Day Nine

Velo Veneto Racing Camp – Italy - Day Nine: Well it took me six races but today I finally made it into the winning break and finished in the top ten! To make it even sweeter, two of my team mates were in the break with me and that resulted in our team winning the overall team competition as well. This is the first time Velo Veneto has won a team trophy for nearly 10 years. Here is our proud team with our trophy.

Today’s race was in Carbonera which is an hour southeast of our hotel. It was another mostly flat circuit race but it did have two significant motorway overpasses to “climb”. One of them came immediately after a hard left turn which made it even more significant. Here’s a shot of the race registration area.

The race was about 40 miles and consisted of eight laps. The start was the fastest I had seen all week and by the beginning of the second lap there was a six man break established with out any of our team represented. The field caught the break halfway though the second lap but immediately three riders from the same break attacked again. A few riders chased and then we hit the sharp left turn at the base of the overpass climb. The race then exploded as riders tried to bridge to the break over the climb. I was the last to try. I totally buried myself and it must have taken me 30 seconds to get across. I almost didn’t make it across the last 15 meters. Finally I did make contact and we had a 13 man break established with six laps to go. Here’s a shot of me leading the break with Mateo sitting fourth.

The break worked well together. I suffered for the first couple of laps but then settled in. We eventually opened a gap of over 90 seconds on the field. The sprint was won by a fellow who used to be a track sprinter on the Italian Olympic squad. I finished ninth and was very pleased with that result. Here’s a photo of me receiving my bag of groceries from the podium girl.

It was a great way to end our week of racing. Tomorrow we are going to take it “easy” and do a 50 mile training ride in the Dolomites hopefully going over four mountain passes, all of which have been used in the Giro. I should have some good photos of the Dolomites for tomorrow’s final edition of this blog.

Thanks for reading. Dave Linden