Festa di San Stefano Ride or You Can't Be Young Again

Or, another title might be, You Can't Be Stopping For Espresso.

Today, the day after Christmas, is another holiday here in Italy, La Festa di Santo Stefano. After stuffing myself royally yesterday I received an SMS : Ride tomorrow, 1000.

Only 10 people showed up. I guess I wasn't only the only one that stuffed himself. I noted that the average of the group was about 30 years younger than me. That didn't bode well. Eros cheerily announced, "No Bardolino today, we'll do the '3 Climbs' ride. It's a beautiful sunny day and the route will be in the sun." Ohh noooo, not climbing! My body has been accustomed over the last 2 months to the somewhat flatish ride to Bardolino and vicinity, lingering long over an espresso, and a leisurely pedal to lunch. I just knew we were not even going to be stopping for an espresso on this ride. I was right.

As we were never far from Verona the climbs are not like climbing in the Dolomites but they do feature switchbacks. The pace was high which meant no resting for me. We passed through Corrubbio, a short climb. The next climb was tougher, called the "Pendola". The last, and longest climb was the climb from Negrar to Montecchio. After that it was a very long descent to Verona.

I was glad I wore my HRM, something I'm going to try to do more often.

December 26

Total ride time: 2 hr 23 min

HR Avg 152

HR Max 186

Hope you had a nice ride where ever you are.

Photo: me and Eros (in Credite Agricole team kit) last month