Each year in May, my wife and I head to Ronda, to participate with 7,000 others in the 101km of Ronda event. Here’s the story of 2012.
The path less traveled.
Category: Sports
This article reflects on my experience as a first-time teacher of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Description and photos from a beautiful bike ride in the Sierra de las Nieves.
It’s October, and that means it’s the season for the chestnut harvest in the nearby Valle del Genal.
We left Marbella this morning around 10am, heading up the Carretera de Ronda where we stopped (as usual) at the Venta Navisillo for a late-morning breakfast. It was an absolutely beautiful morning — cool, crisp, sunny and blue. Perfect for a bike ride.
Below is an article from this morning’s Marbella Express newspaper about the Draculino Team’s performance at the recently 2011 European Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Championship.
Sunday, January 30, I competed for the first time as a black belt in the 2011 European Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Championship, in Lisbon, Portugal. My category was light weight (under 76kg), Senior 2 division. The good news is that I received third place (bronze medal), as you can see from the podium picture above. The bad news is that I got beaten by both those other guys. Adimilson Brites (nickname ‘Juquinha’), from Gracie Humaitá Brazil won gold, and François Deniau (Team Megaton Lyon, France) won silver.
Each year in March, “La Sufrida” organize an event in Ronda, Spain, in homage to their annual “101km of Ronda” race (which takes place in May). The March “Homenaje,” just like its big brother in May, offers three modes of participation — a 69 km mountain bike ride, a 44 km run or a 70 km duathlon (run and bike). Last weekend, Pino and I participated in the event — her doing the run (crazy, I know), and me doing the mountain bike ride.
On Saturday, January 30, 2010, I traveled to Lisbon, Portugal to compete with my team-mates at Gracie-Barra Marbella in the brown-belt, lightweight, Senior 2 category of the European Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championship. Despite an unfortunate previous evening (having eaten something obviously bad), I managed to win my category — making this the third time I’ve won gold in this competition.
Man, I’ve been on some kind of good luck streak lately! First the brown belt a few weeks ago, and now, this past weekend, I…
December 14, 2007 was a really big day for me, as I was awarded the brown belt by my brazilian jiu-jitsu teacher, Edson Jorge (of…
Yahoo! On Monday night, at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training just after returning from the European championships, instructor Edson Jorge awarded me the purple belt! After almost…
In January of 2006, I won gold medal in the Blue Belt Senior 1 division at the European Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Championship!
As a first WordPress website, I’ve reworked and relaunched the website of our local Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu / Grappling martial arts club — Gracie Barra BH…
For quite some time now, my primary way to read books has been the Palm device. eBooks, as they are known, can be stored on…
Since, apart from my Mom, only about two other people read this blog, I won’t consider myself too pretentious in announcing that last night I…
Today we launched the website of Marbella Submission Fighters: http://marbellasf.com/ MSF is our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling training club in the Marbella and San Pedro…
For those living on the Costa del Sol (Spain) — especially in the Marbella, Puerto Banus and/or San Pedro areas — and interested in Brazilian…
El equipazo de Matt Henderson y Carlos Cortes, trabajando duramente y con mucha colaboracion, ha batido el record mundial de ir en bici desde Marbella…
It was the “Queen Stage” of the season — the long and mighty climb to towards Ronda and the “Cruz de Hierro” (the Iron Cross).…
Months of training finally produced some results today. For the first time since my injury last year, I was able to stay with the pack…
I’ve been an avid cyclist, cycling fan and Lance Armstrong fan, since, well, longer than I prefer to remember or state here. So you can…
Tonight was the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) championship in Malaga, Spain, in which three BJJ academies competed, Málaga, Marbella (where I train) and Granada. The good…
With three cycling clubs in a small town like Marbella, you can imagine that its a fairly popular sport here. A friend of mine (Diego…
In the biggest win of his career, Tyler Hamilton becomes the first American to win the Liége-Bastogne-Liége, one of Europe’s most important cycling events! Although…
