raiding

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This seemed an appropriate bottle to bring home to mark my safe return from what has been, officially, a completely flat ride.

I weighed myself this morning for the first time in a fortnight. I have put on almost a kilogram. However:

I've lost 1.1 kg of body fat, which is equivalent to a calorific deficit of about 1,700 kcal/day over the 5 days on which I was riding. That accords reasonably well with what I saw on the days I tracked all my food (which I didn't do every day).

I'm better hydrated than I was, to the tune of an extra 1.5 kg of water.

I have slightly increased my skeletal muscle: by 0.2 kg, which may be close to the natural variation / margin of error of the scales.

similarly, my measured bone mass is up 0.2 kg, which is probably within the margin of error of the scales.

Garmin is very pleased with this. Before the trip, it assessed my fitness age as 55.5 years. It told me I should be aiming for 54, and that to get there I should reduce my body fat and increase the number of days on which I do intense exercise. It now thinks my fitness age is 53.5 years: so, far from putting years on me, Slovenia and Monte Zoncolan gave me two years back.

Looking back to the last time I had a DEXA scan (November 2023), and if I believe my scales, then I've lost about 5 kg of body fat. I'm currently about the same weight I was in 2018 when I rode all three ascents of Mont Ventoux in a day. I'm doing that again in 10 weeks' time. I won't be able to resist trying to match my 2018 time. In 10 weeks' time, I could be back to my recent lower weight, and 5 kg lighter: which would help!

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Bonus picture 2: another of Scott’s candid shots. We are cyclists of a certain age.

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A bonus picture, taken by Scott, a really good photographer. He’s very good at getting into places where we can’t see him as we pass.

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The last serious climb of the Harder route, the day and the week was the Passo Pura. Like every climb since breakfast, it seemed easy compared to the Zoncolan. The descent was another beauty, with views down to Ampezzo in the valley. I was there a short time later, to start the hot 20 km drag back up the valley to the hotel. Levi took my hired bike from me, to get it ready for its next adventure, and I had the ice-cream I'd been promising myself for the past hour or so.

As I ate it, one of the Pinarelli came over. He had had, he said, "a lazy day," doing the Zoncolan in the morning and packing up his bike in the afternoon. I said that no day with the Zoncolan in it could be called lazy. He gave me a look. "But, Ken, you've ridden the highest climb and the longest, hardest route." I said I hadn't gone quite to the top of the Sella Ciampigotto. "That will stay between us," he said.

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I shared the little lay-by at the mouth of the tunnel with about £30,000-worth of BMW motorbikes: which is about 2.3 Pinarelli.

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The Harder route turned across the very tall dam (126 metres: the highest in Italy when it opened in 1948), at the end of which the road disappears into quite the most forbidding tunnel of the trip, surpassing even the three very narrow ones near the top of the Zoncolan.

The inscription is not a reference to the eponymous Marquis, but the acronym of the Società Adriatica di Elettricità, which built the dam and the tunnel.

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Part 2 of my plan for the day was to do the "Harder" loop with the riders who had opted out of the Zoncolan. I left about 10 minutes after them, and caught them on the long climb up the valley, through lovely villages, one of them with a leaning tower to rival Pisa's.

As the day turned out, the cafe at the top of the Sella Ciampgotto was closed, so I cut out the short out-and-back to the top of that col, and took the turn for the next, the Sella di Rioda. Here I offered to take a picture of a German touring cyclist with his bike, and he took mine.

From there, we had a long descent, untechnical for a change, through Sauris to the deep reservoir in the valley bottom. Later riders were tempted to linger in Suaris by the delights of the Festa del Prosciutto, but I pressed on.

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Leaving early meant the monster climb was at least cool. I was at the top before 8 am, to admire the views and appreciate the monument erected by the Giro d'Italia "al ciclista scalatore, symbol del sacrifice e dei migliori ideali sportivi."

That sounded better than Scott's version in last night's briefing. Having described the Zoncolan, he turned to the day's other options with the comment "... and for those of you who don't hate yourselves..."

Coming down, I passed Annibale and fellow-Scot John (who is a big lad, and was walking when I passed him, but he made it). I was back at the hotel by 8.30, and descended on the breakfast table with gusto.

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Monte Zoncolan: it's only 10 km long, how hard could that be? Well, the climb doesn't really get going until the road leaves Liariis with a mere 8 km to go; but the next 5 km are at an average gradient of 15.4%. That's twice as steep as anything the Tour de France rode today, on a stage crossing some of the biggest climbs in the Pyrenees. The Zoncolan is reckoned to be the hardest climb in Europe, along with the Alto di Angliru (been there, done that one too). It's featured in the Giro d'Italia seven times. There are photographs of illustrious riders on the bends. Where lesser climbs have distance markers every kilometre, stretches of the Zoncolan have them every 100 metres.

It is, in short, a monster climb, and a cyclist's challenge. For some of our group, those 10 km were enough cycling for the day; while others opted instead for the gentler gradients of the Sella Ciampigotto, even though it's three times the distance.

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The shape of today emerged yesterday evening. One or two riders began thinking about an early raid on Monte Zoncolan; and the guides explained that they would only be able to support the "Easy" option to follow the Zoncolan challenge for those who started at the usual 9 am time. I'd saved something in my legs for the whole of the last day's loop, so when they asked who was thinking of leaving earlier, I was among the two or three who put my hand up.

Sunrise was at 05:34 this morning, though of course it takes another hour or so for the sun to reach into the valleys. About that time, I set off for the Zoncolan.

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Descending past villages not noted for their mental acuity (haha) we entered the territory of Monte Zoncolan, of which much more tomorrow. The sign was for one of the cable cars to the summit. The rider in blue and yellow, an Italian veteran, was starting from his car, nearby. As he pulled level with me, he grinned and asked "Zoncolan?". "Domani," I replied.

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If you're going to be a tree surgeon, you'd definitely want to do it in German: it sounds so impressive. I have done some Obstbaumschnitt in the garden, but never any Baumstumpffräsen. The van was at the top of the Plöckenpass. The epic woodstack (each of those logs is a full-size tree-trunk) was further down the road on the Italian side. Note the clever angled perpendicular layering at each end to hold the stack together: there are no ropes, posts or cables.

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We passed through the deserted border post and returned to Italy. The promised "technical descent" featured many tornanti and all the other ingredients of examples earlier in the week, but this time with new compound variations. At one point, we had traffic lights at road-works on a hairpin bend, inside a tunnel.

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It had got hot (again) by the time we were on the Plöckenpass, climbing through the wooded lower slopes towards the rocky upper reaches, in which we spent a good deal of time in tunnels: cooler, but noisy. The vans kept us supplied with water. Margot the Marmot appeared to have been commissioned into the Carabineri to ensure good order.

Kim, like me, wanted a picture of the sign with a bear on it. I've now worked out what the sign is about. It says this is a restricted area, the Valentininam mating station, in which bee migrations are prohibited. The notice is from the Carinthia State Association for Beekeeping. It is not clear why they think bears make good bee-keepers.

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One we got onto the small access road instead of the main route through the valley, the morning's riding was quiet, meandering and picturesque, through villages not known for their ostentation (haha). One featured a sort of Leaning Shrine. I put my head into the (Catholic) Parish Church in Kötschach-Mauthen, which was considerably bigger (and later) than the village churches.

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I decided to be a Classic rider today, and save some legs for tomorrow's epic finale; so this was a shorter ride with less climbing; though all day 5 climbing feels serious, even if you didn't do any on day 3.

From Tröpolach we rode up the Gail Valley to Kötschach, where we turned to climb the Plöckenpass to the Italian border, then descend into Italy by the Passo di Monte Croce Cornice. Turning east again, a modest climb over the Sella Valcalda took us into the Monte Zoncolan ski area and down to our hotel for the next two nights, just outside Ovaro.

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Here is tomorrow's route. We go gently up the valley west from Tröpolach before climbing out of Austria by the Plöckenpass to Italy, where the road becomes the Passo di Monte Croce Carnico. There may be some history.

Following (it says in the notes) "a technical descent" – uh-oh – we climb over Sella Valcalda, no stranger to the Giro d'Italia, for lunch in Ravascletto. We will by then be in the Monte Zoncolan ski area. The mountain itself is marked on the map, just south of our route.

Tomorrow's Challenge option starts only about 5 km from the hotel, so we can make up our minds on it quite late in the day. Dauntingly, it is Monte Crostis: not very well known, but it has the largest gain in elevation of any single road in Italy: 1,420 m in 14 km, meaning the average gradient is over 10%.