five degrees in December. Here the two overlap within an hour: Velefique and the Sierra de los Filabres for proper climbing, Calar Alto for the long days, Cabo de Gata for flat riding into the wind, the Tabernas desert for gravel, and the Levante coast for recovery days.

Then there is the part nobody values until they have lived it. In January you can leave at ten in the morning in arm warmers and not pass another rider for twenty kilometres. Middays sit between 18 and 20 degrees from November to March. For anyone based in Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, that is not a marginal gain. It is a different sport.

What a winter of volume does to your body

Winter is when people spend the most consecutive hours on the bike, and consecutive hours are the real exam for a position. Small misalignments need time to become pain. Somebody doing three ninety-minute rides midweek can go a whole year without noticing anything and then find out on their first five-hour day. Here, that day usually arrives in the first week.

Two factors get overlooked almost every time:

• Cold reduces your range of movement at the start. The first kilometres with a cold hip are not representative of anything, and plenty of riders adjust their position based on exactly those sensations.
• Winter clothing changes the position. Long bibs, a jacket and thick gloves alter the thickness at all three contact points. Gripping the bars in a winter glove is not the same as gripping them in August, which is one of the reasons hands go numb on cold-weather rides and not on warm ones.

The four rides you will definitely do

And what each one asks of your position:

• Velefique. Thirteen kilometres at 6 %. Close to an hour sitting in the same spot: the exam for your saddle and your hip mobility.
• Calar Alto. The long climb of the province, for the biggest day of the trip. What matters here is margin, meaning what you can hold when tired rather than when fresh.
• Cabo de Gata. Flat, windy, ridden in a group. Long stretches low and on the drops, and if the trunk cannot give you that, it shows up in the lower back and the neck.
• Tabernas desert. Gravel and constant vibration for hours. Vibration is the fastest way to numb a pair of hands when the lever angle or the bar width is not yours.

The classic mistake after a flight

We see it every season. A rider strips the bike down to get it into a case, rebuilds it in the hotel and goes out to ride. Saddle height set by eye, stem rotated a couple of degrees, cleats knocked out of place when the shoes went in the bag. Then ten days of the biggest mileage of the year on a position that is not theirs.

If this is where the most important block of your season happens, it is worth starting it with the numbers checked. And if you have never had a full fit before, this is the best possible moment: changes need two or three weeks of adaptation, and in winter you have that room.

Hire bikes and borrowed positions

A fair number of visitors fly in without a bike and hire one for the fortnight. That is a sensible way to travel and a bad way to guess at a position. A hire bike arrives set up for the average of everyone who used it before you, and the shop has neither time nor brief to do more than raise the saddle to something plausible.

Bring the numbers with you. If you already know your saddle height, setback, bar reach and drop, a hire bike can be made to feel like your own in twenty minutes. If you do not know them, that is what the report from a fit is for.

If you are a resident on the coast

Plenty of people reading this are not visiting at all. They live in Mojácar, Garrucha, Vera, Águilas or somewhere along the same stretch, and they ride here all year. The risk is different but not smaller: a position set up years ago in a colder country, for shorter rides, on a body that has changed since. Nothing hurts, so nothing gets questioned.

The studio is in Vera, which is fifteen minutes from Mojácar and Garrucha, forty minutes from Águilas, and no drive at all if you are already in Vera. Winter is the sensible time to do it, because you have the weeks to adapt before the riding gets serious.

If you are coming from abroad

We organise the appointment so it is resolved in a single visit, usually the day you arrive or the day after. Vera is an hour from Almería airport and an hour and a half from Murcia. You leave with the technical report and every measurement written down, which is what lets you rebuild the bike identically when you go home or when it goes back in the case. If you are travelling with a group, we reserve the slots in advance for training camps.

Sessions run in English and in Spanish, without an interpreter, with the same person from start to finish. What happens in a session is set out in full, the prices are fixed, and if you are not sure which service you need, tell us what hurts and when and we will say so before you book anything.