Edu Pérez-Landaluce, a lover of mountain passes: “I consider myself a long-distance rider”
Eduardo Pérez-Landaluce’s face lights up talking about climbs. He likes to climb. It’s 1.84 meters high, but it’s fine. On the bike, a lot of style. As if he had started training much earlier. A couple of months ago, however, he was on vacation in the Indian Ocean with his mother. And then, of course, the studies. Pérez-Landaluce studies Business Administration and Management. He has some second-level subjects, others third-level. Little by little. No hurry, no pause. Studying helps him to disconnect from his bicycle. In a few days, when the concentration was over, an exam awaited him.
Pérez-Landaluce has made a lot of progress since passing through the Foundation’s youth team for a year, going out and competing in other structures and coming back in 2019. Especially in the climbs. But in general, on the bike. “I don’t consider myself a climber, I consider myself a long-distance runner”, he says. The Asturian, from Oviedo, really wants to start the new season. “Objectives? I don’t have one either, I just want everything to go well, that there are no crashes, that I respect my health. And do the best possible at every moment of the year. The form does not last forever, is impossible, but mentalization. You have to know how to be at every moment”.
Although not labeled as a climber, while many of his performances during the season refrain from his gifts when the road gets uphill, Perez-Landaluce is a lover of ascents. Very few are left in the Principality to know, and even planned, when he played, trainings to have a thread and an excuse. In 2019 he has competed in the Giro sub23, the Mortirolo and La Marmolada, among many others, on the menu. He finished 33rd, but his performance was very regular. In the Nationals, double top-10, both in the route and in the time trial (8th in both). In Ronde l’Isard, I finished 28th. “If I could choose a race to be in, I would like it to be Ronde l’Isard. I really liked it. I thought it was really hard, but I had a great time. I’d like to repeat it”.
In the end the conversation drifts towards the ports and many leave. He was very happy when he found out that the Vuelta a España was going to arrive in La Cubilla, because he thinks it’s beautiful. “Valle de Lago, near Somiedo, is very nice,” he says at another time. “What about Casielles? Another preciousness”. “For me”, he later defends, “the chained San Lorenzo and Cobertoria is the hardest thing there is in cycling, I don’t know how it took so long to get it in the Vuelta. San Lorenzo alone is impressive”.
Trobaniello is also on the scene, a perfectly passable unpaved ascent on a road bike that would make a lot of sense with the Port of Ventana. The phenomenon of sterrato also attracts his attention. “I like very much a slope of Alto de Santo Emiliano, up from Lada. I don’t know if it has another name. It doesn’t have big ramps. It’s not very long either. It’s about four kilometres at 6.5% or so, but it’s very nice and has the extra difficulty of not being paved”, he explains. “But first of all I’m a long-distance runner, my thing is endurance”, he concludes.
(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)
