THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING »

Get the VeloNews Email Newsletter FREE

  Learn More | Archive
Home » Top Stories » Tech »

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn - Sage advice for taking on a Gran Fondo

Published: Nov. 15, 2005
See anyone you know?
See anyone you know?

With a host of common – and not-so-common – questions already answered in earlier Technical Q&A columns, I've been asked to touch on a few other topics now and then. In that vein, I will take this opportunity to tell you about the Gran Fondo Campagnolo, a very difficult mass-participation race I did for the third time this past June.

The Italian Gran Fondo is a mass-participation event, but it is distinct from mass-participation rides here in the U.S. in that it is a race, and everyone wears a timing chip on his or her leg. The Triple Bypass in Colorado, for example (which I also did this summer), is the same length and offers up three big mountain passes, too. In that event, though, participants are not given times. It is in this way that a Gran Fondo more resembles a giant running race or, perhaps, a cross-country ski race like the American Birkebeiner. Another thing that distinguishes Gran Fondos from big charity rides in the U.S. is that the entire route is generally closed to cars. There are Gran Fondos somewhere in Italy every weekend through the spring, summer and fall.

The Gran Fondo Campagnolo is held on a loop course, starting and ending along the ancient city wall in Feltre, taking riders over four big passes in the Dolomites of northeastern Italy. It is 214 kilometers (133 miles long), with a huge amount of elevation gain. Something on the order of 4000 riders enter the race, although they have the choice of three courses, short, medium and long, and a number of riders poop out along the way, resulting in just over 1500 finishers for the full-length race.

Not your typical Sunday ride, eh?
Not your typical Sunday ride, eh?

As you can see from the course profile, the massive climb is the Passo Manghen. This is a first-category climb when it has been included in the Giro d’Italia, although keep in mind that the Giro does not use the “HC” (hors categorie – beyond category) designation of the Tour, or the Manghen would certainly be in that class. My friend Steve Smith, who works in Feltre for Sportful and Castelli, said that the first year he was there, he thought the real name of the pass was the “Terrible Manghen,” because everyone referred to it that way: ”il terribile Manghen.”

Also memorable are the long, more gradual ascents of the Passo Cima Campo and the Passo Rolle (the later is a frequent staple of the Giro). As steep as the Manghen, but shorter, is the Passo Croce d’Aune, which falls at the end when your legs are fried. You may recognize this as the name of a Campagnolo component group in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is due to the fact that it was at the top of this very pass that Tullio Campagnolo had his legendary epiphany. He was competing in a springtime race in the 1930s that included the Passo Croce d’Aune, then dirt. At the time, riders had single-speed bikes with a cog on either side of the rear wheel of different sizes. They rode up the passes with the larger cog and flipped the wheel around at the top to take advantage of the smaller cog for the descent. On this fateful day, it was snowing and cold. Campagnolo’s hands were too frozen to unscrew his wing nuts holding his rear hub into his frame. As a solution to this problem, he invented the quick-release skewer. The Campagnolo rear derailleur and many more component innovations were to follow from his fertile mind. All of this is memorialized at the summit of the pass in a beautiful marble sculpture with bronze castings mounting on it showing Campagnolo in his time of need, him deep in thought, followed by the fruits of his labors. (To us bike geeks, this is something akin to visiting the apple tree under which Sir Isaac Newton realized that gravity was a force to be reckoned with.)

The first time I did the Gran Fondo Campagnolo was on my 38th birthday, in 1996. Seemed like a good idea until we woke up to pouring rain (that lasted all day) and overnight snow on the Manghen; the course was shortened to end atop the Croce d’Aune rather than run the risk of people racing down the tortuous descent into Feltre. That was a good idea given the number of sharp turns on slick cobblestones. In 2001, I once again did the Gran Fondo Campagnolo, this time with my wife, as we had been living with our daughters for the previous nine months just down the valley from Feltre, in Asolo. That day had been beautiful and sunny, and this day in 2005 was equally cloudless and gorgeous.

With three of these monsters under my belt, I feel ready to offer sage bits of advice, which for purposes of this column, I will call “Tech Tips:”

Tech Tip #1a: Do events like this on a nice day. It’s a lot more fun than doing them in the rain.

Tech Tip #1b: Even when it is sunny and warm, when you are riding high into the mountains, bring gear in your pockets like arm warmers, knee warmers, shell vest, cap, Buff or headband, and maybe even thin full-length gloves and Lycra shoe covers. You will generally want them for the descents, even if the weather does not turn sour, and if bad weather does come in, they can save your life.

We came streaming out of Feltre at high speed on narrow cobblestone roads, eventually onto a closed superhighway running lengthwise through the valley, which we negotiated en masse at more that 60kph. Unfortunately, the small pack of women had not been given its promised 30-minute head start. Seems that the police had not been alerted of this earlier group and did not have the roads shut down in time, so the women got a six-minute head start instead. Their small numbers meant that they were doing the valley at 40kph and got swallowed up, rather than making it to the base of the Cima Campo before being run down, as had been the plan. I started with a friend from Portland, Chris Hamilton, but immediately lost him in the mass of riders. I did come by another friend halfway up the Cima Campo, Steve Smith’s wife, Krista, my cross-country skiing buddy of the winter of 2000-2001 when we had both lived in quaint Italian towns 20km apart.

The often-serpentine drop down this pass is great fun, even if, after one hairpin, I heard the noise a little ways back of riders coming down hard onto the pavement. I was going too fast to take more than a glance back, but it looked like a number of them were going to be hurting badly. As we started up the flanks of the Manghen, the group was now smaller and more spread out, as half of the riders had turned off for one of the two shorter loops, either 118km with three passes, or 98km, with only the Cima Campo and Croce d’Aune. It was here that the part of the race begins to develop you definitely will not see in American charity rides. Many huge local teams do these Gran Fondo events, and often, huge groups of male riders from a team work together to pace and protect a female teammate and hopefully bask in her reflected glory after she attains a high finish. A group dressed in orange and white kits, with a woman with an elegant and fluid pedaling style at their center, filled the narrow road ahead of me. Their chosen one did not carry water bottles or pump or spare tire bag on her bike or clothing and food in her jersey pockets; her minions handled all of that. I ended up yo-yoing with this group up the climb, dropping the group when the grade dropped, and being dropped by the group on the steep sections.

Tech Tip #2: If you are a big rider, you do not have the advantage of feather weight for the steep sections. Use your size and power where you can, when the grade decreases, to get back in contact. Better yet, ride away from the others on these sections, giving you a morale boost and perhaps the opposite for your competitors. If you cannot keep the pace of the others, it is always better to set the pace.

Finally dropping that group for good on the last few kilometers of the climb, even after stopping to pump the tire of a pumpless puncture victim (hey, you get to take a break and get to feel noble at the same time.), I was feeling good. However, I was indeed impressed by the size of this climb. Turns out, the Manghen climbs 1600 meters (one mile) in elevation, and it does so over the course of just 20 kilometers. That’s an average grade of 8.3 percent. Mmmmmm… No wonder it’s so hard.

However, the payoff after a tough climb in a Gran Fondo is a great feed zone. The panini are awesome, and there is a vast selection of appetizing delights. Furthermore, there are great roadside restaurants seemingly everywhere.

Tech Tip #3: If you want to get a fast time in a Gran Fondo, do not spend a full hour of the race chowing down in feed zones as I did.

While I was reveling in the snacks atop the Manghen, along came the orange-and-white group, except things were no longer rosy. That female team leader came in wobbling and pale and promptly passed out. Medics put her on a stretcher and hooked her up to oxygen. Her Gran Fondo was over.

Tech Tip #4: If somebody else is carrying your water and food, especially on a long, hard climb on a hot day, get them to give you some frequently. And if you are a teammate hoping to bask in the reflected glory of your team leader, do not let her get dehydrated and bonk. Even if she looks great pedaling and is riding fast, trouble can be lurking.

Warmly dressed at the high chilly summit in my arm warmers, knee warmers, shell vest, and Buff, I headed down the snaking descent of the Manghen. Now something I always find amazing in Italy is that many riders, seemingly the majority of the riders, go downhill very slowly. Obviously, Paolo Savoldelli is a glaring exception to this. I tend to be a fast descender, having grown up as a downhill ski racer. But generally, in Colorado at least, riders who can climb with me can stay fairly close on the descents; I at least don’t pass them like they are standing still. But in Italy, here are lots of fast climbers just poking along going down.

After living through a winter in northern Italy, I have a theory why this is (and I hope that Italians who read this can do so with a sense of humor.). In Italy, style and dress are extremely important. The woman of the house has traditionally been given little power in Italian society, but in the home, she reigns supreme. And two things that she particularly controls are what goes into her family members’ stomachs and what clothes go on their backs. Hard and fast rules for both have been passed on from generation to generation, and these are hard to break. You eat certain things at certain times during a meal, and you do not mix, for instance, bread with pasta, much less have different courses all on your plate at the same time. Similarly, you do not decide in Italy what to wear based on the temperature; you decide based on the calendar.

For instance, women wear furs from December through February, and, as if everyone were reading off of the same script, you won’t see another fur after March 1, except on a foreigner. On the beach, mothers whip the wet swimming suits off of their kids the instant they come out of the water, since everyone knows that you will get sick sitting around on the sand in a wet suit. Temperature is irrelevant. When all of the dry suits are wet, the kids can’t go in the water anymore. Same thing goes for air conditioning – stay away from it. Everybody knows you’ll catch cold from it. Just look what happened to Alessandro Petacchi at the world championships if you need proof.

During the winter, northern Italians know that it is dangerous to be outside without a scarf covering your mouth. This goes tenfold on the bike. I used to pass riders going up Monte Grappa or the Altopiano di Asiago on nice days in October or November dressed from head to toe in thick jackets, tights, gloves and shoe covers and of course with the required scarf over the mouth, yet it was so warm that I would have peeled all of my layers. Climbing in shorts and fully unzipped short sleeves, I could see the all-knowing he’ll-pay-dearly-for-dressing-like-that look in their eyes as I passed the bundled riders. Their mothers had taught them well. For the descent, my base layer would be pretty dry, and if not, I usually had an extra thin one in a plastic bag. I’d don all of my extra layers (arm warmers, knee warmers, shell vest, cap, Buff, Lycra shoe covers) from my pockets. Dressed in warm, dry layers, I still go fast downhill, even in winter. The bundled ones, however, had no more layers, and went down dressed the same as they came up, and very slowly. Now, I cannot imagine but that they were really wet under all of that, and it would be really cold to pick up any speed. They could catch a cold all right.

Anyway, to come to the point of this diatribe, I think that the average Italian rider does not get enough practice going downhill fast for fear of catching cold. So on a warm day in the Dolomites, I could make up for many of the places I had lost munching panini at the feed zone.

Tech Tip #5: If you want to go fast downhill in a race, practice it in training. After catching a fast group for the gradual ascent up the Val di Fiemme from the base of the Manghen to the base of the Rolle, I was thinking that I might really come in with a fast overall time; we were flying. However, when we hit the Rolle, my legs told me otherwise.

Tech Tip #6: Don’t stuff yourself on panini before a big climb, no matter how tasty they are. Seemingly barely crawling, I came upon my friend Chris, completely asleep near a little water fountain along the road. He had been way up the road with really fast guys, but a monkey had just jumped on his back, and now he was nauseated and unable to get any nourishment in. I managed to get some food and water into him, and we made our wobbly way up to an inn, into which he disappeared in search of a bathroom.

Tech Tip #7: Even if you are with really fast guys and want to stay up with them, make sure you don’t forget to eat and drink in your haste. You will pay for it later.

After the great feed zone atop the Passo Rolle, I had a sweet descent and began the solitary grind up the Croce d’Aune. The payoff for this was another great descent, and the finish on a cobblestone climb. Unbelievably, there were Chris and Krista waiting for me. Seems they did not spend as much time at the Rolle summit feed zone and had slipped past me.

Tech Tip #8: (see Tech Tip #3.)

You remember this guy, don't you?
You remember this guy, don't you?

Now, it took me 9.5 hours to do the race, although less than 8.5 of it was actually riding. But guess who won, in a bit over six hours? Raimondas Rumsas. Remember him? Third place in the 2002 Tour? Maybe you recall that his wife was thrown in jail without charges for 73 days in France after trying to cross into Italy with a trunk loaded with EPO and other doping products on the final day of the Tour. Oh, but those were just for her mother… Unfortunately, her husband still tested positive during the Giro in May 2003 and was fired from the Lampre team.

Anyway, Raimondas had been whupping up on Gran Fondo fields all spring throughout Italy in 2005, getting in shape for a comeback. But his good fortune was not to hold, for only nine days after winning the Gran Fondo Campagnolo and getting second in the Lithuanian nationals the following weekend, he was arrested at his home near Lucca and held in a Florence jail on an extradition warrant from France to face charges on the events of July 2002. This, of course, brings us to:

Tech Tip #9: Don’t get caught doping, and, perhaps more importantly, don’t let your wife get caught in France carrying your dope. The authorities tend to frown at that (and, besides, my wife would kill me).

Back to the 10th and final tech tip. I had been in agony from halfway up the Rolle to the finish due to a chafing of a very sensitive body part. I was wearing some shorts that I had selected carefully to be the most comfortable. They have a gel chamois, and they were always great in the past. But the stitching around the gel pad was definitely not soft and had rubbed said sensitive part raw.

Tech Tip #10: Before embarking on a ride this long, make sure that you wear shorts that will be comfortable for the duration.

All in all, the Gran Fondo Campagnolo is a tremendous challenge that is very rewarding to be done with. The views of incredible jagged peaks, verdant alpine cow pastures and picturesque multi-story wooden mountain homes with window boxes brimming with flowers are exquisite, as is the cuisine. And that timing chip is cool. You not only get a finish time, but you get a time for the Manghen and Croce d’Aune climbs. Your certificate shows these times and your placing, as well as the course profile. And then you can compare yourself on the Web site to Raimondas Rumsas overall and on the climbs. But actually, the guy whom I had wanted to stay with was Fausto Pinarello, proprietor of the bicycle company bearing his family’s name and leader of the huge blue-clad Pinarello Gran Fondo team. No wonder I never saw him. Turns out he was an hour and a half ahead.

Maybe next time.

Then again, maybe not.

Photo Gallery