For a brief moment, it's 1991 again and I'm riding in the Tour de France. Over my right shoulder, a tall, tanned figure pulls level with me and blocks out the sun, seamlessly fusing power with grace.
"Cómo está?" Miguel Indurain asks. "Bien," I lie through deep gasps for air. He offers a fist pump and a smile of encouragement and then glides onwards up the hill with no obvious indication of having accelerated. It's frightening how natural he looks on a bike.
This is the Campus Melcior Mauri in Catalonia, a three-day cycling event that is part training camp, part showcase for some of the best yet least-known riding roads in not just Spain, but southern Europe.
Melcior Mauri, a former professional who won the Tour of Spain in 1991, is the lead organiser and has invited Indurain and fellow ex-racer Claudio Chiappucci along to join myself and 250 or so other amateurs for the weekend's 327 km in the saddle.
Indurain won the Tour in five consecutive years from 1991 to 1995 and is nothing short of cycling royalty, while Chiappucci was his rival and finished on the podium at the Tour in 1990, 1991 and 1992.
Throw in Mauri himself and the camp becomes the cycling equivalent of lapping Silverstone for a couple of days with Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell.
It's hosted and based at the Cambrils Park Resort, a sprawling holiday and sports complex roughly an hour south-west of Barcelona.
Participants are put up in four-bed apartments and have the choice of either bringing their own bikes or hiring one, which in my case is a carbon-framed Merida Scultura kitted out with Shimano's highly rated Ultegra gearing.
Group dynamics
After checking into my apartment yesterday, I picked up my rider number and a free jersey and selected one of five possible groups to ride in over the following days: Group 1 (which would race along at 27 kmh or more), Group 2 (25-27 kmh), Group 3 (23-25 kmh), Group 4 (21-23 kmh) or Group 5 (sub-21 kmh).
Having only ridden a handful of half-days over the winter, I opted for Group 3 and it's proving a shrewd choice given that the pace is fast enough to be challenging but slow enough not to get dropped on the climbs - and even push ahead when my legs permit.
I'm actually on the attack - in the loosest sense of the phrase - when Indurain flies past on our first day of riding, a 115 km loop up into the mountainous Priorat area of Catalonia from the start and finish point in Cambrils.
We have five climbs and a total of 1,975 vertical metres to ascend today, so I should know better than to race ahead of the group on the very first of them, but who doesn't get carried away at the sight of empty mountain roads and the sound of tyres humming their way over asphalt so smooth you could iron your shirt on it?
And "empty" and "smooth" are not hyperbole. The roads are far from new, but hardly any cars come up to this hilly and rural south-western flank of Catalonia and so not only can you ride traffic-free for as much as an hour at a time, but the surfaces have taken so little pounding that they feel like they were laid last week.
Couple those characteristics with the dramatic limestone cliffs, vineyards, olive groves and a handful of pretty little towns, and it all makes for truly idyllic riding.
You don't even see that many other cyclists, except for those on the camp, of course. Catalonia hosts the elite Volta a Catalunya race each spring and the northern city of Girona is home to no end of professionals, but this part of the region isn't famed for cycling in the way the likes of Mallorca and Tenerife are and is consequently light on Lycra. In many respects, it's Spain's best-kept cycling secret.
Indurain is quickly out of sight and leaves me pretty much alone on the climb, a twisting, 6.5 km-long ascent known La Teixeta, averaging 4.5 per cent in gradient.
I'm also caught and overtaken by a Spaniard in his 50s with shaved legs and a £10,000 bike, but I don't really care, because I'm already in that coveted little zone where you've got the sun on your back, beautiful scenery all around, clear road ahead and little else you'd prefer to be doing.
Our group reforms at a feed station a couple of kilometres after the climb and we spend the next few hours ambling along tight, rolling and twisting country lanes in a bunch of about 50.
This, for me, is probably the only down side of the whole trip. I like to let my mind wander and take in the surroundings at my own pace when I'm on a bike, but when you're hemmed in on every side by other riders, it requires constant concentration to stay close enough to the bike in front to maximise the effects of drafting yet far away enough to avoid crashing.
But this is a minor gripe, and personal one at that. Riding in a group is some people's preferred style of cycling and is also part of the experience of a camp such as this, where developing skills holds almost as much importance as having a good time.
With 60km on the clock, we turn left and back towards the coast, cresting two final climbs before swooping down a dreamy descent the best part of 16km long on our way home to Cambrils, which we eventually reach after five and a half hours of hugely gratifying riding.
Everyone then heads to the resort's restaurant to replace the day's lost calories at an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch, and we return for dinner at 9pm for another gorging and the chance to fuel up for the following morning.
Stairway to heaven
Day two of the camp is slightly shorter, at 108 km, and the total vertical gain is down marginally, to 1,875 m, yet the route feels harder thanks largely to the spectacular 10.5 km climb of La Mussara, which averages six per cent in gradient and begins just 20 km in.
The climb is a delight from first kilometre to last and gets particularly enjoyable when it reaches a flurry of 11 successive hairpin bends looking out over the distant coastline. It's the Costa Dorada's answer to the Stelvio Pass.
The ascent is the gateway to Las Montanas de Prades, and from hereon in the scenery gets better with every passing kilometre.
The most fetching stretch is one particular road, little wider than a car, that snakes its way up, down and around gently rolling hills for about 15 km and eventually ends in a corridor of Judas trees just outside the village of Montral.
We then tackle the day's second major obstacle, the 3.7 km climb to Coll de Capafonts, which averages 6.7 per cent in gradient, before embarking on a magnificent, sweeping and high-speed descent out of the mountains and back down to Cambrils.
With hardly any traffic on the road to worry about, the better descenders in the bunch tear into it at scary velocities, but I'm woeful at riding downhill and am more than happy anyway to drop off the back and freewheel out of the sky in my own time. It's 20 minutes of pure bliss.
After two more demolitions of the buffet that afternoon and evening, we return to the bikes on day three for a 104 km camp finale in the Sierra del Montsant mountain range, where another 1,640 vertical metres of climbing awaits.
There's a strong wind sweeping down from the peaks and so we tackle the first climb of the day, the 5.2 km, five per cent Coll d'Alforja in a compact group to protect one another from the head-on gusts.
Once over the top, we stop briefly at a feed station and then enter a sublime valley flanked by a seemingly never-ending limestone cliff.
Yet again the road we're on is little more than a car's width wide and so rather than jostle for position in the pack, I opt to drop back and slalom my way along in my own little world.
We then reach the 2.5 km-long final climb of the weekend, and given that there's still strength in my legs, I decide to go on the attack one last time. It seems to be working out well on the relatively gentle first 1.5km, but then I blow up spectacularly when the gradient steepens and I'm left having to huff and puff my way to the top.
At least Indurain isn't here to see it this time. He has already summited, hurtled down one final spaghetti strand of a descent and is now back at base toasting a memorable weekend that challenges and rewards in equal measure.
Matt was a guest of Campus Melcior Mauri. Places on the camp are priced from £292 pp. campusmelciormauri.com
