Pike Talbert is a man that LOVES the Giro d’Italia, so you can imagine his dismay when the 2020 edition was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Rather than sitting around complaining, he decided to host his very own Giro d’Italia Virtuale on FulGaz. The following words, graphs, charts, and maps are all courtesy of Pike, it’s quite a read but an absolutely remarkable ride.
You can view the rides mentioned by clicking on the header of each stage.
Thanks PIke!
Preface
On Saturday 9 May, the day that the real 2020 Giro d’Italia was supposed to start, I began riding a Giro Virtuale. The real Giro was of course postponed due to Covid-19. In order to honour it, as well as to remain personally healthy—physically and mentally— while sheltering at home in lockdown, I decided to create my own virtual Giro to have something to look forward to each day while in isolation.
Only a few friends and family were aware of this adventure, which was just that: an adventure into Smart Indoor Cycling Training via a virtual tour of Italy. Quite surprisingly (to me at least) several people asked how I was going. Was I preparing a daily Ride Report? A What I Did During My Pandemic Isolation Report.
Background
Some six weeks ago, Sydney, NSW, Australia went into lockdown. In order to get some daily exercise (in addition to the lovely walks I was taking along Rose Bay’s Promenade) I assembled my Smart Trainer in my garage. In so doing I discovered the benefits of workouts with Zwift.
Two weeks ago, I received a notification from Cycling Australia that they had partnered with FulGaz to bring real rides (Zwift is animated) to Smart Trainers. FulGaz is an App, which when combined with a Smart Trainer provides a relatively life-like ride usually up some Pass or Col or Mountain somewhere in Europe. Interestingly, there are 28 rides in Australia. Each ride is between 60 and 90 minutes long, which is about the length of time one can comfortably sit on a bike that is stationary.
The seeds of my Giro Virtuale were sown.
The design rules for the itinerary were simple and limited by the rides available on FulGaz. Luckily, there are a large number of said rides in Italy (52 by my count). And because the vast majority of these rides ascend something, Northern Italy is geographically where they are concentrated. Thus, I am not actually “touring” (or Giro-ing”) Italy so much as I am climbing parts of northern Italy: the Alps shared with France and Switzerland in the West, the Dolomites in the East and the SudTyrol in the Central North bordering Austria and Switzerland.
Naturally, I wanted to experience as many iconic climbs as possible. This of course, almost by definition, caused the focus of my Giro Virtuale to centre in the northern parts of the country.
An added dimension of the itinerary and the route’s design was, like a good Italian Opera, building to a crescendo in the third and final week. Week 1 would warm up the legs; week 2 would build on warmth; and Week 3 would be the denouement! (And hopefully not a death scene!)
With these general guidelines in place, I sourced 20 separate rides on FulGaz that became my stages, and by splicing (figuratively) the end of one long ride with the beginning of another, I added a 21st stage. I started on the northwestern part of the country with two rides that finished at or crossed the border into France.
There is a great deal of recent precedent for starting a Grand Tour in another country; France is a logical neighbor.
A brief word about the parcours generally. Each ride (or in my case stage) is classified by FulGaz as being Mountains (where the route is straight up with very little if any descending—there are 15 of these), Hilly (an ascent or two with an intermediate descent—4 of these) or Flat (no significant ups or downs—only 2). I have tried to put more mountains into the second and third weeks in order to increase the level of relative difficulty.
Additionally, I tried to concentrate rides into general areas in order to minimize virtual travel—one of the great advantages of the Tour Down Under being located in one city, Adelaide. Thus, the first week started in or near the Alps bordering on France, while the second week’s main focus was on the Dolomites. This week is in the Southern Tyrol region of the Alps. It has a particular focus on the Passo Stelvio, which I will climb three different days over three different routes: the first from Switzerland, the second from Bormio (Piedmont) and the final from Prato in the East, the most iconic of all Passo Stelvio’s ascents.
My Giro d’Italia Virtuale!
Stage 1: Col du Mont Cenis (13.2ks with an elevation gain of 490m)
My first stage on Saturday started in Italy and crossed into Rhone-Alps of France. There is a great deal of precedent for starting a Grand Tour, of which the Giro is one of three (France and Spain are the others) in another country. In fact, this year’s Giro was to have done so in Hungary.
This stage was not a particularly long or hard ride. The first stage of any Grand Tour is usually termed a Prologue—a cycling hors d’oeuvre—to sort out legs, nerves and equipment. Similarly, it was an opportunity to test a number of elements of my Giro Virtuale: the FulGaz protocols; my timing versus that of the cycling cinematographer who shot the video in real time; as well as other bells and whistles with respect to operating the Smart Trainer and synching it with FulGaz.
Everything worked a treat! The day was beautiful and sunny (both on the video and outside my garage) and the climb of the Col du Mont Cenis was 7.8ks at a gentle 5.5% gradient. There was a dam at the top along which I rode for the last 6ks. Historical Fact: many historians believe this is the pass that Hannibal used when he made the famous elephant crossing of the Alps.
Stage 2: Col dell’Agnello (20.3ks with an elevation gain of 1450m)
This parcours was more epic: both in terms of length (distance and time) as well as vertical elevation gain. The route had an average gradient of 7.1% and summited at the third-highest paved crossing of the Alps (el. 2744m). While the distance wasn’t overpowering, the gradient made for a long slog, which in real-time took the cycling cinematographer 1:45 hours to film (an average speed of 11.2kph).
From actual experience in the French Alps, my average moving speed ascending similar climbs was closer to 8kph and, due to the thinner air, I had to stop every 15 minutes to catch my breath. This implied that my “ride time” would be 2:30 plus stoppage (if any).
As an aside, you may be wondering what on earth one does for two and a half hours on a stationary bike. Good question! First of all, the scenery is quite spectacular. But there is only so much one can take in from a GoPro camera fixed securely to handlebars. The answer that I came up with was the Cycling Podcast. Music would have also been good but there was something comforting about three journalists talking about Giro’s past. In actual fact, it reminded me of listening to baseball games on the radio in my youth. Transcending!
Fortunately, as it was Mother’s Day, I chose to break up the ride with tea. Gluten homemade cakes hit the spot and provided the required refueling to see me through the second half.
Surprisingly, the ride took a little over two hours, in roughly equal, manageable parts, and very enjoyable. Oh, and the air density at sea level (as well as my current fitness) meant that, aside from tea, I didn’t have to stop to rest during the climb.
Stage 3: Passo Campolongo from Arabba (8.9ks with an elevation gain of 282m)
Overnight, I figuratively travelled across the northern part of the country from west to east to the Dolomites where the next seven stages will be clustered. Stage 3’s ride was from Arabba over the Passo Campolongo with a descent into the heart of the Sellaronda. At only 8.9ks and 266m of climbing, it is the second shortest ride in my Giro Virtuale and offered a welcome counterpoint to Sunday’s effort. I completed it in 32 minutes, 4 minutes slower than the video’s running time.
The next three rides will encompass a large portion of the Sellaronda: a circular ski route around the Sella massif—offering 26 km of downhill trails interconnected by lifts all of which can be skied in a single day.
A note about Stages 4 – 6
Before getting into the individual stages, I wanted to provide some background on the rides in the Dolomites and why I selected them. All of the days in the Dolomites, including yesterday’s Stage 3, form a part of the Maratona dles Dolomites, a cycling race about which I had heard a great deal. And four of the stages come together in the annual Sellaronda Bike Day held in June.
The Maratona is an annual, single-day bike road race—Gran fondo—that crests eight spectacularly beautiful mountain passes in the Dolomites, not far from Bolzano in Italy’s northeast. Thanks to the participation of 9.000 cyclists, the Maratona is one of the most important amateur cycling events in Europe. The Sellaronda attracts even more cyclists—24,000—a month earlier.
The inaugural edition of the Maratona was held in July 1987. Today, the race has three versions: a short course, the course of the Sellaronda (@55ks and 1780 vertical metres of climbing over 4 passes); a middle-distance course (@106ks with 3130 vertical metres over 6 passes) and the original Maratona (@138ks and 4230 vertical metres over 8 passes).
The Maratona’s route is shown below. The sections circled are the portions I will ride. The names in red that identify the sections are the titles of each of the FulGaz videos, which can be found here.
Maratona Course & Elevation