GF Liotto

Numero 1576. What does that mean? Out of roughly 1700-2000 starters, I am 1576th. It also corresponds to my spot in the grid. Very quickly, the rough translation is that while it took me 2:56:09 to cover the course, my official time was 2:59:43. Yes, between "Tre, duo, uno, vai!" I waited for close to four minutes to cross the start line. While looking ahead, the riders with numbers 1-100 and numeri dei meriti are flying around the first turn. As a result, what follows is part of the allure and frustration all at once of participating in a grand fondo. The beginning of a grand fondo is all out. You're riding above threshold for as long as you can. Why? When things settle down, you are in the general group you will finish with. So you ride as hard as possible to get to the fastest and furtherest ahead group. With that I set off into the Piccole Dolomiti.

In the words of Hincapie, it's time to ride like an a-hole. The top of the first climb - Passo Xon - comes at 13,57km. Before the descent I had to get as far as I could. Words along the lines of "Il cane"and "cazzo" followed; not nice things to be called at all. It wasn't that I was riding in the style of Flying Squirrel, I was just climbing the first climb, which comes at the beginning of the race, as fast as possible. Others were frankly in the way and I was going much faster. Until the top of Passo Xon at thirty minutes in I passed a lot of riders to get in as good as a chase group as possible. In fact my one minute thru thirty minute periods of effort were the highest for the three hours in the first thirty minutes of the race.

Passo Xon

The descent of Passo Xon was filled with hairpins (Europe, or at least Italy's, good design and construction of hairpins is part of what makes climbing and descending here so much fun) and was a little steeper than the ascent. Here, the key was to brake right and hit the turns good without letting gaps form in front that would be hard or too difficult to close; because at the bottom it doesn't flatten out completely, but is just enough to where chasing back on to a group would be extremely taxing. There are no breaks, and at the bottom it hits the ascent to Monte di Malo immediately. In these races you don't really rest, and people actually work. Periods of "la-di-da" don't exist - fortunately and unfortunately sometimes.

Monte di Malo was not a climb I found a lot of info on beforehand, but it was a stretch of 2.6 km at 9.3% and a total of 5.3 km at 6.4%. When my group hit this climb we could see the progress we made on the next group of riders - motos, follow cars, and cameras followed. We successfully integrated, and yet again began the process of trying to get as far ahead to the leading riders of this group, past the riders  who were hanging on and may not make it, to make any split. As far as I could see, I made progress before the top of the climb and the neutral support. More words followed as I had to go to the right as two guys in front decided to either stop, or might as well have stopped, to grab the bottles instead of on the fly like everyone else. As a note, tell anyone doing neutral support to crack the bottles open. It allows slight give when taking the bottle, but doesn't explode like kids in the backyard, Fourth of July water balloon fight. The descent was again twisty, but the beginning was littered with water bottle caps and bottles. Beautiful views followed as we began the 5-6 km descent for the 8.6 km flat to the next climb.

The Torreselle from Isola Vicentina was the next climb at 4.7 km and 7.3% gradient. Many people seemed to start cracking here. It was an important climb though because the descent was very technical and what followed was a flat drag to a 2 km, 8% uphill, and then a long slow uphill until the final climb. Cresting the Torreselle and moving as far ahead as possible, about five or six of us motored mangia e beve for 2 km to get to the ~6 km descent. It was really quite technical and the first hairpin came up quicker than I realized. A balancing act of breaking loose, hard breaking, and putting thoughts of fishtailing into the wall were playing out. Note: You should use some high quality pads. I recommend SwissStop. To the bottom in one piece we caught some more riders, and were then caught by some behind us. For the remaining 30-35 km we had a good sized group.

After the long drag with two hills we approached the branch for the lungo and corto. I always feared myself being the one to miss the split, make the turn at the last second, and take out half the field. Someone else did it for me though. While I was near the front I was the lone one to be forced "down"; dropping my chain and being forced to put it back on by hand. With the rest of the field charging to the last climb before descending to the finish I set off to take back as many spots as possible. I charged by everyone that I could see (with surely only the fastest having escaped out of sight), cresting the top and not letting up on the downhill to the finish. The downhill was a great finish to the race with multiple switchbacks and sweeping turns.

After the finish I dressed down at the Cinquecento, hit the pasta party and watched the winners of the corsa lungo come across. I finished in 207th position in 2:59:43, 21:16 behind the first in my category and 22:03 behind the absolute winner in the mediofondo. Not bad given number 1576.