TourFollower

MARATONA DLES DOLOMITES

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:19:18 +0200

I took a little trip and rode my bicycle in the Maratona dles Dolomites on Sunday morning.

In a nutshell, this ride is well supported, well routed(on closed roads) through some of the most beautiful land in the world, and well attended. This year, the ride was limited to 8500 riders who can choose one of three routes to ride.

* The shortest route is 55km with 1780m climbing (34 miles / 5872 ft.)

* The middle route is 110km with 3090m climbing (66 miles / 10,137 ft. )

* The long route is 138km with 4190m climbing. (86 miles / 13,746 ft.)

In other words: Hard, harder, and freakin' greuling!!

The ride takes place in the heart of Dolomites in the area around Alta Badia and Corvara, Italy. This region of Italy, the SüdTirol, is in northern Italy about 1 hour drive south of Innsbruck. What is especially interesting to me about this area is the amount of German spoken instead of Italian. It feels much more like being in south Austria (SüdTirol means South Tirol. Tirol is a province of Austria that I rather enjoy visiting in winter!)

Originally, I had planned to sleep in the car where a colleague had suggested, but at the lat minute chickened out and got a hotel room. Since the ride takes place in "the mountains" and there are 8000+ people riding, plus support, pluslocals, plus the other unsuspecting toursts, plus the not-to-happy motorcyclists who came to ride, but found many of the roads closed.

I stayed at a nice little hotel, the Hotel Langgenhof in Bruneck (Brunico) about 30 minutes drive from the start. They advertise "Our house maintains the old traditions of Tyrolean hospitality: ….natural and casual or classical and elegant but always friendly"...I totally agree. My stay, although very short, was very pleasant. I had a nice walk around the town of Bruneck, followed by a dinner of wine and Gulash, a local tradition I was told. Not exactly the best pre-race meal, but it was tasty.

So, Sunday morning came early with the alarm set to 4:45. Get up, get dressed, drive a half-hour down to Pedraces, get the bike down, climb on, and ride the last two miles to the start area....Then Wait

I was seeded in the last group. My section was the last to start. So, I was about 8400th across the start line.

No problem, that just leaves me more people to pass! BIG problem later when I realize that my slow climbing and extra stops were going to make me miss the time cutoff for the middle distance. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Before I go on.....

I saw this car while driving around the area the night before the ride.

How do you say 'YEEE HAAAAA' in Italian??

(Forza Azzuri??)

In the end it was a fun ride. Not quite so fun during the long climbs, but the overall feeling of accomplishment was fantastic.

I received an email the next day with a link to the standings(all bikes had numbers with a transponder):

Name:        Robert Sayman
Startnummer: 9000
Land/Ort:    D-Meckenbeuren
Kategorie:   55km Uomini/Herren 37-42 anni

Startzeit: 6:50.34,9   Zielzeit: 10:54.08,3
Fahrzeit:       4:03.33,4
Durchschnitt:   13,549 km/h

Rang Gesamt:    847.
Rang Kategorie: 178.

Durchgangszeiten auf der Strecke
Stelle               Tageszeit      Fahrzeit     Rang   Gesamt
---------------------------------------------------------------
Gardena               10:37.34,0   3:46.59,1     183.     860.

What this says is that I averaged 13,549 km/h over 4 hours and 3 minutes for the entire ride. My rank, for the 55km ride, was 847th out of 1286 people, and 178th out of 242 men 37-42 years old. Definitely room for improvement...

I even have a diploma, online, here: http://www.datasport.com/diplom/opendiplom.cfm?racenr=9422&stnr=9000

There are a two pictures of me that I have found in the available commercial photographs, but cannot seem to buy them. So, here they are with the watermark still attached.

If someone can help me buy them from fotostudio5.net, please let me know.

My next planned ride is at the "Lightweight Uphill"

Stay Tuned....

GARMIN TRAINING CENTER UPDATED

Sun, 27 May 2007 13:39:09 +0200

Garmin FINALLY updated their Training Center software to support Macintosh OSX!!

It is available for download here.

System Requirements:

Intel-based or PowerPC G3 or later Mac
OS 10.4 or later
256 MB RAM
1024x768 display
150 MB free disk space
USB port

I downloaded it yesterday, very slooowly I might ad, and installed it on my Powerbook. Launched the program, connectetd my Forerunner 301, and Training Center began uploading the history.

The program display looks similar to the Windows version, with the notable exception of the brushed aluminum theme. Here is a screen shot with a recent bike ride around the Bodensee selected.

There are a couple of notable differences from the Windows version.

First, the map data displays correctly. It looks, to me at least, about the same level of detail that my older version of World Map had. The second difference I noticed is how the graph data pane is handled. There doesn't seem to be a way to get a cursor on the data. Either I missed the way to do this or Garmin hasn't added this basic, but very handy, feature. Also, they only have one variable per axis, where the Windows version allows you to display 2 variables per axis. This one isn't so big, as I have often found the data to be too noisy to display with 3 or 4 variables showing.

I also noticed something else about the data upload....I cannot see any of the mapping data for my older entries. I'll have to check and see if the Forerunner memory limits are causing this, or there was some other limitation that I ran into.

Update: I exported my history data from the Windows version of Training Center into the .hst file type that is created. When trying to import the file, Training Center for Macintosh does not recognize the file. It would be nice to import all of my history, so I'll have to take a look at what could be done....real soon now™

In any event, I am very very pleased that this software was released and also pleased that it basically works the same as the Windows version. Navigation is quite easy. Now, all I need to do is get out and hit the trail!!

Stay Tuned....

Jan 27, 2007 9:29 PM

Updated content

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:27:24 +0100

Added 2007 Prologue Content

Added Stage 1 Content

Added Stage 7 Content