Norman, Oklahoma's own Andrea Ratkovic has joined her new TDS cycling team in Mallorca, Spain, and she's keeping us up-to-date on the day-to-day life of a professional cyclist. Ratkovic is training in Spain for four weeks before she'll return to the States. She'll provide an updated journal each week on the RTN web site.

Its Andrea "RAT" Ratkovic here reporting to you from sunny Spain. Im here training with my cycling team, TDS. We are having training camp here until the end of February, and I thought Id keep a weekly journal for y'all if youre interested. Just a quick intro. I was a 2:34 marathoner, got injured, raced bicycles for two years, got injured, got into duathlon and triathlon, got injured, and now here I am cycling again. My passion is running, but since I cannot do that up to my ability at the moment, I am choosing to focus on cycling. It IS an Olympic year after all.

The weather has been nice -- mostly sunny and in the 50s. I am on the island of Mallorca. My hotel is in SArenal which is rated the top beach in all of Mallorca. I am only minutes from the city of Palma.

The team rides hard 5 out of 7 days each week mainly in the mountains. This week I got 400 miles in. The rest of the times is for goofing off, resting, and recovering not necessarily in that order! It totally depends on the day.

I am eating lots of salami and butter sandwiches on the tasty rolls. Theyre really into sliced meats and cheeses here. I eat yogurt and dried fruit, too, with dry wheat puffs. For dinner, I still have the sandwiches but with a plate of pasta and some other meat and cooked veggie. The first day I was here I had a TINY glass of milk even though I know Im lactose intolerant. Well, I paid for that BIG time. I had to make pit stops all the way up the mountains! My tummy looked like a Budda tummy. Bad stuff man. Anyway, though, Im avoiding raw vegetables as well since those tend to make me gassy.

The wine is wonderful here. Ive bought 5 bottles already. My friends in Oklahoma will think they were all expensive and stuff, but really they were cheap as crap! Were talkin a few dollars per bottle of good quality wine.

There are lots of olive trees, and the almond trees are blooming, They are sweet smelling little white flowers with a splash of purple in the middle. The olives you cannot eat off the tree, I found. They are very bitter. I guess they have to age or something. Whatever.

More later folks...

andrea