Information and articles for everyone who is passionate about sport or wants to get fit.

Gran Fondo Campagnolo

Gran Fondo Campagnolo 2005 - A Personal Diary by Mike Hayes

Introduction
The Gran Fondo Campagnolo is Italy’smost prestigious Cyclosportive event. Every year up to 3000 professional and amateur riders line up to test themselves by racing 214km and some 4500m of elevation gain through some of Europes most testing terrain in the stunning surroundings of the Dolomites. For the less serious riders there are shorter route alternatives of 118km and 98km. In 2005 I lined up to do the full Gran Fondo.... this is my personal account!

My account begins the day before the event in the start town of Feltre.

Saturday 18 June:
Headed into town early to 'sign on', collect race numbers and transponder. The headquarters is in an ice hockey arena - they're all set up with trade stands showing plenty of nice jewellery from Campagnolo, Pinarello and so on. Try hard to keep my credit card firmly in my wallet but fail miserably at the Sportful clothing stand. The race entry includes a goodie bag... which is quite respectable as it includes a nice double wheelbag from Campag, drinks bottle, Sportful cycling jersey, energy gel and the usual collection of promotional rubbish. It's quite quiet at 9:30am which is nice as there's no queue at the massage tent.

12:15pm and I drag myself out on the bike for a light spin to loosen the legs in preparation for tomorrow - I just go for a quick 30km out and back along the river... the heat is brutal, as soon as I stop back at the hotel I'm drenched in sweat and it feels like my head is going to burst. It could be worse I guess, at least it is sunny - and the scenery is nice.

Late afternoon. Go for a wander round the old town to check out the start/finish area - it's a nice old town, good atmosphere but they've gone and made the finish uphill which will hurt after 214km of hard racing....... Looks cool though with all the banners and inflatable bridges - very Tour de France! Stopped by the headquarters again to grab my free pasta feed - really good too, 2 different kinds - pesto and tomato - plenty of it with yoghurt and bananas for dessert. The whole area is heaving, there was a kiddies road race this afternoon that’s just finished so the place is crawling with little Paolo Bettini miniatures with parents in tow!

Spend the rest of the day preparing my kit, food and bike for tomorrow and 'resting' in front of the telly. I eat dinner in with my room-mate, Blair, so we can eat early and get an early night like proper roadies, need to be up at 5am tomorrow for breakfast....... a good move as it turned out, most of the guys went out to eat and ended up having a particularly dire meal that was late and not particularly heavy in carbs.... just what you want before a big day on the bike.

Sunday 19 June (race day):
5am and it's already 26 degs C outside, so it's going to be a warm ride then...!! There's some cloud cover though which may take the edge off the sun. Breakfast is my usual mountain of cereal, bread, dried fruit, eggs, ham and fruit with coffee and juice. There was supposed to be spaghetti too but they're having problems in the kitchen - don't bother hanging around 'till it's ready.... I'll get my fill of spaghetti tonight.

Trundle off down to the start area at about 6:45 and join the other 4000 or so riders all comparing each others legs and bikes. There's rather a lot of compact chainsets in evidence at the start (hanging off some very exotic bikes - carbon wheels in abundance!)... do they know something about the hills I don't.... I only have my regular 39x25.... I rapidly banish that thought with positive self-affirmations (or delusions) like "I can climb like Pantani"... funny coincidence right then a guy trundles past who is Marco's spitting image...

7:20am, a quick last pee by the side of the street (in full view but heck it’s the continent and no one seems bothered) before the music gets going, the announcer starts yelling and the cheers and whistles start. The atmosphere is electric, the street is packed with racers as far as I can see in both directions - be a bit of a bummer if there was a wheel touch early on...! Amazing feeling. It's a slow start as nearly 4000 riders ease themselves out of the start area through the town streets but pretty soon the pace is up to a steady 55km/hr and all I can hear is the humming of tyres and whirring of bike transmissions, this is the closest to riding in a professional peloton I'll ever get - and it's very very cool! Certainly beats the average UK roadrace, i.e. a 60-80 mile ‘sprint’ round a short road circuit designed to take in as many potholes as possible.

I resist the temptation to jump on the wheel of a passing team in favour of a steady warm-up, I'd rather lose a bit of time early on than blow-up monumentally at half distance.

The first climb starts after 15km or so, the peloton has yet to thin out much so I spend the next hour or so of climbing fiddling my way up through the bunch, funny - I seem to climbing faster than everyone else... either I'm particularly fit or they know something more about the pain to come.... ah well. I wish I’d taken the time to learn Italian for “on your left/right”, “coming through” etc but instead I have to rely on whistles, loud throat clearing (not very effectives) and plain old “oii!” The road pops out above the treeline after about 40 minutes of climbing, just another 5km to go to the summit where I stuff a protein bar down my throat (it's a long descent, long enough for recovery to count) and put on my gilet without stopping (style is very important in Italy, it'd be shameful to have to stop just to add/remove clothing - though I haven't mastered the art of peeing without stopping yet...). The descent is ace, the roads are still closed here so it's proper eyeballs out descending, I pass loads of guys on the way down which is good, I’d been working on my descending skills and now I’m a not-to-shabby descender. Put thoughts of hitting gravel and potholes at 100km/hr out of my mind, I left my brown lyrca at home.

The bottom of the descent is where the race splits - straight on for the 215km Gran Fondo or turn right for the 140km Medio or 65km Fondo... as I zip past the sign heading straight on with the more sensible souls peeling to the right I wonder what I'm getting myself into as the road is already looking suspiciously uphill again...... Not for long though, it dips down again to the first food stop... I'm carrying lots, my jersey back pockets are full to bursting but a race like this will need 8000 or so calories so I stop anyway, the scrum redefines the term 'bunfight' as riders frantically scrabble to grab and cram as many calories as possible as quickly as possible! It's pretty good fare - ham rolls, bananas, cakes, dried fruit etc - I cram in a few mouthfuls of dried fruit and cake while simultaneously stuffing ham rolls and a banana down the back of my jersey while a race employee kindly refills my bottles, getting sticky energy goo all over my bike....

Onwards again and the road does go up properly very soon - the start of the Passo Manghen - this is the biggest and nastiest climb, 26km going from 463 metres to 2047 metres.. ouch. There's a control checkpoint a few hundred metres after the road starts going up but my transponder fails to register so I waste 10 minutes faffing about while the techie tries to get it to work.... it doesn't - that means I may not get an accurate start time and my time through the controls will have to be recorded manually. Get really angry at the thought I won't get an accurate 'official time' and at the time wasted already, but my own stopwatch is running so at least I'll know what I did. I do a bit of a Lance Armstrong and turn the anger into on-bike effort and storm up the first half of the climb at 20km/hr passing riders like they're stopped..... they probably wonder what drugs I'm on.... Hope I don't pay for it later on - this is a serious mountain... and there's 2 more biggies after this one.

The cloud is gone by now and the sun is directly overhead so the trees on the lower slopes don't offer much shade... it's baking. After 15km of climbing the temperature is through the roof and the gradient gets steeper.... I dig in and find that corner of my mind to hide in where the pain doesn't register and all of a sudden I'm rolling over the summit at 11:45am... I seem to be way ahead of the 'schedule' I'd planned out with Blair last night.... I wonder where he is right now. The scenery is spectacular - all rugged limestone spires shrouded in cloud and gnarled trees dotting the rocky mountainside.

There's another food stop just below the summit.... another bunfight ensues, I refill my jersey pockets with just about anything I can lay my hands on while stuffing down another protein recovery bar... which by now has pretty well melted in the heat. I also break open the extra bags of carbohydrate/protein drink powder I was carrying and refill my bottles again while also glugging a litre of mineral water. Gilet back on and I start the plummet back down... The descent starts off very narrow and twisty which limits my speed, the hairpins are so tight I start handling the bike in the same way as did riding tight switchbacks off-road last summer in the Alps (credit to Sam at BikeVillage for this!) - it pays off as I nip inside a number of team riders on the hairpins and then leave 'em in my wake on the straights. The descent later on opens out into a screamingly quick plummet along the mountainside. The local Garda are manning the road junctions on the route which is very handy - I pop out of the trees about 100m from a junction with a main road, the coppers stop the traffic for me so I can carve round the junction at 80kmhr and hammer off along the flat.

There's a light tailwind now which is great, the next 15km or so are all along the flat, I pass one Italian rider who looks like he's cracking - I offer him the chance to get on my wheel but he doesn't even register the gesture so I leave him far behind. There's not another rider in sight now as far as I can see either ahead or behind. Sections like this I get a little paranoid did I miss a turn but the odd discarded gel sachet lying in the road gives me some reassurance.

After a short while the route dives abruptly off the main road onto a tiny little lane winding it's way through flat fields of tall grass. I seem to be on the floor of a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. It's getting really hot now so I stop at a water fountain on the outskirts of a village to quickly glug some more water before the next climb which can't be far off..... I'm not really looking forward to it, the Passo Rolle is 'only' about 20km long but it's got some particularly nasty steep bits....

When the road does start going up I have my only real 'bad moment' of the ride - the heat is intense, my feet are on fire, my head feels like it's going to explode and my chest is surely about to burst.... this is the only bit of climbing on the ride where someone passes me - but they look like they're suffering too.... I need an excuse for a brief breather so I stop for a quick pee, when I get going 2 min later the change is amazing - I find my legs again and soon pass the guy who passed me. I seem to be right up with the privileged (and paid) team riders and so on who get to start at the front of the peloton.

The scenery when the road pops out of the trees is simply stunning, there's a line of tall limestone spires and buttresses towering up to my right, the contrast with the blue sky and wispy clouds around the summits is fantastic. There's yet another food stop at the summit, this one isn't as busy as I think most riders are now behind me but I don't bother to stop - I have enough food on board to last the final 70km or so. I cram down my last protein bar along with a handful of dried apricots that had been festering in my jersey pocket... they're pretty nicely stewed too in the heat and sweat.....

It's a long and epic descent this one - 37km. It starts out in a classic alpine manner - all open views with closely spaced tight hairpins. This road isn't closed to traffic but I push it to the limit anyways laying the bike right over on the bends with tyres squealing on the hot road surface. I do meet a number of cars coming up but there's always room for a bike to squeeze through. The cars going down are typically courteous - moving over to let me past. There's some lovely long open stretches later on down the mountain but the blast of a headwind coming up means that speeds aren't that high, only 80km flat out with my chin touching my stem and hands tucked together on the middle of the bars, shame - I was hoping for some 100km/hr + descending. There's a yellow and blue team jersey a long way ahead of me... it's like a red rag to a bull - I'm determined to catch him going down, which I do after about 10 minutes of crazy descending. He's not as aerodynamic as I am - being a bigger rider the headwind has a more marked effect. It's funny as I drift effortlessly past him as the road sweeps through an S-bend in the middle of a town.... he, he, he. He's a big powerful guy though, once back on the flat the headwind is evil and he soon powers past me. I hop on his wheel and we end up sharing the work for the next 7 or 8km before his greater power gets the better of me and I let him go rather than burn myself out with one major climb still to go... I'll catch him again once the road goes up!

The road is going along a river in quite a deep gorge now before it plunges into a long unlit tunnel... this is scary, after a few moments I dimly realise it might help if I wasn't wearing sunglasses so with shades balanced down my nose, feeling like Larry Grayson, I hammer on down into the darkness - at least the wind has gone though it is wet in here... all dripping from the ceiling - it's lovely and cooling!

A bit more flat stuff during which I catch a few riders who promptly jump on my wheel for a 'free ride' and the road starts going up again - steeply this time - it's the Croce d'Aune, 12km of fun, not very long but very steep. I'm feeling a bit peeved at pacing the guys on my wheel who haven't done a stroke of work so I turn around and yell "I need a pi*s" before swerving to the side and letting 'em get on with it. Refreshed and about 500 grams lighter (!) I sprint past them up the road - the gradient here is about 11% - they haven't got a hope in getting back on my wheel....

The gradient gets steeper and I pass a number of riders on their last legs weaving in the road, must admit - I'm finding this really hard, out the saddle now nearly all the time, legs screaming, just about able to keep the pedals turning smoothly. The road goes through some villages where both race officials and locals are handing out water and orange/lemon slices - I decline the water having dumped all my excess from my bottles at the start of the climb and ditched a couple of spare muesli bars (less weight...) but the orange and lemon is really welcome.... especially the lemon.... a 'tangy' alternative to sweet carbohydrates as my mouth puckers up with the acidity....( I remember a cartoon from my childhood that involved, I think, Wily Coyote eating a Lemming, his face screws up with the subtitle “this is the face of a man who’s eaten a Lemming” (Lemon-wordplay! sorry - the heat and effort is clearly doing strange things to my brain)

This climb is really tough, by the summit at 1015m I've got 192km in my legs and it's the hottest part of the day. I'm so fried I can't remember what the scenery was like on the climb. My transponder doesn't work again at the summit control so another couple of minutes wasted and the tech guy gets treated to some ’educational English’ but in a nice way of course... it doesn't matter though - it's all downhill from here. The descent is delicious, long and fast. I hit the closed roads again and the cobbles at 80km/hr as I sweep into the outskirts of town.

The last few kms are on the flat and I give it everything, legs screaming as I maintain a steady 50km/hr through the town. The final bend to the finishing straight feels magic, I've done it... I go hard out the saddle up the final gradient, I've got the road and the encouragement of the crowds to myself as I pass under the banner at 16:03 after a total time of 8hrs 23, riding time of 7hrs 55. I'm shagged.

Just after the finish there’s a guy in a tent dishing out iced tea so I gratefully, if messily, pour a few glasses down my throat and then trundle round to the race headquarters to return my transponder and sort out the mess with the timings and so on... which I do eventually and then get chatting to a guy selling hot grilled focaccia breads.... he's just come back from a stint as a waiter in London so does me a special - filled with ham and dripping with melted mozarella and Marmite from his own personal supply! Heaven.

When I've grovelled my way back to the hotel I catch sight of myself in the mirror in the elevator.... ouch! So that's why everyone was staring at me in the lobby.... my cheeks are white with crusted salt and my legs are a dirty grey with road grime, complete with the odd dead bug sticking to the sunblock!

The rest of the day is a bit fuzzy - there was lots of eating, dozing and stuff going on. Blair dragged himself in some 3 1/2 hrs after I finished and some of he guys ended up in the broom wagon after the time cut-off. They didn't seem too disappointed though as apparently it had a fridge fully stocked with complimentary beers.....!

I'll be back for this event next year (and plenty of others in the meantime) - my target is a sub 7.5hr ride.

For more information on the event: http://www.granfondocampagnolo.it/. Copyright 2005, Mike Hayes. To talk to the author contact me at gravitysucks@mac.com, and to see my photography go to http://www.mikesimagination.net