{"id":674,"date":"2016-09-01T11:12:35","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T15:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/?p=674"},"modified":"2016-10-26T11:18:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T15:18:18","slug":"miglia-italia-1600-km-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/?p=674","title":{"rendered":"Miglia Italia 1600 km 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ride Report from Dave Thompson:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This ride was not without drama …<\/div>\n

The ride turned out to be more difficult than I expected.\u00a0 It wasn’t the length, it was a combination of the routing changes and the heat.\u00a0 Some complained about the rough roads, but I’m sure that they didn’t change much.\u00a0 What did happen is that the more onerous climbs and the heat slowed us down, pushing our best laid plans aside …<\/p>\n

We queued up early to get out early.\u00a0 Given the planned way of releasing the cyclists, we could have been leaving close to midnight but instead were rolling at 8:30 p.m.\u00a0 Our little group was comprised of me, Jerry, Hamid and Victor from Colombia.\u00a0 As usual, Hamid clung to the back of one of the groups and left us behind.\u00a0 I needed to stop for a second as my light connection had come loose.\u00a0 That happened a couple of more times until I hit a Control and was able to use my pliers to fix it for the rest of the ride.<\/p>\n

We planned to get to Vallombrosa the first day.\u00a0 While the distance seems long — 562 km — the first 400 km being flat and windless (night start and night time riding), makes short work of that first 400.\u00a0 I’d used 2010 as my baseline and that year I’d made Dicomano, just over 529, by 5:30 p.m., having started around 9pm the previous night.
\nWe did get away before 9pm and I fully expected to be a little slower, but the heat got to Jerry during the day and the climbing to Dicomano was much more difficult.\u00a0 As a result, we didn’t get to Dicomano until after midnight; crashed for an hour at that Control (spending two hours there) and then did the 34 km to Vallombrosa.\u00a0 That climb from Dicomano to Vallombrosa was also more difficult than 2010, further pushing us back.
\nWe didn’t get to Vallombrosa until daylight and we then got another hour’s sleep at our hotel. Hamid was with us at that point; he snoozed in the lobby.\u00a0 With everything pushed forward by at least 6 hours, that set the pattern for the ride.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of having dinner in each town with an early start the next day, we were getting in late and having breakfast at the hotel.<\/p>\n

Following that pattern, we checked into our hotels in Bolsena around 4am, San Gimignano after 4am, Deiva Marina at 9am.\u00a0 Instead of finishing Monday evening around 120 hours, we finished Tuesday noon at 135, against the 140 hour time limit.<\/p>\n

We pushed our luck in several places.\u00a0 We got to the Deiva Marina Control right before closing, 8am.\u00a0 Jerry was wiped.\u00a0 He could hardly walk, let alone ride.\u00a0 The combination of heat the day before and climbing doing him in.\u00a0 With the heat, he couldn’t eat much, further slowing him down.\u00a0 He couldn’t even ride 5 km downhill to the hotel let alone continuing on without sleep.\u00a0 I let him sleep at the Control for a bit and then we rode to the hotel.\u00a0 I made a strategic decision that he needed more sleep and we left there 3.5 hours after the Control closed.\u00a0 As a result, we missed the next Control close by about 1\/2 hour, which is OK in RM rides as long as you make it up later, and were basically back on track by the next Control.\u00a0\u00a0 We did leave that next Control 1.5 hours after it closed, giving Jerry some time to catch a snooze on the grass.<\/p>\n

Shab and Hamid were at the hotel.\u00a0 Hamid was about to head out.\u00a0 Shab helped us, making sandwiches and later carrying our bikes and us back uphill to the Control (that’s legal, it’s a Control).<\/p>\n

At one point during that hot afternoon Jerry was ready to throw in the towel, close to heat exhaustion.\u00a0 I talked him into continuing — “Jerry, eat some more grapes, pour that water over your head vs drinking, let’s go a bit further”.\u00a0 I knew that once it cooled down, he’d be OK, and he was. Having had to leave him behind at PBP the year prior due to an Achilles problem, I didn’t want to leave him again.\u00a0 I’m very easy on my water and at one point we were riding side-by-side and I was pouring some of my water on his head.<\/p>\n

However, those delays almost did me in. \u00a0 I’m very susceptible to the cold and I’d left my heavy jacket and other cold gear with Shab, at Deiva Marina thinking that we wouldn’t have to ride the night through.\u00a0 Besides, I hadn’t had to use it to this point anyway.\u00a0 That was a mistake.\u00a0 By the time we got to Castelania, close to midnight, I knew that I was going to be in trouble.\u00a0 There wasn’t going to be anything open until 6am and we still had a hundred or so km to go.<\/p>\n

We stopped a couple of times and I broke out my silvery exposure blanket and we slept on the grass.\u00a0 It was the only way that I could retain enough heat.\u00a0 A couple of hours before dawn, I knew that I could make it through and we continued, welcoming the dawn and quickly shedding our clothing as it heated up again.\u00a0 We lost at least 4 hours at that point, perhaps 6.\u00a0 We should have easily made it by dawn.<\/p>\n

I was disappointed in the ride on several levels.\u00a0 First, my recollection was that it was easier than PBP.\u00a0 I believe that the 2010 routing was easier than PBP.\u00a0 On that basis, I had talked Jerry into doing the ride.\u00a0 The routing changes made it more difficult and the heat compounded the difficulty.\u00a0 That messed up my well laid plans for night stops.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, both Jerry and Hamid finished.\u00a0 Hamid finished around 2am the night before and was there to welcome us at the finish along with Shab and Sandy.\u00a0 He had a great ride.\u00a0 It was a tough ride for Jerry; I’m sure that he was cursing me at times; but at the end he was happy that he’d checked that box.\u00a0 If anything, it was memorable!\u00a0 When we left Controls late I knew that we ran the risk of a DNF.\u00a0 That didn’t worry me so much — I’d already checked the Miglia-done box in 2010.<\/p>\n

Those routing changes bypassed some of the scenery that I was expecting but perhaps we were simply hitting some of that scenery at a different time of day.\u00a0 The ride-supplied food was cut back, not as good, but again, perhaps it was the dinners at the overnight destinations that I was missing.\u00a0 The ride support wasn’t as good — in 2010 the ride support motorcycles were everywhere, not so this time.\u00a0 My perception is that the organizers cut costs significantly, but that might be just my perception, as I was in a different place in that spread out peloton.<\/p>\n

As it was, there were only 10 people who finished the ride after us out of 310 or so finishers.\u00a0 Of course that’s not counting the DNFs, about 80.\u00a0 Another 90 had signed up for the ride and were DNS.\u00a0 That’s a lot of money left on the table!<\/p>\n

While I was doing the ride, tired and with rough roads, I told myself that I wouldn’t do this one again.\u00a0 Of course that’s now changed … I’ll be back!<\/p>\n

Italy is offering three other rides in the next three years – one from Rome south to the Amalfi coast; one that takes in the islands and one hitting all the highest peaks in the Alps… I don’t know about that last one but the other two are intriguing!<\/p>\n

One more note — I took a chance and rode with Grand Bois 38s on this ride, rather than my usual Continental 4-season 28’s — I loved them!\u00a0 They really helped on the roads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ride Report from Dave Thompson: This ride was not without drama … The ride turned out to be more difficult than I expected.\u00a0 It wasn’t the length, it was a combination of the routing changes and the heat.\u00a0 Some complained … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ride-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.randonneursontario.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}