for everything that I’ve experienced with them throughout the years, that I couldn’t say no. The issue wasn’t saying no, to the contrary, the question was finding the ideal time to begin work due to the excitement behind the project. Xisco sent me a hard drive with photos of all the editions to refresh my memory. And that hard drive gathered dust in a corner of my house waiting for the right moment, which never seemed to arrive.
12
Mallorca 312
Luckily, the calendar allowed us to find the perfect excuse, the celebration of the tenth anniversary, such an important number, that we decided to take action. So this winter we all got down to work, the hardest part for me was choosing and organising the deluge of memories that came flooding back to me as I typed. A journey back in time that has been a real pleasure and was the least I could do for these strangers who decided to make me an honoree in the cycling sport back in 2010. I leave you with an excerpt of this book, dedicated to the tenth edition of the Mallorca 312 that we’ve created:
In fact, the best memory I have of my very first Mallorca 312 is something that didn’t happen on the day of the cycling sport, but a few days later when I was catching a flight back home. I was lucky enough to get a window seat and it was then, when the plane took off, that I saw the island from above in all its glory, and that was the proudest I’d felt about what I’d just achieved. You see the entire island of Mallorca, the same one you just rode around on your bike in just one day – I thought - … you did it. And I don’t know if I felt better because of the satisfaction of having achieved a goal that had seemed so impossible just a few weeks earlier, or because I felt like the island was no longer an unknown place, that a part of it now belonged to me forever. So here’s my first tip for the Mallorca 312: Try to get a window seat on the flight back. I guarantee that you will become immersed in your memories and you may relive some of the day’s greatest moments. You should feel proud of what you have achieved, that you’ll start to count the days left until the next year’s edition.