Sanjhoy Beltrán: Coffee before, during and after

Where she rides out of

Sanjhoy grew up in Colombia and moved to Catalunya three years ago. Barcelona is where she does most of her riding, but in her own words she is por todas partes, everywhere. She came to gravel after ten years on the bike, having spent that decade on track and road. Her day job is customer service at a bike rental shop, which is a good day job for someone who rides as much as she does. She isn't the first Colombian rider the series has featured: Paula Soler, in a previous Spotlight, followed a parallel arc from Bogotá to Girona.

Her Catalonia

Her home route, in the version she'd take a friend on if they had one day and a gravel bike, runs through the Collserola singletracks, the mountain range that sits directly above Barcelona. 40 km, 822 m of climbing. Technical, forested, the kind of loop that keeps you on your toes. Short kilometres, she writes, but plenty of technique. Gritline's Pedraforca Loop is on her longer wish-list, for the views and getting lost. The Prepirineo is a landscape she keeps returning to in her answers.

For coffee, she goes to Morrow Coffee. Before, during, and after, those are her exact words. She calls it the best speciality coffee in Barcelona. More importantly, she describes the people who work there as ones who have, over months of short conversations before rides, quietly become close. Café as community, not a caffeine stop.

Asked when to come to Catalonia, she picks the months most riders think are too hot: June to September. Not for the coast but for the mountains and higher terrain, where the temperatures are actually usable and where you can spend the whole day out without dressing for winter. Her advice to visiting riders is not about kit, tactics, or tire choice. Don't rush. Enjoy the landscape. Live it and feel it.

A ride that changed something

Two rides matter here, in different ways. The one that stayed with her, taking cycling as a whole, is the Transpirenaica: the multi-day bikepacking traverse of the Pyrenees. "The toughest and most beautiful thing I've done," she writes.

In gravel specifically, it is The Traka. Long hours on the bike and, she notes, an event where the head is at least as important as the legs. She did the preparation: eating, pacing, managing the effort, managing the mind. Her bike, she writes, was perfect. She would have liked a better finishing time. She finished, and that is, in her own summary, what matters.

Don't rush. Enjoy the landscape. Live it and feel it.

What riding gives her

What riding gives Sanjhoy is a feeling she has held onto for a decade. She calls it freedom, the same freedom she found on a bike ten years ago, unchanged. The bike, in her framing, is part of her life and not having it would mean something was missing. It is where she disconnects from routine and reconnects with her body and her mind.

Her rituals are small and specific. Coffee is one. A Tibidabo climb once a week with a friend is another, more for the conversation than for the metres.

What's next

She has closed the sports goals she had set for this year. Next year's target is El Piri, the ultra-distance bikepacking event that traces the Pyrenees, the region of Catalonia she describes as her favourite. No doubt she’s in a good place for that, given her impressive credentials.