The words Strade Bianche takes me back to a two hundred metre stretch of greasy stone slabs. Screaming fans adorn the barriers to my left and to my right and the Danish rider Michael Valgren is at my side, handlebars swinging as we muster all the leverage available to conquer the final arduous metres.
I woke up early on the 12th of June. It was a cloudy, rainy day, and I went for a little walk around the hotel before breakfast. We had a hard day ahead of us – starting straight into a big mountain – and I was a bit nervous. I’ve never liked stages like this: A big climb early and more than 2000m altitude gain. Plus, I’d just come back from a crash where I suffered a broken collarbone, and my form wasn’t good yet. So I’m sitting at the hotel with my breakfast and coffee when I see an ashen, nervous face coming into the hall. It was obvious that Mister João Correia was just as anxious about the day’s ride as me.
Let’s be honest, The Coast Ride isn’t entirely accurate unless your bicycle shares characteristics with that of a hovercraft. We discussed yesterday that the freshly felled section of California coast makes it impossible to complete the Monterey to Morro Bay route entirely within a seven iron’s distance of the Pacific, so we took a short detour upward and inland. Today’s final section is anything but a ultimate day’s parade stage — rather, 128 miles of California heartland was on the docket.
Having lived overseas for nearly a decade, I’m semi-literate in a handful of languages; converting metric to statute translations is also one my many skills. I can tell you that 100 miles is 160 kilometers. So what’s 160 miles? A really, really, really long way to ride a bike.
If you take all three hundred cyclists and divide the work among the 128 miles required to pedal from San Francisco to Monterey on The Coast Ride’s opening day, that’s just 0.42 miles of pulling apiece. Of course, the biggest climbs come in the opening minutes of the seven-to-ten hour day, so that math doesn’t actually shake out. Within minutes the ambitious and well-caffeinated group is splintered throughout Golden Gate Park and San Francisco’s beautiful Presidio, and then strung out south all over Highway 1.
Part “deconstructed, single-origin, almond-milk cappuccino,” and part “finishing straight, full-gas smash,” this sexy little number from Giordana is a modern take on the classic merino jersey, and it does something that few cycling products can manage – it looks good off the bike as well as on it.
Travel does curious things to traditional cuisine. And we’re not just talking about Olive Garden abominations here, but universal favorites. Inspired by distant homelands and adapted for local tastes, the end product often bears no resemblance to what the relatives back in the old country would recognise.
