Jun 25-30 - 999 Miglia

Some years ago Audax Italia put on a 1600 km ride called the 1001 Miglia out of Milan.  I did the 2nd edition of that ride in 2010 and then again in 2016.  There had been some route changes in between but it covered much the same territory; hit the same Control locations.

Audax Italia then conceived of a grand series -- the existing 1600km ride out of Milan, another 1600 out of Rome and south, a 1400 km ride in the Italian Alps and lastly, a ride that hits some major islands, like Sicily.

The Rome ride was offered this year, the Alps will be offered in 2018 and the Islands in 2019 ... at least that's the plan.  I talked myself into doing the Rome ride -- named 999 Miglia; time will tell whether I sign up for the other rides.

Here's the route -- https://ridewithgps.com/routes/22781110

Initial advertising for the 999 counted around 10,000 meters of climbing.  The final route included 20,000+ according to OpenRunner.  Go figure.  It was a climb-fest.  Ridewithgps puts it at 20,883 meters and it tends to understate !  It was also hot as, well, I suppose that hell is actually hotter.

How hot ?  The weather services showed temps in the 90's Fahrenheit / 32+ Celsius.  It was actually a lot hotter than that on the roads with the cars, at times the air felt like a blast furnace out on the open road.  Think of being on the business end of a hair dryer for six days ...

Although there was a lot of climbing, the grades were mostly moderate, 6% or lower by my estimation.  However, to accumulate 20,000 meters that means that you were always either climbing or descending.  The route goes through many, many small towns and once you're away from the Mediterranean, there are springs -- water that is a) cold and b) tastes better than bottled water.  I made ample use of that water supply.  Often we would find locals filling up their water bottles and jugs.  The springs have piping and, in many instances, faucets.  High volume springs would have small creeks running away from the constantly running water coming out of the pipes.

In the heat, access to water was obviously critical, however, I poured more on myself than I drank.  One of my water bottles was constantly being used to dribble water on my head; that was usually spring water.  The other usually contained naturally effervescent bottled water that I would buy, because I like the taste.  It also contains lots of magnesium, great for warding off cramps !

At most of these springs I would empty one bottle, refill and then dump cold water on my head to a sharp intake of breath !  After doing that a couple of times I would have a long cold drink, refill and hit the road again.  This is how I survived the heat.  It's critical that you keep your internal temperature down and difficult to do in the heat.  Evaporation helps immensely !

Anyone who rides with me knows that I don't drink a lot.  That helped as I could use that second bottle to dribble water on my head.  I don't draft much so riding on the flat isn't my forte.  The low grade hills, my method of coping with the heat and lack of flats for others to have a drafting advantage kind of leveled the playing field, pardon the pun !  There were a couple of times that I worried about my water supply; a couple of times that I was dragging, but mostly ok. 

Coping is the operative word, however, not flying through the ride.  Many many short stops, some longer restaurant and/or grocery store stops, some necessary sleep time all added up to a lot of stopped time.  The days were long and when they run into dawn or close to that, starting mid to late morning the next day puts you in a pattern of riding through most of the nights and you missed the cooler morning riding time and without sleep, you rode slowly at night.

Hamid Akbarian and I rode together.  He had developed a plan for the ride, booking hotels along the route.  The days were broken down as follows:  378k, 272k, 263k, 282k, 216k & 198k.  Although it seems like some days are short and that you should be able to get ahead of the game, in fact we didn't make a lot of progress between 11am and 5pm.  It was just too darn hot. 

At times, the scenery is glorious, such as the Amalfi Coast.  The roadway hangs over sheer cliffs down to secluded bays with tiny beaches, yachts big and small anchored in those bays.  Naturally those areas have heavy traffic, breath-taking in more ways than one !  The traffic in the towns such as Sorento can be daunting with cars, trucks, buses, scooters and motorcycles all dodging each other, crawling along.  Follow that scooter !  riding down the middle of the street between the cars was often the only way of getting through.

Away from the coast the traffic is light to non-existent.  The road surface was better than the Milan 1600 but still pretty rough at times.  That said, it was faster than the exit from Rome at the start which had us riding on several kms of cobblestones.  That gets old pretty quickly.

Organization / communications

I would rate this a B+, pretty good for a first edition.  There was some inconsistency at Controls but they generally all knew what they were doing.  One Control ran out of pasta - how do you run out of pasta in Italy, especially with all the DNF's ? - it appeared that the crowd of volunteers had polished it off, would be my guess.  Another Control closed at 2am, just before we got there.  As a result we couldn't find it; luckily we were staying in that town and came back the next day.  You were supposed to take a selfie at the location -- great if you found it and had a working camera !

Communication was good before the event, overwhelming in fact.  That said, it was hard to find information on the website and nothing was really finalized until just before; the cue sheet and the OpenRunner GPS files didn't completely agree.

We were supported by Shab, Hamid's wife.  She went from overnight to overnight and saw us one or twice at intermediate Controls.  Without her support, this would have been tough as they only offered one drop bag at 800km, not quite useless but close.

Route / roads

The Amalfi coast was overused; very pretty but you had to contend with the traffic.  In many cities, the gps route wandered you around for a "city tour" as Hamid and I called it.  The organizers didn't really care if you followed that path and happily directed you out of town to the outbound road. 

There were some odd shortcuts generated by the gps route, horrendous grades that most everyone walked that cut off a gentle circuitous climb.  Smart riders took the longer route around, which was probably the intended route anyway.

The open source map that I'd loaded onto my Garmin actually showed Water for the locations of the springs.  That was a help !

Riders

There were thee options for the ride -- 150 hour BRM (Brevet Randonneurs Mondiaux) limit (standard or slightly extended RM); 168 BRI time limit - "Brevet Randonneurs Italia ?" and Tourist -- an 8 day jaunt. 

I believe that there were something like 275 riders signed up for BRM and something like 250 starters.  The limit for BRM + BRI had been set at 333.  At one point I asked an organizer how many were still on the road, after two days of heat, and he said 150.  I haven't been able to see any confirmed results anywhere but if the Seattle group is any indication with 3 of 5 riders DNF'ing, it's not surprising. 

There are always many little sub-stories to tell, if you can remember them.  Stops at Controls or along the way, conversations with other participants and interested people, riders intercepted going the wrong way, one rider completely donning cold weather gear convinced that he's going to be very cold, just before a big climb ...

That said, I did have a "moment" when I was worried about not having enough clothing.  As hot as it was during the day, it can cool off at altitude.   There were warnings about wild dogs and wolves going through one national park; they were selling pepper spray; we carried whistles  There were long ascents and equally long descents.  At one point I needed a quick nap and found a bench ... Hamid ate his sandwich while I caught 15 minutes.  He pointed out all the ants on the wall of the shelter.  I didn't care.

It's a funny kind of companionship on these things.  You get very tired, very irritable.  I sat on a park bench once before going to the hotel simply to calm myself down.  Later I vented and moved on.  Hamid and I both took our turns.  Shab, on the other hand, was always smiling, always helping, one amazing lady. 

Randonesia has already set in.  What a great ride !