PJA Sabatical: Thursday 8th of September 2011

I don't really have a lot of notes for this day as it wasn't billed as anything significant and an early night before attacking the big climb didn't leave much time to write the text.

Anyway I had signed up to do a group ride and it was a relatively short one but I wasn't quite sure how steep it would be. It didn't look too bad. The dutch riders were all out in their group kit. I think they were there as a charity raising event as there was a cycling shirt all signed and a copy of a cheque and a picture of a young kid on there.

We set off west towards Foscagno pass that I'd done before but soon hit a right and the climbing commenced immediately. It hadn't been much of a warm up but I don't usually need one like some people do so I just took it a little easy to start with and tried to find my rhythm. The coach and a couple of the guys dressed up in hotel liveried gear disappeared off up the hill (hotel owner and brother?) and one of the dutch guys was trying to keep up with them. I was a little behind the female dutch rider and one other I had in sight. I managed to get past her but she held on fairly well. I'd say the rest of the climb, probably 700m elevation gain, I managed to claw a little back on the guy infront but it was marginal. I can usually claw some metres back in on the hairpins and on the ocasional shallower sections but this guy had the same plan as me. Eventually I made it to the top third (excluding the 'pros') out of about a dozen of us.