The plan for today was as follows: Assemble bikes. Put bikes in car. Drive to registration. Sign in. Drive to Corvara and meet up with the Cycling Weekly group for photos and a group ride and coffee. Best laid plans…
Breakfast first though, right? Gotta love continental breakfasts – lots of cooked meats that I can eat, even if I can’t eat most of the rest of goodies – and they did look good – on offer. You could even boil your own eggs. I’d taken rice cakes with me, and the discovery of little packets of nutella that I could put on those was a definite highlight 🙂 Oh, and the coffee was good too – let’s get our priorities straight right?
Right, time to put the bikes together and check that that my baby had survived the journey intact. And it had. Just as well really!
Judging by some of the other steeds stabled there, even if the basement hadn’t been secure, my bike would have been! Some very swish carbon out there… As Kevin is ably demonstrating here, assembling bikes is clearly a very serious job, that involves a great deal of fiddling and concentration…
Time to put on kit, load the car, and get to La Villa, where the event village and sign on was. Getting there was a nightmare. There is one road through the valley, and it was full of cars doing the same as us, as well as hundreds of cyclists riding there instead. It got busier and busier and slower and slower. Unless you’re an Italian driver in which case you just hurtle past regardless and scare the rest of us witless. We missed the turning for the village, there being only three signs, easily missed amongst the chaos and the paying attention to what everyone else was doing, and we ended up in Corvara where the finish line and later meet up was due to be. Time for a U-turn, a quick flurry of texts exchanged with Steve who has done it before, was there, knows what he’s doing, and sorted me out, and we made our way back to La Villa where parking was not so much at a premium as completely lacking. We ended up dumping a car in a little residential street, like many others, but which luckily turned out to only be a short distance from where we were supposed to be. The queue to sign on was long, but moving fairly swiftly, and we joined it. Well, it’s why we were there after all.
There was a wide range of outfits and lycra to internally critique to pass the time. The sun continued to climb, and the temperature to rise, as we all stood around sweating under clear blue skies…and that was before even trying to ride a bike! Did this bode well?
Once into the building, our paperwork was checked – photo id, entry paper, and medical certificate – and then it was onto the rider number queues to collect your very goody bag, along with rider and bike numbers. The free jerseys were lovely, but the sizing was, well, Italian. Trying them on was essential, and the stage was full of people doing so and exchanging them for a size that actually fitted. It’s a good thing cyclists are generally a relatively fit bunch otherwise the sheer amount of flesh on display could have been distincly unpleasant. As it was…well… 😉 Even the skinny men I knew ended up in XL or worse. I’d put myself down for an L back when I signed up for this, and I got to be an S instead. Which tickled me :). I was tempted to buy the matching shorts…but by the time I decided to actually do so later in the day, they’d sold out in my size. Boo hiss :(.
Formalities done and we were back out into the sunshine. There was a large sign to show you just what you’d let yourself in for. Be afraid, be very afraid…?
Next to sign on was an outdoor seating area where 5E bought you pasta, 3E apfel strudel, and inexpensive beer or water were on offer, depending on your preference. Considering the heat, and the whole abstention the day before thing, it was sparkling water and one of my fabulous flapjacks for me, with awesome views to look at while sitting in the sunshine, and a ski lift going up and down past us. Nice :).
The event village was just a little down the hill, with various stands and stalls. Not a lot of any interest to me though – maybe I’m not bike geek enough. Although the Pinarellos were nice. Having said that, Pinarellos were ten a penny this weekend, which is not something you can usually say.
One of the nice things was the children’s entertainment around, with face painting, stilt creatures, activities etc. Although I’m not sure what kind of creature the stilt walker was supposed to be. See the Maratona jersey in the foreground?
I found the sheer number of people around otherwise a bit intimidating and stressful. Considering all the chaos of the morning, there was no way we were going to make it back to Corvara in time to meet up with everyone and be in the photos, which was a bit of a shame. It would have been lovely to ride up the Campolongo with the group, but I had been worried it might take too much out of my legs and dent my confidence, so I guess circumstances had conspired in my favour in a way. We decided to head back to the hotel, and go for a trial ride from there instead.
We headed for the little village of San Martin de Tor just down the valley, which was only a short ride but went straight up straight away! Which, in afternoon heat, not being warmed up, with the unfamiliar altitude, was hard work. We had planned on going all the way up to the Castle at the top but quickly decided that was unnecessary which, since I was later informed it ramped up to 20%, may well have been a good call. Instead we dropped back down into town and sat outside a café for more sparkling water instead.
The large building in the centre of the shot is our hotel. Scenic out there isn’t it? The village had a very pretty pointy church too – I wonder if they build ’em pointy around there because of the snow and the weight of it on roofs and the like?
I’m not sure I’ve ever drunk so much sparkling water as over this break, and it’s just as well I’ve acquired a taste for it. Kevin’s capuccino looked lovely but I was worried that caffeine might keep me awake later and I definitely wanted to do my best to get a good night’s sleep, though nerves usually get the better of me on such occasions. Still, no point aggravating the situation, and it’s important to keep hydrated in heat like that anyway.
It was a very nice place to kill some time. Shaded, scenic, colourful, quiet, peaceful…the complete opposite to the morning, and much better for my head.
The gadgets informed us that actually it had been 12/13% to get up there, so the fact that it had felt bad felt less bad. Especially as the maximum gradient due the following day was alleged to be 16% and the averages far lower than that, albeit for much longer than the diddy climb we’d just done. It may have only been a short ride, but it served its main purpose which was to make sure the bikes were working properly and that my gears were working, which they were. Time to go back down the hill and back to the hotel, as plenty of faffing remained to be done to make sure that first thing in the morning was going to be as easy as possible. Kit to sort, debate, lay out. Numbers to attach. Same old same old…
Now I know it’s a very weird, coals to Newcastle, thing to do, but I took a bag of gluten free pasta away with me and the hotel were happy to cook it for my dinner. It’s a great shame they then decided to put it in a very lovely but very far from safe tomato pasta sauce. Man, did I ever regret eating that…. 🙁 Still, it stayed where it was supposed to be, so the chances were it would do its fuelling job. Definitely no white wine this time, just time for an early night before the big day ahead. Alarm set for 4:00am – as ready as I’d ever be.