Bradley Wiggins, kaput?
Today was our first official ride at the ICC and Colleen and Ernest from Singapore came out from Treviso to join the group. There would be two rides today, the Lake Ride which was lead by George and his women assistants, and the faster paced Leopoldo ride, as requested by Ed. Ed is a strong rider from the USA who is from Boulder CO where there are plenty of mountains to practice on…unlike pancake flat Singapore where most of us hail from. Leopoldo is a former pro cyclist having completed the Baby Giro d’Italia and coming in 2nd for the Italian national championship race….this means he is good. Having ridden with Leopoldo last year, I knew we had to be smart about how we ride and not let him think we had too much energy or fun, or else he would pick up the pace and make us hurt. Given that some of us are doing the Pinarello Granfondo ride on Sunday, we needed a ride that was not too hard….the other group was doing the Lake Ride which is a ride to a beautiful lake where you stop for cappuccino and snacks.
Lee was looking strong after the first three kilometers of this ride.
Our ride took us to a very nice climb called Croce d’Aune and another shorter climb of 4km shown below.
Off to Croce d’Aune we go!
The hunched over style which Lee is deploying here is normally a bad sign. We have only ridden about 54km at this stage and we told Leopoldo that we wanted to do 120km today…I was starting to worry. The other thing I should mention is that Leopoldo speaks only Italian and nobody in our group; Colleen, Ed, Ernest, Lee and I, speak any Italian. Therefore once Leopoldo was given the instructions on our ride there was no turning back….I guess you could call it a no Blackhawk ride, a term used for people when they reverse drop a group…normally applied by mean cyclists who don’t like waiting for people. Anyhow the thing about cycling is it is a very physically demanding sport and sometimes you can hit a wall and blow up or sometimes you can feel great. Over a long ride you can experience both feelings and I was sure that Lee would recover a bit before the end of the ride.
Lee and Colleen looking strong at kilometer 60 or so……this is halfway up the Croce d’Aune climb. I had never done the Croce d’Aune climb before so it was great to be doing it today with a great group of climbers and Lee.
We hit a very nice village with six kilometers to go to the top of Croce d’Aune. We stopped there to refill our water bottles as it was really starting to get hot. Leopoldo was waiting for us and then conveyed that we had six kilometers to go, three flat, and the final three kicking up a bit.
At this point we were all fine. The weather was starting to get hotter by the minute so thankfully most of the last kilometers were in the shade. The ride started taking it’s toll on people as we approached the 80km mark at the top. Finally we hit the top of the climb and the views were spectacular.
Lee resting at the top of Croce d’Aune.
After taking a short break and recovering a bit, we started the nice long descent from Croce d’Aune, stopping only to see the statue that was built to commemorate the development of the quick release by Campagnolo.
After the descent Ed and Leopoldo were hammering it. We continued along narrow roads through small farming villages. This is where I heard Ernest yelling something from behind. With wind blowing it is hard to hear when you are cycling so I had to slow down a bit to hear what he was saying.
Ernest: …..is off the back
What, I thought?
Jeff: What?
Ernest: Colleen is off the back?
Jeff: Who, Colleen? (that would be strange as she is a good rider)
Ernest: No, Lee.
Jeff: Oh ok.
So I sped up a bit to let Leopoldo and Ed know what we lost Lee and to slow down. Since nobody knows where we are going except Leopoldo, we stopped and waited for Lee to catch up. When I went up to Leopoldo I tried to communicate with him in my non-existent Italian. So I used the name of a professional rider who rides the same bike as Lee. I told Leopoldo, that Bradley Wiggins, a professional rider with Team Sky, had fallen off the back. He did not understand the ejecting like hand signals I was using to mean ‘off the back’ so I ran my finger across my throat as if to say he was dead. Leopoldo nodded in understanding before saying ‘Ah, Bradley Wiggins kaput?’. Yes I said….yes. Ed added the words ‘Wiggins finito’. Lee, aka Bradley, was hurting and needed some gels and food to re-energize. When he caught up he immediately seized upon a power gel as if he was a starving man at KFC!
So the group slowed down a bit as we were heading back to the ICC for a nice hot lunch. Unfortunately the gel did not have the intended effect and Lee was really hitting a wall. At almost 100km mark, this was most likely his longest ride of the year so maybe he overdid it a bit. I offered Lee another gel to help get him back which he immediately downed that. At this point I knew where we were and how to get back so we let the group go and we stopped for a calorie packed rest at a beautiful café on the lake.
After an ice cream bar, a piece of pie, a coffee, some Coke, water and a handful of fresh cherries Lee was starting to come back to life. His life was short-lived however and he had a horrified look when I told him we had 40km to go including a three kilometer climb. It was now almost 1pm and I knew we were going to miss lunch if we kept up the 18km/hour pace we had been doing….(after Leopoldo left us). We ploughed on through and after 20km we stopped again at a nice village for some lunch.
Burgers, parma ham, three Sprites, three beers and we were ready to tackle the final bit to the ICC. We rolled in at just after 3pm when the sun was hot. Damian had arrived and Kim had to go to the bike shop so we did not even have a chance to change and relax a bit before heading back out to the bike shop.
Overall a great ride! 
