Giro d'Italia 2010

Hello from the Giro d’Italia 2010 where we are watching the “fight for pink”. Seeing as the race was in such close proximity in time to the finish of the TransPortugal I thought I should take this one off my “bucket list”.

Through a friend of a friend we were of the understanding that once we got to the race we should be able to pick up VIP passes for Stages 6, 7, and 8 of the tour. Once in Rome we rented a car and headed for the finish town of Stage 6. Stage 6 ended in Marina De Carrrara about 250 km north of Rome on the west coast of Italy. Our drive there deposited us in the town about 3 hours before the finish was expected. The stage was expected to produce a sprint finish with about a .5 km long finish straight after a fairly flat 200km stage.



We were told to seek out the organizing committee RCS “permanance” and ask for a specific individual but with our poor understanding of Italian and the usual Italian casual way, we wandered around for quite a while. Eventually we found the VIP suites and managed to find a young lady who spoke some English. She had the phone number of the individual that we were to talk to, but he would not pick up. Eventually she gave up trying his number, and just moved us into the stands near the finish. She said she would keep trying. Near the finish does not do it justice. We were parked at the 10m point of the finish and despite my fear that as the race neared we would get the boot, we were allowed to remain until the end.






The day ended with Australian Matty Lloyd winning on a solo break. A few stragglers from the break group were next and then came the sprint from the group. Too cool watching these guys charge the line. Liquigas’s Francesco Nibali held on to the pink jersey as leader of the race.








After the race we managed to find the RCS accreditation facility and not surprisingly, if we had walked about 50 m in the opposite direction from where we parked the car we would have been at the front door. Our contact sort of remembered our names and we were issued our pink passes for the start and finish of the race. We thought that we were “on the program” but events would prove otherwise.

We headed out to find our hotel which was near the finish of the next day’s stage and after another 3 hours of driving we eventually found our digs in the middle of Tuscany. I had not really done any research as to which stages we were about to see but as luck would have it Stages 7 and 8 may have a significant bearing on the final results of this years Giro. Stage 7 finished in the walled town of Montalcino and prior to arriving the riders had to navigate 20 km of "strade bianche" the white clay like dirt roads of the region. Further, when they enter Montalcino they also had to navigate several km of cobbled road before a slight uphill sprint to the finish.

The day dawned rather wet and cold, and the rain continued to fall all day long. This made the dirt and cobbles especially treacheraous to ride and for this reason the pace was pushed from the very beginning as several of the GC contenders saw an opportunity to put time into their opponents.

We headed to the finish, expecting to be treated in similar fashion to the day before with covered grandstands and a live TV feed. After waiting for several hours to be let into the “seats” we figured out that “space” was severely limited at the finish line at the top of Montalcino and we were never going to be let into “prime” territory. Boy, I can tell you when Italians think they have the stuff, and then do not get it, do tempers ever fly. We headed back down the finish straight to where we could see the Jumbotron, and waited with the rest of the plebes for the riders to arrive.

What a crazy race. More mountain bike than road bike, sort of like Paris Roubaix in the middle of a three week tour.

The racing was unbelievably intense with GC contenders Cadel Evans and Vinikourov going ding dong for the last 30 km. The pink jersey crashed about 50 km out and never did make it back to the front. Evans won in a sprint and Vini was in pink.

Once out of Montalcino we headed toward the finish of the next day's stage and our hotel for the night. We accidently ended up in the middle of all the team buses as our route took us through the start town of the next day. Garmin Transitions was behind us and for much of the drive all I could see in my rear view mirror was a bound up Giro mascot sitting in the front seat of their bus.

We eventually ended up in Rieti the closest town to the first mountain top finish of the race Monte Terminillo. Stage 8 finishes with a climb up Monte Terminillo; 16km long with gradients between 6 and 10 %. (16 km at 7.3%, 1168m of gain)

Once again, Stage 8 dawned very wet and cold. We drove up the mountain and headed for the finish thinking that we might get covered seating and the live feed, but again were foiled by the small size of the finish area. So much for our VIP passes.

It was very cold at the top, about 2 to 3 C, with recent snow and very foggy, actually in the clouds.

The rain intermittently fell and eventually we were so cold that we made our way back to the car and turned on the heater to warm up. We had no way of knowing how the race was going so atabout 1630 hr we headed back up toward the finish to watch the riders come by. The fog rolled in even thicker as the riders ascended the mountain. It was very, very miserable to say the least. From the look of the riders, it was clear to us that the the pace of the day before in association with the difficulty of this stage, had cracked a large portion of the field. There were quite a few hurtin individuals at the end of this day.

Sorenson from Saxo Bank won on a solo break. The GC contenders came in together about 1 minute back. The L'Autobus farther back then that.

Pretty cool experience but I sure wish the weather had been a bit better. I am not sure I have yet thawed out from our walks up and down Monte Terminillo.

Climbing Grossglockner

Hello again from the depths of the Alps.

Today we, my son Blake and I, climbed the Grossglockner, another epic pass in the Austrian Alps.

While Stelvio (Stilferjoch) claims to be the highest pass in the Italian Alps at 2750m, the Grossglockner claims to be the highest pass in the Austrian Alps. It peaks out at 2540m, just 30m higher than the Timmeljoch, that "other" Austrian pass which we rode in the Tour TransAlp. Blake and I rode the pass in the northerly direction, which in retrospect after riding it, seems to be significantly harder than the opposite direction. The major part of the climb is about 18 km long and gains about 1950m in elevation. This results in a "difficulty score" of 288 which is significantly harder than Stelvio at 194.

Blake and I warmed up with a 15km ride along the river leading to the base, and then headed up. The first sign as we started up caught Blake’s full attention. “Achtung, high pass, grades at 12%” Oh, oh, what are we into here? In fact, the average grade going in a northerly direction is about 10%, but there are definitely sections with grades as steep as 15%. Going the other direction the average grade is only 8%.

Thank God for compact cranks as we rarely ever seemed to get out of our lowest gear for the vast majority of the climb. A good portion was spent standing up and mashing the cranks.

Part way up we passed the toll booth and things started to get really crazy. The wind picked up, the temperature plummeted, and snow started to appear all around us. From lessons learned earlier in our adventures we had made sure we were carrying a windbreaker and the jackets came in handy now. But, as we continued to climb, it became colder still until eventually we stopped at a pullout and had a discussion with my wife in the accompanying van. Blake decided to bail out as we had been climbing for almost 2 hours, and he was starting to become hypothermic. From Blakes 13 yr old perspective...

The Grossglockner was an experience. (Notice how I didn’t say good or bad!)

When we pulled the van over to the side of the highway and got out of the car I thought to myself, “Where’s the pass?” I then was informed from my dad that we would be having a warm-up of 5 kilometres or so. So I think to myself, not that bad, right? Well, my dad was quite mistaken. It turned out that we had to ride 20 kilometres, which would be a piece of cake in any other given time, but your attitude changes when you know you’re about to climb THE HIGHEST PASS IN AUSTRIA!!!! So we ride out on the road through the rolling farmlands, which was fairly nice. We saw a waterfall on the way, went through a small village. I was quite happy with the ride so far, until we got to the base of the pass and I saw the sign that said, “12% Grade, 33 kilometres.” And the climb begins...

Instantaneously after you see that sign you’re on a 12% grade, in your lowest gear, and heaving on the pedals; climbing the first switchback of the Grossglockner. I look at the people getting shuttled on buses up this huge pass and can’t help but be a little bit jealous. But I keep spinning the pedals, looking at my PowerTap, and trying to stay above 10 km/h. (sounds easy, actually quite challenging!) We climb for probably 40 minutes until we finally see my mom in the van, stopped just after the toll booth. She tries to convince me to get in the car and quit, but my dad steps in and tells me to suck it up and get moving. We climb for another 20 minutes until we get to a little downhill. At this point we’re at snow and jackets are on. We start on a short downhill, and once we get down to the bottom, the REAL Grossglockner begins. The pass steepens, and there are no more trees around you. All I could think about was having a hot chocolate at the end of the ride. (And it’s supposed to be summer...) We climb for another hour in the snow, until we reach a spot with a huge headwind, and that took everything out of my legs. We ride for another ten minutes until we see my mom, and I have a decision to make; either keep going to the top, or get in the car and get warm. I was convinced that there was still another good hour and a half of climbing, so I got in the car while my dad put on every piece of clothing that he had in his bag. So my dad was off and my mom and I drove to the top. I was disappointed later, because there was only another half hour of climbing, but the way I think of it, I rode 9/10 of the highest pass in Austria, so I was pretty proud.

Out came the arm warmers, the skull cap, and the leg warmers; on went another jersey, and an insulated jacket. And then I headed on up to the top! As I rode on it became increasingly clear that the road had been recently plowed as I had to avoid the snowbanks on the side of the road. The wind increased even more and I must say even with all my clothes I was quite chilly when I reached the top. I could not feel my toes,or my fingers.

The top, or what I believed was the top, came fairly quickly but involved a trip through an unlit tunnel of unspecified length. There was ice on the road, and I was concerned that once in the tunnel, the road might be quite slippery. Kim drove through the tunnel behind me with her lights on which gave me sufficient light to see my way. Once out the other side we were treated to the view of multiple families playing in the snow and tobogganing down the slope beside the road.

The road then cruised along for about 7 km as it made its way over a saddle toward the next pass.

Once over the next pass we were treated to a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains,

before we started the long descent. On the way down, I hooked up with a couple of Austrians doing the out and back from the north side and we ripped the downhill passing cars through the switchbacks.

The temperature rapidly increased so that once again as we hit the bottom we were sweltering in about 28C heat. With all my warm clothes, I presented quite a sight when I pulled over to jump in the sag wagon.

If you are into climbing on bikes make sure that you put this one on your list of must do's.

If you think that your fitness is not up to snuff, do the climb heading in the southerly direction as the gradient is significantly less.

Tour TransAlp 2009: Day 6

Day 5 may have had the most difficult climb in the race and reached its highest point, but Day 6 was the longest in distance and included the most vertical gain at 3770m. Over the 180 km length, we would climb 5 major passes, several of which have been the site of major clashes in the Giro I’talia. Profile here.

Out of Livigno, we immediately retraced our route back up the Passo d’Eiro and then Passo Foscagno. Thankfully this time it was not raining, and although cold, with the lessons learned from the previous day we were much better dressed. The descent off of Passo Foscagno through the towns of Valdidentro, Premadio, and Bormio was pretty crazy. The train that I was on included about 40 riders and we ripped through these towns at about 55km/hr, dodging tourists, traffic, parked cars, dogs, cats, ferrets, all the while weaving through tiny little streets even occasionally on cobbles. After this ride, I can now see the attraction of road racing; what a natural high!

Out of Bormio, we headed up the infamous Passo Gavia. This is the pass that in the 1988 Giro d’Italia promoted Andy Hampsten to the Maglia Rosa, the only North American to win Italy’s grand tour. The story goes that despite the Italians pleading with him to ride “piano piano” over the climb, he went on an epic attack. Story here. The weather was so bad, -4 C and snowing that Hampsted remembers that “I kept one gear moving because all my other gears were frozen up with ice”

Our climb up the Gavia was not quite so cold but there was fresh snow at the top from yesterday’s storm. The descent included probably the scariest moment so far in the race. About halfway down, while traveling at about 55km/hr we entered a totally unlit tunnel about 1 km long. As could be expected… you could see nothing. Not the walls, not the roof, not the road surface… Oh yeah, not any of the other 10 riders you entered the tunnel with. How there was not a major crash is beyond me…I personally just started yelling “Don’t hit me, don’t hit me, don’t hit me”, hoping that the sound of my voice would “encourage” others riders away from me. When I saw the “light” at the end of the tunnel, I have never accelerated so hard on bike in my life figuring that the sooner I was out, the safer I would be. Absolutely INSANE!

The rest of the descent was not quite so crazy although Passo Gavia does not quite meet North American road standards. The majority of the road is probably a little over 2 m wide, and this often requires that the cars that meet back up to a wider area in order for you to pass. Throw in 1100 crazy road riders descending and you get the picture.

The next pass was Passo Tonale, about halfway through the day, and again as in the 3 previous passes Dave and I summited as the first of our motley crew. Our support team was at the top dressed in “black tie” with a table set out with white linen, crystal and silver. “Supported” we headed down the other side for another crazy 45 km long train ride. On this descent I just decided to hide well back in the group and save my energy for the last big climb of the day. It turned out that this was good planning as again the “Mediterranean” heat started to take its toll on those that had expended a lot of energy pushing the head wind on the descent. In my group, people started popping off the back in droves as we started the slow climb up to Passo Mendola.

Passo Mendola turned out to be the “pussy” of the day. We kept expecting it to rear its ugly head as we climbed, but the farther we went up, the less the gradient became. The descent on the other side was again epic. It seemed we flew through at least 50 full switches as we came down and the central section was blazingly fast and flowy, while perched on the side of a vertical cliff. How they build these roads is beyond me!

The finish arrived and Kaltern put on a great welcome as the beer was cold and flowing well. 6 down, 1 to go! Results here.

Tour TransAlp 2009: Day 5

Oh that Stelvio!!!!

What can you say about a pass that has 49 switchbacks to the top with the last 20 or so up a vertical wall?

What adjective can I use to describe this day? This was the day that we had been thinking about all winter long!

Dread, worry, anticipation, concern, fear, enthusiasm, pain, abuse; I could go on and on.

With the temperature at about 28C, the day started with some serious heat as we left Naturns for a 35km neutral ride to the bottom of the Stilfserjoch, Stelvios’ official name. It seemed the weather had finally changed to the heat that we had expected for the race. Stelvio is about 23 km long and climbs about 1900m for an average gradient of about 8%. By our calculations it was the toughest climb of the race rating a difficulty of 194 compared to Cypress’s measly 76. By all accounts the climb started well with several of the boys attacking off the bottom. Jamie Armstrong flew by me vowing to be the first to the top; Thomas Haas was not far behind. The rest of us settled in for the long climb. The scenery was spectacular and on the way up the first several km. I had the chance to see our descent route from the mountain bike TransAlp three years earlier.

Stelvio is extremely intimidating. The start seems to meander up the valley. At about 10 km in it starts switch backing seriously up the side of the mountain and at about 13 km in you look up and see the “wall”.

The wall seems like an endless number of switchbacks and it literally goes straight up the side of the mountain. You can see it all from the bottom and it really does strike some serious “apprehension/fear” in your heart. Of course, as could be expected, the weather took a significant change for the worse at exactly this time with a nasty head wind and very cold rain when riding/looking toward the wall. Most of us had dumped our “warmer” clothes at the start as it seemed that the chance of rain/snow was extremely slim. We all paid the price now. Thankfully the switches facing away from the “wall” allowed us to warm up a bit before we bit back into it on the switch above. We eventually made it up to the highest point in the entire race (2750m) only to find a bunch of junior ski racers just finishing their morning training and coming off the snow loaded with skis. Slightly incongruous!

Down we went on the other side with the temperature increasing by the minute until at the bottom we were again sweltering in the Italian heat. Almost immediately we started the second big climb of the day, the Passo Foscagno. As we reached the top, a quick look ahead revealed we were still in for some excitement as in the distance one of the biggest thunderheads I have ever seen was hanging over the last pass of the day, the Passo d’Eira. As Dave and I started to descend toward the Passo d’Eira, the skies opened up and the lightning and thunder roared all around us. We both saw one lightning bolt hit a cell tower just off the side of the road and the thunder that followed just about knocked us off our bikes. The rain might as well have been biblical in amount. It just poured! Neither of us had real rain gear, and personally, I just made the decision to just get it over with as fast as I could. The descent off of Passo d’Eira was crazy. The road was a river with dirt and ditch debris sweeping over the road about 2 inches thick. I just thought mountain bike and let the thing go. By the time I reached the finish in Livigno, I could feel neither my fingers or my toes. It felt just like winter riding in Vancouver! The organizers at the finish were fantastic, attempting to deal with many hypothermic riders as they came across the finish.

Although I thought that Dave’s and my ride was cold, the riders behind us had it even worse as the storm moved toward them. Dave and I may have suffered for maybe 20 minutes; many at the back were in the rain for almost an hour or more. Day 5 will certainly be remembered as an epic a ride as could be imagined.

Sella Ronda Bike Day 2009

Hello from Val Gardena, Italy. This might just be the most beautiful place in the world. Today was Sella Ronda Bike Day. The Sella Ronda is a 55 km loop in the Italian Dolomites that includes 4 mountain passes; Passo Gardena (2137m), Passo Campolongo (1875m) , Passo Pordoi (2242m), and Passo Sella (2244m). (Profile here) The roads were closed to all motorized traffic from 0900hr to 1530 hr to celebrate Italian cycling.

At least 10,000 cyclists participated starting from various locations on the route, mostly riding in a clockwise fashion.

We (my son Blake and I) started from St. Christina shortly after 0900hrs and climbed from here to the Sella Ronda, a further 350m of climbing. The weather was perfect, about 12C, sunny with the occasional cloud.

The atmosphere was very relaxed with bikers on all forms of 2 wheels, from mountain bike to road bike, from kids on 20 inch wheels to tandems towing kids in trailers. There were lots of road teams out for (I assume) recovery rides and the occasional hammer head blasting up the road. The descents were quick but not race fast as the various bikes and caliber of riders required a degree of conservatism.

The scenery was spectacular as we basically circumnavigated a dolomiti massif. Many of the restaurants, cafes, and refuges went out of their way to provide exceptional service to the many riders. Blake and I stopped for lunch in Arabba, a town about half way through the ride and grabbed a sandwich to fuel our ascents of Passo Pordoi and Passo Sella.

The same route holds the Maratona dles Dolomites race in early July. The winning time in this year’s race was 2:02:50. Blake and I rode the route in 4:55:00 with a stop for lunch and many conversations.

Any day on a bike is a good day, and celebrating Italian cycling along the route of numerous Giro I’talia’s makes it that much better.

Road TransAlp 2009: Pre Race Jitters

Well here we are in Germany. We arrived a couple of days ago and after a few hassles picking up our vehicle we eventually made it to our first nights stay in Fussen. I picked this location as our jump off point because there is some really spectacular scenery in the local area and it is just a short ride to Sonthofen. Yesterday we tooled around Fussen and checked out the Neuschwanstein castle. Our intention was that after lunch we would spin our way to Sonthofen. As fate played with us, it started to pour as we toured the castle and despite waiting through lunch for the rain to stop, it did not let up. Plan B quickly became “Let’s drive to Sonthofen and maybe get a ride in there.” The drive was spectacular and by pure chance (we were following the GPS directions) we drove right down the first climb that we will attempt in the race. Everybody’s eyes tuned in and we surveyed the first of many climbs we will see in the week ahead. Much bravado filled the van about how it did not seem particularly intimidating. I guess time will tell!

Today we are checking out our start town and meeting up with the rest of our crew. In total there are 26 Canadians from the Vancouver area over for the race. Joerg Becker http://www.magicplaces.com/ has been running trips to the Tour TranAlp since its inception. He lives in the interior of BC and we used his vast knowledge of the logistics required to help plan our trip. This year he is running support for multiple teams. After a great breakfast and registration, we intended to go for a ride but again the skies opened up and rain poured down. Shelve that idea for a little while. Instead we cleaned and tuned bikes and stocked the van for the week ahead. Everyone hunkered down under the awning and we all got to know each other a bit better.


Joerg has managed to garner us some small perks. We are all starting in the first start block tomorrow so we have only 100 riders ahead of us, and 900 behind us. That should make the start a little less hairy. He also managed to get Trevor Linden his favorite number so the beast goes off with plate #16. Dave and I have #76. My partner is Dave MacLennan who is a colleague from work. This is his first road race also and he is a little leery as to what the week ahead will bring. I think that his biggest worry is not the length or breadth of the race (he has cycled across Canada) but the tight quarters that a peloton will bring and the possibility of “road crashes”. It is my opinion that in a lot of crashes most of the variables are out of your control. Hopefully we will be in the right place at the right time, and not the opposite.

Tomorrow is Day 1, and the first pass, the Oberjoch awaits us 15 km out. I have butterflies already.

Maratona Dles Dolomites

For anyone who has ever dreamed of racing bikes in Europe but for whatever reason never made it happen, do yourself a favour, get yourself a plane ticket to Italy and sign up for a Gran Fondo!

Gran Fondo means long distance or great endurance in Italian and my experience was nothing short of amazing. Over the years I have spent lots of time training and travelling in Europe but all of my racing has been contained to the North American continent. After a couple of trips to the Italian dolomites I heard about a race that covered the same roads used in countless Giro D’Italia’s. It was something that immediately appealed to me after years of reading about the epic mountain battles of the Giro in Velonews.

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