Team MotionBased

Another day in the books and we're over halfway now so its all downhill right? Ahhh...wrong. We learned at the start line that the stage would be several klicks longer (as if 118 wasn’t enough). Another frenetic neutral start got us out of the ski town of Livigno, Italy and straight into the Tyrolian alps. The first climb was quite steep and loose in places allowing us to move up quickly. A quick descent on single track through open cow pastures was immediately followed by a longer, almost impossibly steep climb through like fields. There was some showers last night which softened the grass allowing ones tires to sink at least 1/2 inch to add insult to pain. Speaking of pain, the legs now have a dull, lingering ache which seems to be present most all of the time. A nice descent was followed by some flat riding along some high mountain lakes. The water was the “seafoam” green made famous by crayons. At this point, the real climbing began with the trip up the Bochetta di Forcola. We are not sure of the exact meaning by long and hard would be an understatement! First we climbed on gravel, then single track which was interrupted by short hiking sections. We reached a “false” summit near 2700m before a short descent and more climbing to the highest point in the 2006 TransAlp--2769m! A long paved, gravel, paved descent of the pass was insanely fast and littered with traffic in both directions. With speeds approaching 80km/hour, passing mid-switchback was interesting to say the least. The next 65km were slightly downhill with slightly being the operative word. There were countless small climbs and undulations which continually punished our legs. The valley was significantly warmer as well, with temperatures between 90 and 100F. In the end we finished the 123km stage race best in 12th and have moved up to 13th in GC. Tomorrow’s stage promises even more of the same with over 80km and over 3400m of climbing. Until then, ciao from Italia! Check out the Garmin / MotionBased file: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.mb?episodePk.pkValue=1073445