2018 Maratona dles Dolomites

• Wheelgood rating: Hard
• Length: 134km
• Height Gained: 4400m
• Category: HC
• Route: https://www.plotaroute.com/route/996591

[Editor’s Note: this is something which was written in 2018 during a trip to the Dolomites in order to take part in the Maratona dles Dolomites. Enjoy!]

Before I start rambling I should note that this is a long one, so you may wish to cancel all of your upcoming appointments, grab a beverage of choice, snuggle down and be prepared to read some things that you might not have expected (or maybe you did, I don’t know)…

I’d also say that this isn’t a Club Run, so there may be some NSFW topics/language in here.

I shall, however, begin traditionally with the list of thanks for what, overall, has been an excellent trip to one of the toughest European Gran Fondos:

• Mrs W, for being Mrs W
• Mum and dad, for being mum and dad
• My friends for sticking with me through all of this
• My coach, without whom I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as prepared
• Gertrude for transporting us through Europe with aplomb
• The weather for not chucking it down on us
• The organisers of the Maratona for putting on something that’s a bit special (although not without its flaws!)

In the beginning, then. This particular trip was conceived in and around the time of the Marmotte and, following some of the events of the time, was put out to the Club membership on the forum in the event that anyone who wanted to have a go would have opportunity. In the end, only a subset of the Marmotte crew also decided that the Maratona (Sue, Adrian, Alex, Charlie and me) was for them … plus one more. Mrs W, who, after conquering Mont Ventoux chose to test herself against the Sellaronda route of the Maratona. Don’t be fooled that this is an easy option: it might ‘only’ be 55km long, but it still has 1760m (5784ft) of ascent and, as such, needed some real preparation.

And, so, preparations were made. Rooms were booked, hassles were hassled (single supplements, flights from Gatwick and all that), bike boxes were loaned, training rides were … actually best not talk about that … but we got it sorted in the end. Months turned to weeks, weeks to days, days to hours and then it was time to travel.

Except that it wasn’t. Mrs W and I chose to drive down so that we’d have access to a car for the four additional days we’d be staying to make the trip a full-on holiday. So, on Wednesday night, probably in the course of packing, my recurring hip problem, er, recurred. From past experience, this was likely to be game over without access to a physio to put it right, but, as we were travelling early the next morning there wasn’t much I could do at that stage other than to do what we’d all do, which is to hobble around and pretend I was OK, but feeling that this was going to be a problem.

So, on early Thursday morning, I levered myself into Gertrude’s passenger seat whilst Mrs W did the first part of the drive down to Peterborough. We didn’t do much other than to shove some sandwiches down before swapping over and then continuing the drive: I’d booked an earlier ferry than last year so that we could get into France and have an overnight stay in Reimes before a second day to bring us down to the hotel. The traffic wasn’t exactly helpful, but we still made it in time to board our ferry (with minutes to spare) and then relax for 90 minutes, or so. The subsequent drive through France was great too – the Autoroute was pretty much deserted all the way across and we rolled in to the hotel just in time for dinner – and the knowledge that everyone else had made it down to Alex’s parents for their overnight crash before their flight.

The following day’s drive, however, was a different situation. Once again, France was great – straight through, apart from the sections where one Departments had decided to cut all of the grass on the Autoroute on the same day and we had section after section of ‘roadworks’, although at least people could be seen actually working there – but once we got into Germany things took a bit of a nosedive. The traffic volume went up very significantly and the weather deteriorated into some very heavy rain showers, which made for an unpleasant change from the bright sunshine of the previous day. Oh, and there were lots of roadworks here too. It wasn’t until the last 100km down towards Austria that we found a reasonably deserted, dry, derestricted section of Autobahn where I tried to make some time up. I was only partially successful – despite what ‘people’ say, not every driver on the Autobahn uses their rear view mirrors to check for vehicles whistling up behind them before pulling out. Gertrude has good brakes, which was just as well as we had to lose 80mph very quickly indeed to avoid punting into the back of a small Peugeot which pulled straight across from the on-ramp into the outside lane in front of us…

Austria was different again: very little dual carriageway/Autobahn, so we just had to sit in the queue following the truck that was in front of everyone. And then at the traffic lights which appeared to be holding up one of the major trunk roads through the country.

And then Italy, which appears to have roads in a similar condition to our own in combination with drivers who seem quite, well … flexible … as to which side of the road to be on. The Autostrada are fine, but the single carriageways are a whole new learning experience.

Along the way we learned that everyone else had made it to Gatwick, that the flight was then delayed, but eventually made it to Venice, bereft of 10 bike boxes. This caused some stress, but, fortunately, none of us were affected. We were affected by the two hours’ of delay whilst the missing boxes were sorted out, which meant that the whole party were due to arrive at the hotel around 2215 and would be having a cold buffet. People were not pleased. Mrs W and I arrived at the hotel around 2000, to be greeted by the view below and, having checked in (hurrah for a concierge service to carry luggage and park Gertrude), decided to go on and eat ahead of the everyone else.

By the time we all got together, things were all a bit frazzled – and the idea of a led bike ride at 0930 the following morning didn’t go down well. Nor did the information that we couldn’t make this a bit later. Whilst this isn’t really the place to go into it all, I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t had the best ‘hosting’ experience from our travel provider and that, in fact, we’re pretty disappointed with them in a number of respects.

The following day dawned bright and sunny and, by the time of the 0930 ride, we were just about finishing breakfast. We’d made our own plan to ride up to the top of the Valparola (the hotel is actually on the final descent of the Maratona) to have a looksee. Despite some worries on my part that this might be too much effort two days’ before my designated ‘A’ ride for the year, I went along, as did Mrs W.

I also wanted to find out how my hip would get on. In the past, when it’s gone, I’d get about 20 minutes of effort on the bike before I just wouldn’t be able to ride any longer. I, therefore, decided to see how it would perform knowing that if it was bad, I could turn around and freewheel back to the hotel and have a very easy couple of weeks. It was still painful when moving from sitting to standing and I had no idea how it would react on the bike. Very well, as it turned out. Whilst I could feel it, it didn’t hamper my riding, even when I’d finished warming up and gave it a good 20 minute test. Once I’d done that and recovered waiting for Sue to catch me, we rode to the top of the climb, then part way down the other side, just to see what it would be like. This took us to a car park, which would turn out to be important on the Sunday’s ride. It also allowed me to look at Sue’s front tyre, which was looking a bit cracked and worn and I recommended that she change it for the spare that she’d brought with her: better safe than sorry for the time it takes to change a tyre!

Spa, sauna and plunge pool (except the ladies) were used to relax after the ride which, when followed by an excellent dinner, were great compensation for day’s exertions. A plan was hatched by Sue, Alex and Charlie for a ride the following day: the rest of us just wanted to relax in a calm before the following day’s storm.

Come the morning, there was a delay caused by Charlie’s rear tyre having a blister and Adrian’s front mech not moving quite as commanded. I put on my bike mechanic’s hat, picked up the toolboxes that I’d brought from home, and went into the fray. This is a bit complicated, so you’ll all need to try to keep up…

Sue noted her tyre difficulty first and was planning to change it over, then Charlie reported his with the question of ‘can I use a tubeless tyre on a non-tubeless rim with an inner tube?’ The reason for this was that Alex had brought a spare tubeless tyre with him. I wasn’t confident that the answer to this was ‘yes’, so a plan was hatched to take Charlie to the bike shop. Sue heard about this and offered her spare tyre to Charlie if hers could be declared ‘safe to ride’. I really wasn’t sure and said I’d take another look. I did … and found a huge blemish on her tyre too which decided the question for everyone. Next stop was Charlie’s bike where there was, indeed, a large blister on the outer carcass of the tyre that would have been dangerous to ride on. A trip to a bike shop was arranged and we took the wheel off the bike. At this point I suggested we remove the tyre from said wheel to make sure there weren’t any other problems beyond the blister – better to check for something else and fix it rather than just do the initial issue and miss something else! Then it got a bit strange: I pressed the valve core in and started to get latex on my finger. From a clincher tyre? Strange. Are you sure this isn’t tubeless, Charlie? Yes, I’m sure. Hmm. In the end, it was a tubeless tyre – it even said so on the side of it. Down to the car to get the Alex’s spare tyre and a trip into the garage area saw the four of us wrestling with the wheel and tyre. The first problem was that the tyre was tight. Really tight. So tight, in fact, that two of us were struggling to make any headway into the last six inches. In the end, I had to go back to our room to get my secret weapon in this scenario: a bead jack. This worked. Eventually. I actually thought I was going to snap the jack on a couple of occasions, but we got it there. In the midst of all this, Adrian was trying to do some diagnostics on his front mech and ask questions about internal cable routing and cable stretch. Once Charlie’s tyre was on, I transferred across to Adrian’s issue leaving Alex to operate the air canister to get the tyre seated on the rim, which he’s done before. In the end, the best we could do there and then was to take up the cable slack to the mech and hope for the best: if the cable did go during the ride, then it would drop the chain onto the small ring, which, whilst not great, wouldn’t prevent him from completing the ride. By the time I’d finished that, Charlie’s tyre still wasn’t seated: it was proving … problematic. The tubeless valves that Mavic supply are shorter than the Hunt ones that Alex uses and the canister was struggling to get enough purchase on the valve. Or so they said. In the end, a little bit of jiggery pokery and rectifying that the tyre was sitting too far into the rim bed at the valve, and we got it popped on with some satisfying crack noises to indicate that the gaps were being filled.

So, an hour later than planned, the three riders actually got out of the door and Adrian had a working bike. Probably.

Mrs W, Adrian and I had a splash about in the pool, before discovering that the spa only opened at 3pm. We decided to go for a walk towards the restaurants that we’d seen by the road on our ride the previous day. Having found one, we dropped a note to the guys to let them know where we were eating as they’d decided to come straight back to the hotel from the top of the Gardena, rather than eating in Corvara, which was originally planned. We had a very pleasant lunch waiting for them to arrive, although we did bake quite significantly in the sunshine, which was very strong indeed. In turn, they had a very pleasant lunch too, whilst we continued to bake. The sauna saw us return in the afternoon. Well, OK, the 60 degree sauna saw us return – the 90 degree one was just too stupidly hot for any of us to stand for more than a minute, or two. It did make the plunge pool frisson feel that little bit more real, though!

The evening before the day after was a very relaxed affair. I remember the evening before the Marmotte and everyone was, well, bricking it¹. This time there were no real signs of worry, although I do know that there were some worries floating around. And off to bed we went, knowing that we wouldn’t sleep all that much, especially as the alarms were set for somewhere between 0430 and 0445 depending upon how much faffing was planned for the morning.

Both Mrs W and I had spent some time in the afternoon choosing our kit for the day, packing pockets, making sure our Garmin were charged and attaching race numbers, so, once everything was finally laid out, we were pretty much ready to go in the morning.

Brrrrrr. Brrrrrr. Must be the alarm. Time to wake up. Check time. 2330. Must be hearing things. Try to sleep. Too warm. Brrrrrr. Brrrrrr. Alarm time. 0230. FFS. Hearing things again. Sleep time, but mustn’t miss the alarm. Rattle, rattle. Shuffle shuffle. Bang. 0425 – next door (also cyclists) have got up and are getting ready. Oh, well, if you can’t beat them, join them…

A surprisingly normal breakfast followed and then it was time to get ready to head. We left the hotel at 0535 – minus Sue, who was calibrating her power meter and told us, quite firmly, to go on and that she’d catch us up. I rode down with Mrs W, who was beginning to show some nerves by this point: it was, by far and away, her biggest cycling challenge both in terms of difficulty of ride and numbers of people on the road.

We rode gently through La Villa watching the police stop odd riders and challenging them to look at their numbers: there were some who were trying to simply hop onto the event having not paid. Mrs W parted company at the pen split to head for the ladies’ pen: she wanted to do the event on her own without the pressure of us lot being around her at the start, which I absolutely get. She was doing her own challenge and wanted to do it her way: chapeau! Sue wanted to start with us, but the officials were trying to direct her to follow Mrs W. Easily solved – I simply indicated that Sue was with me, to which they waved their hands to say ‘oh, OK, then’ and all was well.

And then we had to stand around in the start pen getting slowly colder until things got going. Fortunately, it never got anywhere near as bad (for me) as the Maramotte, which was really quite chilly. We did all the usual things: waving to the TV helicopters as they flew by, eating bananas and then wondering where there might be a bin and standing in the queue for the portaloos, then not being able to actually get into one, because the Italian rider standing in the crowd parks his bike in front of the door until it’s pointed out to him that he’s blocking the way. I also remember standing their thinking: oh, bugger, this lot all look pretty fit: I’m going to get utterly lunched on every climb here. All normal stuff.

Then the cannon went off. An actual cannon. It was suspended from a helicopter and looked to be one of those avalanche jobs. If anyone in La Villa didn’t know there was something going on, they did now.

Excitement built and … nothing continued to happen. Presumably the elite riders were now balling headlong into the Campolongo, but, from our pen, we couldn’t see this at all. About ten minutes later the back of Mrs W’s pen, which we could see, began to move and the buzz of excitement rose. Another few minutes later and we’d shuffled our way onto the road from the car park that acted as our ‘pen’ and we could mount up and … ride very slowly down the road so as not to crash into everyone else who were also riding very slowly.

The five of us got ourselves together. By this I mean that Alex, Adrian, Charlie and I had formed a group of four and Sue was some yards further down the road. We sort-of concertina’d a bit along the 4km of 2.3% that passes for flat in this part of the world before reaching Corvara and the start of the day’s real climbing. Adrian had a Plan – he was riding with a back injury and wanted to preserve it as much as he could and so he was capping his effort quite significantly. I tried it, but found that I was struggling to keep at that level, so, as my hip seemed to be absolutely fine, I pedalled on a little bit before catching Sue. The two of us then rode the remainder of the Campolongo together. Well, I say rode: the volume of people on the road and the 12% ramps were causing an effective bottleneck so there were occasions where we came to a complete standstill. Sue had to put her foot down at least once – I was fortunate as I was behind her and had just enough room to get away with it. The throng cleared just a little bit higher up and we were able to ride properly: I’d managed to find a slightly clearer path through the riders and was just ahead of Sue and tried to hang back, which seemed to cause some problems so, after some persuasion to do so, I just rode at my ‘pace’ to the top. Sue and I swapped positions a few times depending on how well we got through the other riders, none of whom seemed to understand the idea of keeping to the left to allow quicker riders through: I think I spent about 75% of my time wedged against the right hand side of the road, annoying the even faster riders who wanted past me. Mind you, given that I was moving when I could, I got no hassle from them at all, unlike some other riders for whom being shouted at was becoming something of an occupational hazard. The lack of situational awareness of a lot of people left something to be desired!

During the climb I was also on the lookout for Mrs W. I hadn’t seen her at the start, so assumed that she must have got going. But, as the climb went on, I was getting just a mite worried…

We got to the top of the Campolongo together and waited for the guys. As we did so, Sue had to perform some emergency safety pin work on my jersey race number, which was in danger of becoming detached. And then, in the middle of the road, there was a crash: someone didn’t indicate that they were pulling into the refreshment area at the ride of the road and a lady piled straight into them and came down. Like I say, situational awareness wasn’t in great supply! After a short, but slightly tense, wait we saw Alex and Charlie and gave them a wave. Alex pulled in, but Charlie, and presumably, Adrian, carried on on the grounds that we’d catch them up at some stage. We said ‘hi’, rolled up our arm warmers, I stuck an energy bar in my face, and we were off. I set off first – I saw a gap in traffic and just went for it. I remember passing Charlie as he was parked by the side of the road on the descent and I must have passed Adrian somewhere, but I can’t remember seeing him.

The bottom of the Campolongo turns straight into the bottom of the Pordoi. By ‘straight into’ I do, literally, mean that you pass straight from downhill to uphill with no actual flat bit in between. As I was first down, I decided to carry on riding at a steady pace and let the others catch me. This didn’t work so well: I was about 1.5km from the top of the Pordoi before Sue appeared at my wheel. Oops. Once again, we waited at the top, this time taking pictures of the three guys with big horns upon which they were playing a tune. I stuck another energy bar into my face.

There’s a theme here. After not eating enough on the Marmotte, I had a plan to have a gel half way up each climb and a full Veloforte bar at the top (all 300 calories of it). The idea was that, combined with my carb drink, I’d be taking in around 80g of carbs per hour. It almost worked.

Once we’d collected up and people were ready to go, I took off down the Pordoi descent. I was making the most of the closed road conditions and, without taking any silly risks, giving the descents a good go. I was held up on most of them, because I’d catch a rider who was going just quickly enough, or just erratic enough, to make passing dangerous, even though I was quicker than they were and had to wait for my opportunity. Yelling at people did nothing helpful, so I just waited and, when the moment was right, pounced. The problem was that this could take quite a long time…

The descent of the Pordoi was great: I caught a guy up who appeared to know the road. He wasn’t taking any stupid risks and knew I was there (he looked around), so I gave him room and he let me follow. Whoosh!

At the bottom of the Pordoi, the road turns right straight into the Sella. Once again there is genuinely no flat section of road between the two: down goes straight to up. 12% up, in fact. The crunching of gears was the loudest sound to be heard anywhere in Italy at that time. Amusingly, the feed stop was just above this, although at least it meant that everyone had to work for their lunch. I waited for Sue, then we both filled bottles and headed for the portaloos. I got lucky and found some toilet paper left in mine, which made the rest of the day rather more comfortable as I could get rid of all my excess weight without using up any of my emergency standby rations. I was, however, discombobulated when I found that these particular commodes didn’t flush: you pressed a foot pedal which moved the conveyor belt onto which you’d made your deposit such that, I imagine, it fell off into a septic tank of some kind. For some reason, this made me feel much dirtier than knowing that it had been moved by liquid, but I’ve no idea why.

As I came out, Sue spotted Alex and Charlie and waved them across. Adrian materialised too, muttering something about not being able to stomach his energy bars and that every ham and cheese sandwich along the route was now in real danger of being eaten by him.

When we got away, Alex tailed Sue and I for a bit so that he could get some footage of us on his Virb. We even got a commentary, although we don’t know whether this particular unit will, in fact, record audio. Even so, it was worth it to hear Alex’s impression of things!

Eventually, our pace was more than he wanted to go with and we pulled ahead, noticing along the way that we passed a someone from the Club who couldn’t actually have been there. Good effort for getting from the end of the Cyclone to the beginning of the Maratona overnight… 😉

I tried to set a comfortable pace, but Sue felt it was a bit much and urged me to just carry on at my own tempo. I hesitated, but, knowing that it can be irritating to have someone sit alongside you when you’re climbing, I did, indeed, just keep plodding on. I never made a great deal of ground – I wasn’t going that much quicker even when the way was clear, but I was regularly catching large clumps of people spread across the road.

This is about the time when I should mention an observation: despite what I’d thought at the beginning, we weren’t being overtaken hand over fist by people. In fact, it was the other way around. Somehow I was passing far more people than were passing me. This was confusing, especially as I knew that I wasn’t caning myself to go as quickly as possible.

And then it all came to a stop. There were roadworks about 1km from the top of the Sella and, somewhere along the line, it looked like someone hadn’t known what to do about the traffic lights and likely stopped at a red one. The combined weight of riders behind them then backed up and we were all walking. Sue took to the cyclocross course path by the side of the road, whereas I just stuck with it. She got past the blockage sooner, but was delayed getting back on the bike (I passed her just as she reached the top of the path), so it worked out honours even.

We got to the top of the Sella, I stuck my bar in my face and, within five minutes, or so, we’d all arrived (it’s quite short, the Sella, but has some steeper pitches in it). We got a nice French guy to take our photo and got ourselves ready to go, having first waited for the ambulance to go through on blues-and-twos. Oh, dear, we all thought and debated whether to wait for them to ‘clear away the bodies’. I also found out, from Sue, that the guys had seen Mrs W on the descent of the Pordoi, which was the source of some considerable relief. I’d not seen her, but when I saw her at the end, she’d seen me pass her at speed…

After sufficient time we were ready to leave, I saw my gap in traffic again, and went for it. This, it turned out, would be the last time I’d see the group until the finish. The descent of the Sella is quite technical, but, again, I found I was scything my way past people, until the point where the red flags were being waved by the marshals on the side of the road. And then, around the next corner on a reasonable straight section, was the ambulance and a guy on the floor who really wasn’t moving very much. He had bandages on his head and blood all over his face. My guess is that he’d been passing someone who had moved on him, squeezed him into the barrier and you can guess the rest. Slightly subdued for the next 50 yards, we carried on and then, after the next corner, it was ‘as you were’ and off we went. Until we came to the helicopter landing site: the chopper was in the process of landing and kicking up a huge dust storm which was being blown straight across the road. Into us. Everyone slowed down in case of backwash and the right hand side of my face has been nicely sand- and pebble-blasted. Once we’d cleared that, and removed the grit from, well, everywhere, we were on our way again.

I don’t actually remember the bottom of the Sella, but I must have turned onto the Gardena somewhere as the road started to go upwards again. I went back to my ‘easy pedalling’ and assumed that Sue and the guys would be along soon. What actually happened was that I reached the feed station half way up the Gardena before they reached me and, given the number of people standing around in the middle of the road, I had a paddy. The polite variants are ‘you can get lost with that idea’ and ‘blow this for a game of soldiers’. And then I saw an Australian guy turn his bike off the road, walk over some grass to the service road and miss half the queue. Thanks very much – I’ll have some of that. I did, and got a pat on the back from the guy behind me who saw what I was doing, then did exactly the same. That was half the queue and, unfortunately, I had to shuffle along for the rest.

And then I left. I felt a bit guilty at not waiting for everyone, but something had just snapped/clicked in my head and all I wanted to do was just ride. For me. And, for one of the very few occasions, I did just that and, once I’d got past feeling guilty (it took to the top of the lower section of the Gardena), I calmed down and began to … just ride. The descent in the middle of the climb (yes, really) was very welcome. Less so was the sight of the 3km to follow, which all seemed very uphill indeed. Once again the crunching of gears signified the start of the ascent and it was back to winching bottom gear all the way to the top.

It was at the top when two things occurred to me: that Mrs W would, essentially, be finished when she reached here as it was all downhill to the finish from the summit and that there was no way I could stomach a full energy bar this time around. I did have a gel and hoped for the best. In hindsight, I should have forced it down, but, hey, sometimes you just have to roll with the conditions that you’re facing at the time!

The descent of the Gardena was really nice – very sweeping and fortuitously free of too many other riders, so I could relax my way down in preparation for Round 2. I already knew this, second hand, of course, because Sue, Alex and Charlie had ridden it the day before and told the rest of us about it. Mind you, it’s one thing to hear someone talking about it and quite another to find out for yourself. I got to the bottom, picked the right hand lane around the finish area and carried on round to the bottom of the Campologo for a second ascent.

This was much improved over the first one as there were far fewer people on there this time around. This was great as I could pick where I wanted to be and didn’t feel under any pace pressure from the baying masses. In fact, I even managed to pick up a passenger on one section: my even pace must have been an attraction. I genuinely wasn’t bothered that he was there – I was just riding as I wanted to ride. I did tuck in behind a very large Spanish gentleman for a period up there, though, because there was a roaring headwind on one of the long straights and I figured I’d be better off letting him do the work rather than me. My friend saw what I was doing and tucked in behind me. Then the road tipped uphill a bit more and my windbreak started to go slower and slower, so it was my turn to do some work, which I duly did – all the way onto the next flatter section, at which point I kept the same effort level and he disappeared straight out of the back.

Of some concern, though, was my water situation. I’d not really looked at the ride material and wasn’t sure whether there would be a refreshment stop at the top of the Campologo and I knew I’d need additional water to tackle the Giau. As it turned out, I needn’t have actually worried, but, given the situation, when I saw the water ‘fountain’ by the side of the road and a number of other riders filling their bottles, the decision was made. Two full bottles later and I rolled up to the top of the pass to find … a refreshment station. Given that I still had two pretty full bottles, I carried straight on and down the descent for a second time where, inconveniently, I was held up more than the first one. In fact, about the only rider who didn’t hold me up was the guy on the aero bike and full aero helmet (visor an everything) who was travelling downhill very slowly. Most odd. No matter, I got to the bottom, turned left instead of right and continued downhill, this time blasting past every other rider that I could see as they all pussyfooted their way down a straight road. Bah!

The next 20km were no fun. Predominantly downhill, but with the occasional 6-10% incline just to spice things up a bit (there was even 200m of actual flat), but it was into a headwind and just chewy going. There weren’t many riders about, so finding shelter was quite tough. I did, eventually, tuck in behind an Austrian guy, but this was problematic as he was a seriously crap descender – but I didn’t have enough go in my legs to really get in front of him. In the end, I sat behind him until a slightly technical section turned up that was a bit downhill and I went for it – and made it stick.

Not long after this was the route split between the medium and long courses. I’d already made up my mind and went for the long course, knowing that, even though I didn’t feel great, neither, apparently, did anyone else around me.

Some more descent followed the split point which meant that, even if I’d wanted to turn back, I couldn’t really: I was committed. And, given that this is the Maratona, what do you think followed the descent? Quite right, a climb. An unnamed one too, at that, which made the 10% sections slightly less bearable. I was also beginning to wonder about my water situation again too, until I heard a British voice a little further up the roads say ‘there’s a feed station just around the corner at the top of this slope’. I was catching the guy up and, as I reached him, said that ‘this was the best news I’d heard in miles’. Two full bottles and a cup of coke later and I was all set … until I was waylaid for a couple of minutes by three English guys who’d never seen a Cervelo with disc brakes before. After a short conversation, it was time to go (‘I should go and get this over with.’ ‘Enjoy!’ ‘Does anyone enjoy the Giau?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘How about ‘survive’?’ ‘Yes, that’s better – we’ll go and survive the Giau.’)

The bottom of the Giau is quite interesting: you come downhill, turn right over a small bridge and then immediately left to face the road, which looks like a wall straight in front of you. In fact, it’s not all that bad – 12% – but the suddenness is disconcerting. There was a muttered comment from beside me from a Turkish lad who looked massively fit, to which I said ‘welcome to the next hour’. He agreed, said it was a brute and then rode off. I found a pace that wasn’t too tough and stuck with it, knowing that it wouldn’t get any easier. Once again, I found that I was riding past a lot of people, even though I was expecting to be passed by hoards given how slowly I was going. The thing was that everyone else was also going slowly. It’s a funny climb, the Giau: in terms of stats is seems quite similar to the forest section of the Bedoin climb up Ventoux (Ventoux is about 10km at 10%, the Giau 9.9km at 9.3%), but, in reality, they’re nothing like each other. On Ventoux the gradient is pretty steady – yes, it’s unrelenting, but you can keep a single pace the whole time, which, mentally, makes it a bit easier. On the Giau it changes a lot – they’re are even some flat bits across small bridges which then go into 12% ramps. I just rode all of it at an effort level that I knew I could keep pushing, although, as the climb went on it began to get harder and harder so I found myself tacking onto people’s wheels for a few seconds’ respite before getting back into it again. The problem was that it was also getting harder and harder to get back up to speed, as it were. No matter, I kept plugging away.

Until the point where the road signs really got on my nerves. In France, there are km markers on a lot of the climbs. This is useful as you have a guide as to how far away the top is. In Italy this doesn’t always happen and, when it does, the markers are at x.5km, rather than just x. So, in France, you’d have 5, 3, or event 1km to go markers for example, but here it’d be 5.5, 3.5 or 0.5km to go. I just find that very irritating – and they weren’t correlating with what my Garmin was telling me about the climb, either. The net result was that the last 0.5km was really the last 1km. I wasn’t pleased, but what could I do?

I did, eventually, get to the top, stopped, said ‘Strewth!’, to which the German guy just in front me turned around, looked, gave me a grin and rode off. In all of this excitement, I missed the selection of local cheeses that they keep there, but, really, I was a bit beyond caring. I stuck another gel in my face and hoped for the best before heading downhill.

This time I really was held up by some seriously inconsiderate riders who, despite knowing that I was there, just kept taking the line and giving me nowhere to get past without putting both of us in real danger. I sat up and swore to myself.

Then you turn off the bottom of the descent and go straight into the climb of the Falzerego. I knew immediately that this would be a problem. My legs weren’t working as they had been and, this time, they didn’t really want to wake up. I did have enough to quickly despatch the fools who’d held me up downhill, but just didn’t have it after that. In the end, I managed to tag on to a couple of big German guys who did a sterling job of protecting me from the headwind. They then tacked on to a Belgian lad, who pulled what had become a group of about 8 along the flatter lower slopes at some speed (with everyone hanging on for grim death). Then the road tilted up again and one of the big Germans blew. Unfortunately, he was right in front of me and I had to go around and then try to chase back on to the two in front, which worked, but cost me and I spent the next couple of km sitting on the wheel at what felt like full gas, even though it was nothing of the sort.

In the end, I got to 3.5km from the top of the pass and just had to stop in the lay-by. A couple of minutes and my last gel were sufficient to get my moving again and I was able to start moving at something closer to my usual pace, although it was still definitely down. In fact, I started passing people again, albeit relatively slowly – in fact, I caught the two large Germans who I’d been drafting earlier and rode straight past them. Until I hit the headwind again and had to do a mix of sitting on and pushing to the next rider/group on the road.

And then I reached the top. Better yet, I reached the car park that Sue and I had ridden to a couple of days earlier. And even better, there was a refreshment stop there. I knew that I only had about 0.6km to go to the top and that would be pretty much all the climbing done, bar the very short Mur du Chat so my water supplies were ‘sufficient’, but I took the opportunity to neck a coke to be on the safe side. This worked well and, knowing where the top was, I set off with what felt like, but probably wasn’t, gusto. This was only disturbed once when another rider passed me like I was standing still, but, otherwise, I was the one doing the passing. There’s always someone quicker than you, eh?

Come the top I was starting to run out of that adrenaline that had sustained me from the car park, but kept it moving along the sort-of flat section at the top of the Valparola (into the headwind, of course) before dropping down the other side. I caught up with a couple of British guys who we, once again, travelling just quickly enough to make passing extremely dangerous. In their favour, however, was the fact that they seemed to know the road and weren’t hanging about. I did get past one of them when he got one of the bends completely wrong and ran around the outside, but I sat up because I could sense that he was going to push it to catch his mate up and it was much easier not to be in his way at that time. There was also the fact that I knew we were almost at the bottom of the main descent and that he’d come straight past on the flat section in a short while anyway, so why hold him up?

That flat section felt never ending and, during this period, my calves began to make their complaints known in the form of cramp. Fortunately, the never ending period did, in fact, end and the descent began again and I tried desperately to loosen things off. This worked pretty well until I got into La Villa when both quads tried to lock up on me with 100 yards to go before the bottom of the Mur du Chat. Fortunately, again, I was able to get things moving again and rolled on to the bottom of the Mur expecting to find utter carnage. Now, the race bumpf had built this up to be something mythical – this idea of a 20% wall that would finish everyone off. Tom Last’s CGN video of the climb also made it look pretty severe. What I’m about to say now will, probably, get me some flak, but, compared to what I expected it was a nothing. Yes, it’s 200m long. Yes, there’s a 20% ramp at the top. And, yes, you’re tired from the previous lumps along the way. But I’d contend that the 20% climb out of Blanchland is actually a tougher climb than the Mur du Chat. Mind you, any 20% incline deserves some respect and, to that end, there were a number of people already walking and about five riding. Half way up were some Brits shouting first names at everyone they saw to encourage them on and there was no way I was going to let them down. And so I winched myself up to the top without any huge burst of effort, which is in direct contrast to pretty much everyone else who seem to have gone at it ‘shit or bust’ or ‘die trying’: hence why my time up there is so lamentably slow.

And then it was all over. Or so I thought. A 4km tootle of a little bit of up and down to the finish. At least I’d read the notes, unlike Adrian who thought that the top of the Mur was, in fact, the finish of the event and temporarily stopped his Garmin until he saw people still moving and realised the error of his ways. It’d have been better if this were the case, because that last 4km, into a block headwind, on your own was no fun. I did find a wheel to sit on for a period, but the lad was already pegging it and blew about 2km before the finish and I had to do my own thing again.

And the it really was all over. Some kind chap cut the zip ties holding the transponder chip onto the bike … and then handed me the chip itself, which I was to hand in at the next gazebo down. Er, why? Couldn’t he have done the whole job himself, or was trusting him with cable snips as much as was allowed?

I wandered, slowly, towards said gazebo wondering the main question of time itself: which lane should I walk down in order to get my finisher medal? In the end I chose not to deviate too much from The Path, was presented with my medal and then had to make another choice: cap or cash? When you gave your transponder chip back to the organisers, they refunded your money, as it were so you were offered the 10 euro deposit back, or a Maratona baseball cap. I took the money: I’m just not a baseball cap kinda guy!

Then came another walk, this time culminating in a young lady who was offering stuff. Bottles of energy drink, in this case, one of which I gladly accepted, took two further steps to be met by Mrs W who’d wandered down from the holiday company’s gazebo to have a bit of a change of scenery. My arrival, an hour before I’d predicted that I’d turn up, was something of a surprise, but, strangely, we made the best of the situation. In my slightly cabbaged state, I followed her up to the gazebo and immediately drank the energy drink and a bottle of Sprite before, finally, sitting down on the grass, just in time for Adrian to have arrived back from wherever he’d been in the interim, and thus began the Afternoon of Chat which was interspersed by (a) him making sure that I shoved both fluid, calories and electrolytes into my mouth and (b) me getting cramp in assorted areas and making the odd mewling noise. I gave up on the idea of the pasta party when I heard that the queues were monumental and resolved to sit there until we could be bussed back up to the hotel.

Sue came in next, about half an hour after me, and she did head for the pasta party, encountering no queue whatsoever. After some messaging, she came up to meet us in what could only be described as A State. ‘Broken’ was her word for it and, indeed, she was somewhat unsteady on her feet and was guided gently into a comfortable position by those who were still able to assist. The plate of pasta didn’t see much fork action as, like me, I think she’d temporarily given up on the idea of food. Some story swapping later and what had happened was that she’d bonked part way up the Falzerego (where I’d run into the trouble) and had been nursed to the finish by a very kind rider.

Alex and Charlie arrived another 20, or so, minutes later still looking fresher than they had any right to. Well, Charlie did – I think Alex had also run into problems on the Falzerego. I felt sorry for both Sue and Alex as I knew what they’d gone through, but also a tiny, tiny, bit of relief that it wasn’t just me.

So, overall, everyone made it round their chosen route on the day. The prevailing wisdom is that the Maratona was harder than the Marmotte. Personally, I think it’s a bit more complex than that. We were better prepared for the Maratona, if only because of our experience on the Marmotte, but this meant, I think, that we pushed a bit harder this time around. My power data certainly indicates that. So, as such, it’s not really a surprise that the Maratona felt harder – we’d worked harder on the day. My own view is that they’re both very similar in terms of raw scores on the doors, it’s just that the ride profile is different. Alex summed it up nicely: the Maratona had the flavour of the Wiggle Scarborough Black sportive. The climbs of the Marmotte are long and relatively steady so you can get into a rhythm and stick with it. Those on the Maratona are shorter, steeper and far less constant. Different riders suit different types of climb and your difficulty rating of the events will reflect this. For me, I found the Marmotte tougher, in part because we were less well prepared (the experience and an additional year’s preparation go a long way), but also because I simply tend to prefer that less constant type of slope. It’s one of those debates where no-one is right, or wrong, and I know some prefer the more alpine ascents to those of the Dolomites/Pyrenees.

And that was that.

Except that it wasn’t. There was some fuss over the bussing back of people to the hotel, specifically that said bus could only take three people at a time and that it was a half hour trip each way. Mrs W had already decided that she didn’t want to ride and Sue was struggling with the concept of standing up, so that made two. The rest of us, therefore, decided to try to be Men and ride back to the hotel. We got some ‘directions’, which got us riding the wrong way, until a nice English bloke pointed out that we were unlikely to find La Villa in the direction in which we were travelling, so we applied Google Maps to the problem, turned around and headed the right way.

The trip back was … annoying, mainly because we’d had to make it in the first place. I also had the problem of having no water left in my bottles, but, because I’m a Man I didn’t make a fuss and got on with it, despite the 30 degrees of sun beating down on our backs. I can’t recommend it as an option particularly, and it got worse as we caught a guy on a bike and began to pass him as the road turned uphill. Normally, this would have been great: it was a mountain bike and he was a big guy. Except that it wasn’t a mountain bike – it was a mountain e-bike and we were in danger of being overtaken very easily having just overtaken him. Adrian settled back into his pacemaking duty and I rode next to him, thus, effectively, preventing our friend from overtaking us and making life difficult (in fairness to us, we caught him, rather than the other way around.)

Once we’d got back to the hotel it was a waiting game. The girls obviously thought so too – they’d gone to the bar and were drinking wine whilst they were waiting for the bus (and we were slaving away riding up the road.) They got back eventually, after which it was a race to get down to the terrace for drinks and dinner, both of which were rather excellent. The high spirits didn’t last as long as might have been expected: pretty much everyone was knackered and drifted off early to bed (not to mention the time of the transfer the following morning, of which there was a Conversation between the guys and our holiday company).

The following morning saw most people up and about packing bikes and the like before breakfast where Mrs W and I joined in and then saw the bus away to the airport at the end of what was, overall, a highly successful trip. Yes, we had some problems, but, as Sue said, we’re all adults: in the end, we’re experienced enough on the bikes to be able to sort things out ourselves when we need to!

Did I enjoy it? Yes, in that type II way.

Would I ride the Maratona again? Highly unlikely. [That was written with the hindsight of a few days. With the increased distance of a couple of years, I have to say that I could be tempted…]

Would I recommend it to anyone else? Yes, absolutely, without question. It’s a great one to do and well worth the effort. Just be aware that the statistics don’t do it justice and that it’s a properly hard day out.

I’ll sign off here with another thanks to Mrs W, Sue, Adrian, Alex and Charlie for making a great holiday!

Thanks, and kudos, for getting this far – if there are any other road rides, or climbs, you’d like me to take on, the more ridiculous the better, then please send me a message on my FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/wheelygoodcycling/ or email me on wheelygoodmail@gmail.com and let me know…

---

1. I also remember the evening two days before the Marmotte when everyone was, well, I still don’t know where that bottle of whisky went… ↩