Training Log Archive: AC

Picked a tough one for my first go at a mtb race! The Dolomiti Superbike is a major fixture here in northern Italy and it is superbly organised. They take over the town of Villabassa for the weekend and 5000 cyclists depend on the place to ride either a 120k or a 60k race. I chose the latter as that sounded hard enough with some 1500m of climb (900 in the first 15k!). Superb day for it - sunny but cool - and this afforded some great views of the Tre Cime national Park which has spectacularly jagged mountains rising from picture postcard perfect valleys.

The course itself was tough. The first 3km was fast downhill on a road and bike path, and then the climbing started. Settled into a steady easy rhythm and did okay for most of the hill. It was a mixture of forest track and sealed road and seemed to go on forever. My back started to get very sore and I had to walk a few stretches of the steepest part of the hill. I managed to overtake a few people while I was walking and they were cycling. There seems to be some sort of perverse pride in being able to ride really stee[ tracks even though the best option is to walk! Got to the top of the first climb and cruised along a plateau with absolutely spectacular views of teh Dolomites. Stopped to take a photo (yep, took my camera with me!) and cruised at a good but not crazy pace along the top. Then it was a long descent down to the valley floor and then along the floor to the point where the 120k competitors parted company from the 60k wimps. The 30+km of downhill was superb. Once again, I didn't push too hard, but cruised at a good pace and enjoyed the scenery. Not so enjoyable was the 300m climb that followed - very steep and in some parts my computer was telling me it was a 21% gradient! Stopped for a few more photos on the way up - actually just wanted a rest, but put the stops to good use. Then it was up and down across the top of the plateau and through a beautiful forest before a truly hair-raising descent to teh finish, most of which was on very steep single track with huge roots and several drops. My arms and back and legs were knackered but i managed to get down at a reasonable pace without falling off (I saw several people being attended to by teh first aid guys in this section). Then a short ride through town to the finish. They thrust a huge cup of beer into my hand as I crossed the line and I also gorged on watermelon and a nice ham sandwich.

Anyway, an enjoyable but tough day in the office. I came 71st out of 120+ in the veterans category, but less than 2 hours behind the winner :-). It is very hard to do this type of race with very little bike training under my belt and absolutely minimal hill training on the bike. So just pleased to have finished in one piece!

In Sesto in the northern Italian Dolomites for the Dolomiti Superbike MTB race tomorrow. Went out for a training ride with prosseri up the valley from Sesto. This has to be the best mtb ride I have ever done scenery-wise. Stunning Dolomites mountains rising all around us. Cycling on a lovely gravel cycle trail up the valley. Didn't feel like we were climbing much, but still managed to do 300m of climb over 8km before cruising back to the hotel. Feeling fit for the race tomorrow, but still plan to take it easy up the first climb - 15km, 900m straight from the start!

Day 4 of Italy 5 Days. Not a great way to finish up the O part of the trip. Wonderful area with superb forest in the Lavarone area - it was the WOC long distance final area. Clean runnable forest with rocks but very steep. A chairlift ride to the start promised a downhill race, but still had 165m of climb advertised! I managed to stuff up the first 2 controls, which were the simplest of the lot for the week, losing 3 mins in total on them. Then never managed to get my act together for the rest of the course, running tentatively (esp downhill where I was very cautious despite the good footing in the forest) and stopping to check my map quite often, bleeding minutes rapidly. Stuffed up the long leg with a poor route choice and lost 4 minutes there. Wound up nearly 14 mins down on the winner and a good 10-11 mins behind runners with whom I had been managing to stick with the last three days.

Anyway, O is over now and on to the Dolomiti Superbike in Villabassa in the Italian Tyrol, just near the Austrian border. Superb country and weather looks like it will hold for Saturday Registered this afternoon after a 3 hour drive from the O event - very excited for my first mtb race - 60km, 1500m climb, superb views.

Day 3 of the Italian 5 Days. Tough hilly country near Lavarone. Forest quite clean but just steep. Needed to be very strong to do well today. Ran okay but made a couple of small route choice errors that cost quite a bit of time in the end - no real misses around the controls, just a bit hesitant on the map reading at times and on running downhill (not reckless enough). Good day out though. Superb country.

Watched the WOC long distance final afterwards. Great to see Thierry G win again. And a new star in the women's as well (Minorova). Hanny Allston did very well with 14th place (at least I think it was 14th). All the top runners (male and female) looked so strong coming through the spectator control. Very inspiring.

C • Training week 2

Good solid warm-up.

A very frustrating ride with prosseri. We spent a lot of time mucking around trying to find teh start to a series of mtb tracks and had spent nearly 14km riding in circles near Asiago before finally getting onto the proper routes. But then decided to only go part of teh way as we didn't want to get ourselves too tired and also didn't fancy getting stuck in the impending thunderstorm (our timing was excellent as it started pouring as we arrived back at the hotel. Nice to be riding with Ian though.

Good steady warm-up.

Day 2 of the Italy 5 Days. Sprint race in Levico Terme - 6th place, winner did 12.35. Good race in a nice but not complicated Italian hill town. Ran well but made one route choice error where I didn't see the obvious shorter way to the 2nd control (20 secs) and ran right past the 7th control, which was in a dark passageway and I was within a foot of the thing and had to come back (30 secs). But ran hard the whole way so pleased with that.

Following the sprint race, jumped on the mtb with the aim of doing a bit of a ride around the hills behind Levico Terme. It seemed from the 1:25000 topo map I had purchased of the area that there was plenty of track options on teh big hillside. But unfortunately, the tracks were very overgrown and dodgy and so I wound up just riding up the road. I figured I would just keep climbing until I had had enough and then cruise on back down. I wound up doing 600m of climb which is a good confidence boost for Saturday's Dolomiti Superbike race, which has a 850m climb in the first 15km (followed by a 22km descent, a 6km 300m ascent and a 7km descent to finish up with). Quite a warm day and reallt sweated heavily doing the hairpin bends on teh climb. Nice to cruise back down and then finish up with a dip in the lake by the O finish line.