What an epic ride today. Starting at 5:30am, we enjoyed 9 hrs on the bike, experienced 225km of the most stunning views along the Amalfi coastline, conquered our first two serious hills (or were they mountains!?) of the Giro, and ended up finishing the course literally 15 MINUTES before the pros. I couldn’t believe the local Italian police allowed us to continue cycling until the very last minute, but it certainly allowed us to become heroes for the afternoon as thousands of villagers dressed in PINK cheered us on, believing we were a break-away team … although we quickly gave it away by smiling and waving at every spectator!
But the biggest highlight for me was the gutsy performance of our guest cyclists. All 9 of them achieved personal bests in distance, some by more than doubling their previous record. Just to put this in perspective … we were out for over 11 hours, with actual time on the bike of 9 hrs, we cycled 225km, our elevation gain was 3,250 metres, our energy output was 7,000 calories (which is equivalent to losing over 1kg of fat!), and my Strava scored this as an “EPIC” ride with a Suffer Score of 301 (for those who don’t use Strava, well, you must start!).
Well done guys – Michel Masquelier, Ioris Francini, Matt Collings, Tom Barnes (all from IMG), Guy-Laurent Epstein (UEFA), Patrick Jutras (RDS), Guy Ouelette (Ethicor), Steinar Hoen and Bjorn Maaseide (World Event). Seriously impressive.
The road along the Amalfi coastline is truly beautiful, but the road was wet so was very slippery on the descents and so our speed suffered as a result. We also experienced a world record number of punctures along that stretch of road. Ellie and Luca (our friendly IMG support team) must have jumped out of the car 30 times to tend to our punctures and other mishaps, while Vi hung his entire body out of the car in a yoga pose to take videos of us all cycling against the backdrop of the coast, and Harry drove the car as if he was an experienced Sky Team driver.
Crash of the day went to Guy who suffered a head-on collision with a car in a roundabout, fortunately only at 3kph by the time they collided so no injuries. The driver suggested we should tackle these roundabouts in an anti-clockwise direction like most Europeans, but was ridiculously polite about it all.
By 11:30am we realised that we were likely to be caught by the peloton before the finish line, so our “journey” quickly turned into a “race”, which certainly appealed to our ultra-competitive Norwegian Olympians. We formed a “train”, and got ourselves into race-mode to impress any pro-team (except that we kept waving at the spectators), and motored to the finish. I didn’t think we would make it in time, but we arrived to thousands of fans on the beautiful beachside resort in the warm sun, screaming in delight. Hilarious. 15 minutes later the real pros arrived. Their race started at 11:40am, ours at 5:30am. So we had a “slightly” longer day, but surely just as epic.
This was the 3rd and final day with our guest cyclists, so we farewelled each other after this incredible long weekend together. Thanks again guys for your company, laughter, support and encouragement. For the next 4 days I am SOLO, so I am feeling lonely already. Gulp.
