Challenge

Miles from Home - 5309.75
Firsts / Highlights - Rode Passo del Mortirolo from Mazzo (the difficult side)
Miles Ridden - 35.77 miles
Vertical Feet - 6,706 ft.
Route - View Today’s Route Here
People - Just me.



This post is from June 22, 2009.

Today was original scheduled to be my check-out day at Hotel Funivia in Bormio. Since I had not made adequate progress on planning my next steps, I decided to extend for a day.

With my extra day, I set out to ride the "easy" side of Mortirolo Pass. I had the route in my GPS, I was dressed and ready to go. I pulled my bike out of the deposit in the garage and walked outside and it started raining. It wasn't a warm rain. It was in the 50's, blowing and overcast. Not the best way to set out on what promised to be a challenging day.

I ran into Daniele and he assured me that the rain was moving north, and if I headed south toward Mortirolo that I would avoid it. He even offered to shuttle me down the valley to a lower starting point and I took him up on it. When we arrived 15 miles down the hill, it was just as promised. Warmer and no rain. Unfortunately, the wind continued. Daniele has been a fantastic host throughout my stay.

Since I had the jump-start from the van ride, I decided I should take advantage of the opportunity to ride the even more evil side of Mortirolo. My new plan was to ride up the Mazzo approach and down to Grosetto rather than up and down Grosetto. The Mazzo approach has more elevation (it starts lower) and climbs to the summit in 12 km rather than 18. That makes for a significant difference in grade. If I'm going to do the climb of a lifetime, I may as well do it right.



The pictures I selected for today's post are not for scenery. They are an attempt to give a sense of how steep the pass is. Pictures have a way of flattening out terrain, so these only give a little bit of the flavor.

The question of, "what is the steepest climb you have ever done?" has now been answered and will probably stand for the rest of my life. It wasn't the longest or the most vertical gain, but it was certainly the steepest. If Lance Armstrong can call this the most difficult climb he has done, I don't feel too conflicted saying that it is probably the steepest I will ever do.



The average grade is over 10%. That is deceptive because it honestly seemed as if it almost never dropped below 10%. It was mostly 12-15% with frequent blips above 20%. It's amazing how 10% can begin to feel like a recovery zone after pulling 15% for a while. Only the somewhat flatter section near the top caused the average to drop near 10%.

Key Stats for climb:
Distance: 7.18 miles
Time: 1:28:28
Avg Speed: 4.9 mph
Vertical Feet: 4,184 ft.



On both the climb and descent, I had a couple of mountain bike sensations that you usually don’t get on a road bike. Climbing some of the steeper pitches, I could actually feel my front wheel lifting up from the pavement. Not so much that I was going to flip over backwards, but enough to know that the grade was affecting my weight distribution. On the way down, I had the sensation of diving over the edge. I extended my butt off the back of the saddle like you do on a mountain bike to assure that my rear brake could be effective. Neither was scary or dangerous, but not sensations you usually attribute to a road bike.

Mortirolo is a challenge that has been in my mind since starting to think about visiting Italy. It wasn't a challenge I was committed to achieve, but I knew it was there. Riding it today, I thought about challenges in general. Anyone who has ridden a bike uphill at 12% knows that it isn't easy or comfortable. When you hear that there is a pass in Italy that sustains that for nearly 7 miles, most people's response is that they couldn't do it. They can go 100 feet at that grade if they need to, but 7 miles? No way.

I have observed during previous big challenges, and confirmed today, that everyone is capable of so much more than they know. Do I think I can sustain 12% for 7 miles each time I encounter a 12% hill? No. Like everyone else, I think it is ridiculously steep. If that 7 miles happens to be the 7 miles in front of your wheel, however, you find a way. Not only do you survive the challenge, you realize that it isn't the limit of your capacity. I'm not saying I want to get any closer to discovering my climbing capacity any time soon, but it is useful to know that self-imposed limits are not necessarily real.



The climb back up to Bormio was made substantially more difficult by a head wind. Between the pass and a headwind climb back to the hotel, today was my slowest day of riding (maybe ever). All things considered, I’ll take it.

Daniele will be driving me down to Tirano tomorrow to catch a train to Fianle on the Riviera. It will be Bike Hotel #4, so I will continue to build some miles. From there, I want to do a fast pass through Switzerland without the bike and do some hiking and sightseeing. If I can find a place to stay, the next stop will be Monaco to see to first stage of Le Tour de France. Beyond that, my itinerary is again blank.

My original plane ticket was scheduled to return to the U.S. on July 7. Given how much I have left to see and do, I am going to extend that return date and cancel my plans to ride the Pacific Coast. I will need to leave that for a future adventure. I have managed to keep the budget in line so far, so I think I should keep my run of good experiences going in Europe for a while longer.