Milano San Remo Stage 3

Oropa to Ceresole Reale

Strava: 106.99 km, 1,915m, 5:33, 281 shifts

I woke up a little early and got to have a nice video chat with Katie at 6am. Breakfast this morning was a little slim, small pieces of white bread but with unlimited chunks of decent cheese. And each person got one still-warm croissant, the most awesome type, with fruit filling, so good. And unlimited juice. So after a lot of juice and a lot of cheese and bread it was time to pack.

Today we had a choice of tracks. The regular stage three track was all paved and the special 3a track included four km of gravel and saved about 12 km of distance and at least 300m of climbing. No brainer for me! We headed out at 8:15 and took a side road that did a little up and down but generally had very little traffic and was easy and fun. After maybe 15 km our gravel route split off, and I think about 10 people rode it. It didn’t have much climbing and the actual unpaved section was less than three km, fun to ride and not too rocky. Soon we came out in the town of Andrate and there was a nice looking café in the shade so we stopped. Riggo bought us drinks and I ate a banana since we were halfway to lunch.

All this time I was trying to gauge how I was feeling. I knew I was better than yesterday but did I have it in me to do the whole stage? After our snack, I took off and rode to lunch – lots of descending, then a short, hot 300m climb. I arrived very sweaty but felt better quickly, sitting in the shade eating and drinking. Maybe not full strength but I was definitely up for continuing even knowing what was ahead.

I was toward the front of the pack when I left and we had more descending, and lots of rolling with some climbing. It was about 60 km from lunch, but the kicker was the last 10 km, all up, getting steeper and steeper. I steeled myself for that, in fact, I had descended this road last September so I knew it was very, very steep. I kept going, with a couple of stops to cool off – if you stop just inside a tunnel, it’s shady and there was a slight tail wind of cool air that was magical.

Finally I got to the tunnel bypass about five km from the end. I was SO glad to not have to ride that tunnel in the uphill direction. It’s 3.5 km long and we cruised down it at over 70 kph last time. The bypass had to climb a LOT of meters which it did via 15% switchbacks, kind of brutal in the sun. Someone said it was 35° – well it felt hotter. But everything ends eventually and from the top it was under a km of nearly flat riding to the hotel. I arrived to cheers and immediately had soup and juice. I was quite hot but cooled off pretty quickly – we’re up over 1,500m now so the air is better, cooler and drier.

A few of us were staying in a hotel up the road so after we stashed our bikes and picked up our luggage, the hotel lady gave us a ride up there. The shower felt awesome and the sun was blasting our balcony for excellent laundry drying.

I rested a bit but didn’t sleep. Dinner was at another hotel, just below our main one. It was a much more appropriate sized dinner for cyclists than last night. I had spaghetti with tuna, then caprese and roasted potatoes. And a large number of glasses of water. Wilbert gave us the Colle de Nivolet briefing for tomorrow and I headed up to the hotel for a long deep sleep, I hope.

PS Two riders went above and beyond the call of duty today. When Jesper arrived at the hotel, he continued up, all the way to Colle del Nivolet, our ride for tomorrow. What’s an extra 1,200m climb? When Eddy was riding up the steep, hot valley, he spied a road switch backing up to the side. He took it, “10km but not even 1,000m extra.” Amazing efforts!