2nd June 2007  

My first ever Grand Fondo!! (training..aparently...!) 

140k Citti D' Castello.  Italia

We have no races this weekend so Me and Miyoko decided to do a Grand Fondo for some quality training!   We looked at the course profile and started laughing as it looked flipping hard!! about 35k of climbing in total! Thankfully the sun came out for us so this made the torturing session a little easier to cope with! I could not believe how many men turned out for this grand occasion! about 800 in total.  I was told that this was an important event so a lot of top guys and girls would be here to win! So it was a race after all! The start was fast! at 20k we started climbing for about 8k then climbed some more and more.................... 

once things settled and the large group split things settled a little but still the pace was high!! My legs felt awful in the first hour but they just got stronger through out the ride which was good new as the route just got harder!!  Thankfully there was a lot of water stations on top of each long climb!!              

At around 90k we had a 13k climb to do so me and Miyoko tapped away and released we had a group of guys sitting comfortably behind us for about 7k!! So we let them do some work for us then and settled in behind them.  I felt very comfortable on the climb so stepped it up a gear for the final few kilometers.  We had a nice down hill section to follow leading us into the finish bust still the pace was high!!!   I was 2nd woman overall and Miyoko in 3rd I don't know the lady who came first but she is a professional Grand Fondo rider I am told.  It was great training for us today I really enjoyed the atmosphere it was fantastic!! After 4.27 hours in the saddle we where treated to some lovely Italian food and loads of it too!! then we collected our prizes!!

I was very surprised to be standing on the Podium and so was Miyoko we laughed a lot as we only wanted to do a good training ride not a race!  I got a big trophy and a bouquet of flowers which I later donation to my Team Managers wife Donatella as she is always giving us girls some naughty treats!!

A great day and good training  before we go to Spain in a few weeks time!!  Our next race is on Saturday in Italy close to Verona the GP Rancanova.  It is a new race so we don't know a lot about it so we will find out on Saturday.  Then we fly out to Spain for he Durango Durango and two days later we have a 4 day stage race in Spain................. 

Leda