Archives
Name-dropping
[ posted by iain Friday, May 20, 2005 ]
Spent this afternoon in Rovereto waiting on the final 50m of todays Giro stage. Not much chance for good photos, the finish was so fast. Petacchi won and seems to be redeeming himself after a pretty poor start to the race by his standards. On the walk home I was pretty disappointed by the photos I had got. Just when we thought all chances for photos were lost Phill spotted Robbie McEwen at the cash machine. He was happy to pose for a photo and chatted for a bit, he is leaving the Giro tomorrow to return home and prepare for the Tour. A pretty good end to the day really, looking forward to visiting the mountains at the weekend.
Monte Bondone
[ posted by iain Thursday, May 19, 2005 ]
Fantastic weather today and an excellent ride up to the pass at Monte Bondone from Aldeno and back down via Vason to Trento. The view over to the Brenta mountain range was amazing, well worth over an hours climbing. There are a few photos available
here. I'll try and get some more published when I have a chance to sit down and go through them.
Got back in time to watch the first mountain stage of the Giro, Simoni, Basso and Savoldelli were all excellent in different ways.
StelvioCam is looking good, the chance of the weekends stage being shortened are pretty slim now so we're still on for riding up before the race. Apparently there are still some avalanche warnings so we'll be picking our vantage point carefully.
Tomorrow's stage finishes in Rovereto so it's an early morning ride and then into the town to soak up the atmosphere and hopefully get some photos of the riders.
Preparations
[ posted by iain Wednesday, May 18, 2005 ]
Rest day today and the chance to head off into Rovereto to check out the town's preparations for this Friday's Giro stage. All the shops are making a real effort for the occasion and most have bikes of some sort or another in the windows. Many are from Moser's bike shop (some very tasty carbon numbers amongst them). It must be good free publicity for Moser. We also had the opportunity to go into the local library where they had
Pantani's Giro winning Bianchi and
Gimondi's Bianchi. Pantani's bike is tiny and there's not a gram of carbon to been seen, things have come a long way since 1998.
The local tourist office is also displying
Mosers hour record bike, which looks like the most uncomfortable bike I have ever seen, he deserved the record just for riding the bike for an hour.
Stelvio Snow
[ posted by iain Wednesday, May 18, 2005 ]
This is the
Stelvio webcam. We had some rain in the valley last night and the Stelvio had a fair covering of snow, which could be a problem for Sunday's stage. Hopefully with a bit of the predicted fine weather this should clear, it would be a real shame to have to cancel/shorten the stage.
Cima Valbona (1782m) via Folgaria and Passo Coe
[ posted by iain Tuesday, May 17, 2005 ]
First proper ride of the trip up to Cima Valbona. I've done this ride a few times before when I've been out here and today was a significant improvement on my past performances. It's a
long climb with three gradient sections (steep, flat, steep) and there are some fantastic views up and down the valley to keep you distracted. Up on Passo Coe we were hoping to stop off for strudel in one of the cafes but Tuesday is a no-show day for all the baristas in the valley so it was onwards and upwards into the clouds to Cima Valbona. The temperature difference between the valley and the mountains was especially high today and it took ages to warm up on the descent back round the mountain to Folgaria, where we finally found a food stop in the form of petrol station. From there it was a pretty nasty descent down the main road into the valley behind a garbage truck, which was unpassable due to the twists of the road. It was a relief to get back down into the valley for a short blast home along the newly resurfaced Giro route.
Piste Ciclabili
[ posted by iain Monday, May 16, 2005 ]
Today was two hours of flat riding along the piste ciclabili (dedicated cycle ways). These get pretty busy at the weekend but during the week they are excellent for a fast paced ride along the flat. We've got a fairly hard ride tomorrow so it was just a two hour spin down the valley and back in the morning.
This afternoon we drove up to Moser's bike shop in Trento to browse around and inevitably came back with new shorts and a jersey. They are all big Simoni fans in the shop, his wife and sister-in-law both work there. They reckon Basso is going to be very hard to shake off on the climbs, so it looks like Cunego and Simoni will have to work together if they want to get rid of him. We got held up in traffic on the way back because they are busy repairing the road for Fridays stage down the valley into Rovereto. Not that many of roads round here need repairing, compared to the roads in the UK all the roads here are really well surfaced.
Passo Bordala (1200m ) from Loppio (via Ronzo Chienis)
[ posted by iain Sunday, May 15, 2005 ]
We managed to get out for an afternoon ride today up to Passo Bordala. We climbed up out of Loppio along the same route the Giro del Trentino took a few weeks ago. The climb is a fairly steady 7-8% to Ronzo Chienis (the Giro del Trentino stopped here) and then the gradient steepens for the final 200m height gain up to Passo Bordala. We got quite lucky with the weather and managed to descend between the showers. Not bad for a first day outing.
Arrivo
[ posted by iain Sunday, May 15, 2005 ]
Early start this morning this morning to catch the flight to Verona. The bike took me over the baggage limit but the flight wasn't too busy so BA let me off without the £6 per kilo overcharge!! I arrived in Italy around midday and the drive back to Rovereto was around 40 minutes. Thankfully the new wheels have survived.
The plan is to spend this week riding around Trento region and getting some decent climbs in. On Friday the Giro comes into Rovereto so this will be our first chance to get some photos of the race, the route comes down past the town once then back up the valley to finish in the town center so we should get two opportunities. Over the weekend we will be following the race over to the Dolomites and riding the Passo Sella stage on Saturday and the awesome Stelvio on Sunday. I am really looking forward to the Stelvio, its a bit like Alpe d'Huez but much longer and at a more consistent gradient.
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