it’s the Milano-San Remo weekend.
Ah yes, the race I almost always almost miss, because it is on a Saturday and not on a Sunday. 😃
leading into the Cipressa, your mouth will start to go dry as the peloton fights like madmen to get their hopefuls into position for the climb and then POW, it’s the finale and it lasts for the next ~25 kilometers and if you have a heart, I guarantee that you’ll hit pulse 200 somewhere along the way.
Actually, it is the descents which scare the shit out of me. I didn't breath once during Niccolo Bonifazio's descent of the Cipressa in 2019. And then you have those who go like braindead loonies in the descent of the Poggio, like Mohoric once.
The last mile before climbing the Cipressa (or Poggio) used to be quite scary too, because of the crazy speed of trains and riders trying to reach the front while there were several obstacles on the road, but the last few times didn't look so scary. I don't know if the road was somewhat improved, or if filming is different, or something else. They most likely don't go more slowly 😃
I """rode""" the final part on home-trainer once a few years ago. I hadn't checked the profile. Given the speed at which the riders go on TV, I thought the Cipressa was a short false flat. Yeah... So, on the flat before (our course started a couple of miles before the Cipressa), I was going almost as fast as I could, at the front of the bunch. The others aren't better than me, great, was I thinking! And then, well... hey, but that's a real climb, that's not like on TV, oh dear... and riders started to take me over, and again, and again, and the climb was never ending, and almost everyone went past me, and the first ones were quickly so far away from me that there was obviously no hope for me to join them again later. On the flat, I tried to ride with other riders, as the software simulates some drafting effect, but it is hard to 'lock' to others when there are only 2 or 3 people. Also, with my heavy heavy heavy weight (and I wasn't cheating about it), I was suffering a lot in climbs, but then I had ended up with weaker (less powerful) riders on the flat, whom I would catch and drop even if I didn't really want to drop them. So in fact I had to ride most of the rest of the race alone. There was a guest rider from an Italian Pro Team. When I was about to reach the start of the Poggio, he was already crossing the finish line in San Remo 🤣 The Poggio was easier but I was already long cooked. I had gone basically full gaz from the beginning to the end (and that lasted more than 1 hour...), I was dead on arrival 🤣