Remember the episodes of Friends where Chandler got a roommate called Eddie; well, I woke this morning feeling like one of Eddie's cantaloupes .At least I had managed to sleep until 5.45 am which was a bonus despite what my Garmin metrics were telling me.
Next surprise was that the tentative cable-bike computer connection had not, in fact, been connected at the correct angle and thus my Garmin Edge had been on all night, slowly draining the battery which left me with 15% charge to start the day which ain't much when you are using the map function in a strange country! Panic ensued when I also realised I had left my DI2 charging cable and rear light charging cable in the basement of the hotel in Venice, searched everywhere and finally found it after looking for the second time in my laptop bag. Still semi-sedated from the previous nights medication, apparently !
-Arrived at breakfast at 7.12 am with a large queue for the coffee machine and John reminding me of a 7.31 am departure for our group, so it was a last minute fumble to be ready , tough when you got out of bed the wrong side, not to mention all the other maladies.
I decided to start easy and ride with the grupetto of Di, Zarnia and Liz .. lots of navigational snafus on and off bike paths, bike paths which turned to deep gravel , busy roads with no shoulder where we couldn't locate or had missed the bike path....jeepers. The good part was it felt like a pretty easy recovery spin and that's probably what was needed today. .we decided to make it to the first aid station at 51km ; this was in a small village and despite no sign of our aid station, we found the fountain in the village square and duly filled bottles, dipped heads in as the mercury was rising! There was no way , given that this had taken us THREE HOURS that attempting the 175 km loop ( this was the loop excluding the Zoncolan) was going to happen so we thought just turn back and head back up the valley to Cortina.
Oli + Kylie appeared not long after and sorted us out and advised they drive us across a short cut road which would leave us at the base of the last climb, 37 km from Cortina and would be a much prettier and more enjoyable ride so we concurred with that and dismantled bikes and ourselves into the van.
By the time we started the ride up to Tre Croces it was toasty hot , there was no shade on our side of the road. This must be what it's like as you approach the furnaces of hell!! I spotted a caravan selling cold drinks by the roadside although was convinced it was a mirage until I heard the two Italian guys cry out and ask if I wanted a drink or a beer. "Fresco?" "Si, signora" so a bottle of limone and a packet of salted crisps later which averted the ( literal) meltdown I was ready to ride again. They assured me it was only 10 mins to the top, in which time there was an ominous darkening of the sky and it had cooled quite a bit, then a quick flash and a huge rumble of thunder and thus the heavens opened in monsoon fashion.
Be careful what you wish for kids!! I continued on after deliberation on whether to bail or just to htfu given I had only ridden half of the ride schedule for the day so duly pedalled off to the end of the climb but the rain was so bad I could barely see and the surface water across the road was about an inch deep so I let common sense prevail and was picked up ~ 2km down the descent by Oli and Kylie. Soaked and shivering with goosebumps. A stark contrast to half an hour ago!
The day ended on a high note however, with an Aperol Spritz and a fine repast , not to mention a successful charging of the Garmin having it balanced on one of my Hokas.
Tomorrow is a ride up hill for 24km then a trail run up at Tre Cime Lavaredo followed by a lake swim somewhere. Fingers crossed for a good zzz and a better attitude tomorrow :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment