I turned out to be right in more ways than one. Felice was hard.

Triathlon
To understand my predicament you need to understand triathletes. Real triathletes do not draft. The bike is meant to be about the solitary athlete fighting the resistance of the sun, wind and rain. Hiding in a peloton (French for Platoon) while stronger cyclists ahead of you act as barriers for the wind is cowardly. If it were permitted, you’d have skinny runners lurking in the thick of the peloton pretending to contribute to the group effort, when instead all they’d be thinking of, with their devious little minds, would be about putting on running shoes and running away from the other triathletes with the bigger quads as soon as they dismounted from the bike. A bit like the pro draft legal races.

In a nutshell, the nature of triathlon would change entirely and the bike discipline of triathlon would be diluted with team tactics and wheel-sucking. I have friends who will never speak to me again if they find out I ever drafted in a race.

So to ride a cycle race where drafting is not only permitted but encouraged, elicited the nefarious aspects of my training persona to rear their dark little horns. If they want me to draft as part of the rules, I’ll draft.

RobbyRicc and the Roadies
Ten minutes before the gun went off, I found myself at the back of 5,000 cyclists. Not having a UCI card or a track record in cycling meant that I was banished to the back of the pack with all the pensioners and non-carbon bikes. This suited me just fine. I always think that rookies need to prove their worth and get to the back of the line. Good cream always rises to the top, I thought to myself.

In honour of my first mass start bike race, I had removed my aero bars and left my one piece lycra tri suit at the hotel. No need to attract too much attention. However, just to remind everyone, and myself, where my roots lie, I left my energy gel-filled bento box on my bike’s top bar and went for my 70.3 Florida Half Ironman cycling top. If you’re behind enemy lines, sometimes the only option is to raise the flag and wait for the cavalry.

The Roadies with their UCI cards clutched tightly between their teeth were way up in front with the pros and riders with less than 2% body fat. Bull and Sticks (Marco Stichini), in their matching Specialized kit, were alongside their rivals Vervet (Richard Meinesz) and Stoat (Tim Palmer) in their matching Dauphin Cycles kits. Testosterone oozed from their pores as their feet itched to be clipped in.

I reminded myself of the dinner the night before at Bergamo’s cittá alta (city on the hill). The bottle of Italian Spumante as an apperitif had released all pre race tensions and the roadies were only to happy to impart tips for my first race. Wear the arm warmers, put on the new brake pads, use a shirt for underneath the cycling shirt to wick away the sweat on the uphills and add some warmth for the downhills. I took these nuggets and added them to my good ideas list.

That night as we toasted each other’s safety and good fortune with goblets of Montepulciano red, I wondered if the glimmer in my friends’ eyes were reflections of the bold rich grapes or stirring of the competitive spirit. Either way, I felt like cyclists from bygone eras, happy to be with friends and inspired as to the possibilities that the race in the mountains would bring.

The T-bone steak that was put onto Duncan’s plate was the size of a birthday cake. Fuelling for a big day he said. It was a page straight out of Paleolithic man’s cookbook. This wasn’t normal nutrition, but neither was this a normal race. Never was a man more right with his choice of meat and red wine.

Race Start
If I ever had to go to war, it’d be like the Felice Gimondi (The ‘G’ in Gimondi is like that in G-force). No fireworks, no starter pistols, no whistles. I was too far back to hear anything except the clicking of cleats into pedals which sounded like infantry loading their rifles. The ripple of clicks spread through the crowd. The race had started and the swarm gently trickled over the start line. The crowd called out to their loved ones – ‘Corraggio. Forza.’ Only 165 kilometres left to go.

As we crossed the line that’s when it all changed. It was as though the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had unleashed a fireball within the throng of bicycles. Riders burst across the line at 40k’s per hour. Whippets of men in their bright uniforms flashed past me spinning their wiry legs at insane speeds. If they kept this up for more than 5 minutes, I’d be the last man in the peloton.

Thankfully, the narrowing of the course caused several bottlenecks and the calls of ‘Occhio’ (‘Watch Out’) kept everyone attentive. For the next few miles I felt like I was in rush hour traffic with surges and stops. At one stage, an unsuspecting bus had veered down the cycling road causing hundreds of us to dismount and find a way round. The volley of abuse that the northerners hurled at the poor bus driver was impressive.

The Hills Are Alive
Felice Gimondi is a legend in Italy. The son of a postal carrier, he won the Tour de France in his first year as a pro. He is also one of only four people to ever have won the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España. His nickname is ‘The Phoenix’ and he is remembered in the record books as the greatest rival to Eddy Merckx aka The Cannibal, possibly the greatest and most successful cyclist of all time.

His annual bike race covers 165k’s above the town of Bergamo with 2,620m and 52k’s of climbing. It has fantastically named climbs like Pasta Neck and Rooster Neck. And of course there is the infamous Forcella di Bura which is a 20 kilometre climb and the 6th and final climb, Costa Valle Imagna. The CVI is a 10k climb with gradients close to 10%. For comparison, one of our biggest training hills in Surrey is Box Hill which is 2.8k's long and has a gradient of 4-6%. Italians, especially those from the province of Lombardy, snigger to themselves when we call Box Hill a hill.

The first climb of the day actually comes as a respite after hammering the legs for 30k’s and gave me an opportunity to stretch the legs and spine and enjoy the views. The switchbacks zigzagged up the side of the hill and you could see the faster cyclists way up the side of the mountain working their way up the climbs.

I thought of the Roadies way ahead of me giving the Italians a run for their money. I was later to find out that Sticks was part of an initial breakaway from the Roadies, however after about an hour into the race was forced to abandon the race as a result of a mystery bug which caused him to chuck up his breakfast. He barely made his way back to the hotel where, upon chucking up once more, promptly fell asleep for 4 hours. Specialised were now a man down and Dauphin Cycles were on the hunt for the Bull.

I sauntered to the top of the first climb after a good hour to find a fantastic spread of nuts, oranges, strawberries, bananas, dates, iced tea and water with salt. With a handful of strawberries, a couple of ‘nanas and a full bottle of peach ice tea I remounted and headed down the extreme declines. One thing about the Italians, they sure know how to put on a good spread.

Braking and accelerating down the spine of the mountain, my wheel dug into a groove in the road causing a surge of adrenaline across my shoulders reminding me of mortality. It was after about the 6th switchback that I noticed my weight was in the white knuckle grip on my handlebars making me top heavy. As I transferred my weight into the pedals making myself bottom heavy, I was able to flow much more smoothly through the corners. Keeping my fingers off the brakes and opening up my eyes to the road ahead as I leaned into the corner, as I had read from a Chris Carmichael & Lance Armstrong book, kept my speed up and made cornering much more manageable. It’s amazing how such simple advice from a book actually works when you’re on the road.

Ironman
After a good two hours on the bike I started making my way through the field. I skipped the occasional feed station oasis and opted to ride between the feed stations fuelled on Power Bars and iced tea. I edged past my first ever Cervelo Soloist with tri bars and all. It looks like such a sweet ride and I felt chuffed that my Cannondale had proved a worthy steed as I pulled away from my adversary. That’s when I began to milk the whole drafting thing using the slipstream of each rider to frog jump to the next. The effect on my HR was negligible and yet I was able to maintain speeds on the flats close to 40 kph. Quite impossible for me in a time trial or triathlon.

It was up the final 10% climb that I met Ironman Marco. He called out to me after spotting the Ironman logo emblazoned on my Cannondale. One hell of a nice guy, he told me that he had completed all the European Ironman races and was doing Roth Germany in the summer. We discussed strategies as we stood on our pedals at 13kph, bobbing right and left like Columbian riders up Alp d’Huez. Here’s a translated portion of our conversation:

It’s the philosophy behind adventurers like Marco and the juxtaposition with athletic endeavours that stokes the fire within the belly. As much as I appreciate the sentiment from Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights who quipped, “If you’re not first, you’re last”, it’s more about each person’s endeavour to get to that finish line, standing.

With more than 10k’s from the finish line a small gruppetto formed behind a pony tailed Italian with very extreme shorts. Every few minutes someone else would take the lead to keep the pace up but inevitably he was the strongest of the group and would head the 8 to 10 man group. At this stage the legs were quivering and I downed my last gel and water for the final surge to the line. The curves and turns in the last few hundred metres to the finish line killed the speed of the riders and we dribbled across the line. I raised my arms in celebration, broken, but thankful that I didn’t have to put on my running shoes for a marathon.

The first man across the line did it in 4h30m. Duncan’s time crossed the line in an inspired 5h49m. Tim & Richard (Team Dauphin Cycles) were an impressive 6h13m. I managed a time of 6h45m. 1,387th position. Initially I was staggered that I was able to move my way from 5,000th position to 1,387th place. Was I special? But after trawling through the results and excluding the participants of the shorter 95k and 134k races, I realised that only 1,800 rides had completed the 165k event. Oh dear - still so much to learn.

The Roadie
There’s something incredibly cool about hanging with the Roadies. They truly understand and love their bicycles and focus on them as intricate machines rather than wheeled devices to get you from the swim to the run. There‘s the history and the passion that filters into the strategy and team tactics which is largely ignored in triathlons. And it’s about the pursuit of speed sprinkled with heaps of danger as witnessed by the ambulances that picked up the many fallen riders throughout the day. It’s about espresso, pink newspapers and arguments over whether Fausto Coppi would’ve beaten Lance in the Giro if Coppi had a carbon framed Trek.

And it’s about looking like a professional at all times, in all things, even while hanging out with the ragazzi in the piazza. Roadies are the Spartans of our era.

If you’re not first, you’re last.
Ricky Bobby

If you’re not first, make sure you look good.
RobbyRicc