Photo: What else would one eat in Italy to recover from a 300km ride?

This week was all about recovery after completing the Randonnée della Fortuna on Saturday/Sunday. It started well, but didn’t finish as planned due to someone else’s recovering.

Having climbed over five thousand metres on the Randonée I chose the flattest place I could find for my first recovery ride. 32km, 52m of rising, average speed 25km/h. No dramas.

My second recovery ride at 103km and 641km of climbing was designed to get some gentle climbing into the legs before the weekend club rides. What I didn’t account for was the amount of resurfacing, or recovering, of the roads in several places. This meant narrow lanes with brand new perfect asphalt. It was just too good not to waste and pick up some speed. That and the combination of the traffic building up behind me meant a few sprints rather than zone 1 recovery.

The whole point of an audax is to ride at an average of no slower than 15km/h and no faster than 30km/h. If this had been an audax and there had been a control point at 29km I would have been disqualified.

That’s the joy of cycling. One never knows what’s around the next corner, or indeed how long a perfectly flat and smooth piece of road one can have a blast on.

Year to date

4,726km / 45 rides / 105km average per ride

43,958m elevation gain (4.9 Everests)