After last night's team briefing, we all ambled out of our rooms in the hotel and down to breakfast with an air of anticipation, excitement and nervousness in the air. After our hearty breakfast it came time to pack our bags onto the truck.
I'll have to remember to take a photo of it in the next day or so
We all then posed for our group photo!
Now before you start making rude comments about the colour of our jersey's, it should be noted that we are in Italy, at the same time as the Giro De Italia, the leader / winner of which is awarded the Dela Rosa (IE: Pink Top). The colour of the jersey being based on the fact that the newspaper which created the Giro originally, La Gazzetta dello Sport, had been printed its papers on pink paper. Admittedly, it does look a bit "poofy" but what the heck and we've decided with typical Australian laconic humour to call ourselves the Freddie Mercury cycling crew.
After lunch however it became apparent that there were some riders who were keener and arguably more capable than others to race to the end. Having always said that I was interested in doing this ride as a means of getting fit, seeing the Italian countryside and making a social occasion of it all, at the same time also knowing my limitations, I decided not to take off in pursuit. There is plenty more time for that, should I ever wish to do so. Yeah right.
At any rate, all of that aside and not knowing whether everyone was intent on simply racing off into the distance once we left the outskirts of Terrasini or whether we'd ride as a reasonably paced peleton, I must admit to being a tad nervous.....
I didn't want to find myself falling off the back of the pack too quickly cause otherwise it was going to be a long ride to Como if I couldn't even keep up on day one! Fortunately however we stayed together pretty much as a group for the first 50 odd kilometres, such that we all rolled into the lunch spot together.
As a result I rode at my own pace, which at times was faster than others but slower than the boy racers. What do you do when you find yourself not capable of catching the breakaway group yet still sitting out the front of the peleton??? I know, I know, I should have sat up and let the rest of the group catch up and ultimately I did this, though it wasn't by choice!
Basically that last four or five kilometres of climbing was just enough to finish me off. Now at this point I should mention that I'd been unable to get the lowest four gears throughout the day as obviously the gears had become slightly misaligned during transit, however a poor tradesman always blames his tools, so ultimately I'll just have to put my hand up and say by the time I'd turned onto the final "goat track" which led up to where our hotel was located, I was totally stuffed. As a result some of the peleton caught and then passed me with only a couple of kilometres to go.
Ah well, there is always next time and all in all I can't complain!
Pretty in Pink!
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