The End of the Giro

I'm hallucinating again...

This is bad.  It always starts with déja vu, thinking I’ve seen something already, then seeing people in the night: prostitutes and beggars, sometimes aliens or monsters.  The prostitute hallucinations are anything which resemble someone standing up, on the side of the road, whilst the “beggars” are anything which resemble a person lying down.  This means I'm falling asleep again, while I'm riding, and there is no cure for this.  No caffeine tablets will help, even the 500mg tablets which I’ve run out of (more caffeine than the contents of 15 cans of coke).  These are tricks of the mind, telling my body to stop, but I can't give up, I can't stop to sleep, there are only 25 miles to the finish, and there are three riders behind me who could catch me if I slow down.  I know the hallucinations aren’t real, but they’re distracting, all the same, as they are danger signs for falling asleep, slowing me, delaying me from finishing the race.

It’s 2300hrs on Friday the 3^rd of June, and I've now been riding for 133 hours, with only 12 hours total sleep, since the previous Sunday morning, covering 1,350 miles unsupported, through torrential rain like walls of water, falling so hard that you can’t see more than five metres in front of you, through fog and frustrating headwinds, over rubbish-strewn crappy roads with potholes and cracks like you’ve never seen, belonging more in Africa rather than Europe, maniacal Italian drivers intent on murdering me with their plethora of vehicle-weapons: mopeds; cars; lorries; buses, who pull out from side roads forcing me to slam on the brakes, or just overtake inches from my left arm, forcing me into the gutter and through the potholes.  The people of Napoli, or Naples, made me curse at them for the number of near misses, bringing me to a stop and, almost, to tears of utter despair, making my local area’s drivers appear angelic, even though the locals have run me over twice in the last seven months.

That’s why I need to finish, now, tonight, and get back to my family, who are staying in a Villa close to the finish, so we can all drive home from Venice to England on the Saturday morning.  It’s been a long, lonely, torturous road and missing my family has become unbearable.

The night is pitch-black.  Now it’s getting cold with the wind chill, but I won’t put on my jacket to stay warm – the cold is my friend.  Even though it makes me suffer, it keeps me awake a little longer and a little bit more alert.

Déja vu again – haven’t I been through this town before?  Then, a loud noise from the front of my bike emanates in the silence of the night: ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.  Oh no, have I broken a spoke?  What’s happened?  Will the riders behind catch me?  I gently bring my bike to a halt, in the dark.  I look down – my USB cable which I was using to charge my Garmin, from a battery pack in my top tube bag, has somehow fallen out, wrapped itself around the hub, and been shredded.  Without dismounting, I pull the remains of the cable out and rejoice at the lack of damage to the bike.

I ride on, looking behind me, worried that I’m going to be caught.  Every time I look back, I worry about crashing into something in front of me.  The doubt clears from my mind – I’ve been trying to “time trial” at 200 Watts, 20 miles per hour, for the last 6 hours.  Just an hour or so left, just keep going, they’ll be just as tired as you, if not more so, and they won’t be able to put such an effort to catch and pass you… or will they?

More hallucinations, more déja vu.  They’re not real.  I slap myself in the face on both sides.  It stings, especially in the cold, but the pain is my friend.  It will bring me a few minutes of alertness and I can concentrate on riding.  I curse the flatness and straightness of these roads, praying for a turn to wake my brain, watching for a sign which says that I’m getting closer to the finish.  Every sign I see tells me that the finish is not close enough.  Every road is unfamiliar.

Boredom is the enemy.  Sleep is the enemy.  Stopping is the enemy.  Everything that stops me from moving forward to the finish, fast, is the enemy.

Over and over again: the déja vu; the beggars; the prostitutes; the signs of despair; the fear of being caught; the slapping; the cold; the monsters in the night.  Until, finally, I reach a familiar bridge near the finish, which was also the start – Malcontenta – only a few hundred metres to the Hotel Palladio!

I dart into the car park, stopping at the bottom of the steps, carry my bike up and into the hotel foyer.  There are no other riders, no other bikes around.  I wait patiently at the desk, as the hotel concierge finishes assisting a guest with bus travel times and routes.  The guest leaves the foyer.

I ask the concierge whether any other riders have arrived before me.  He says no, and stamps my card, the twenty-fourth checkpoint, then says that he needs to call the organiser, Fulvio Gambaro and, shortly after, that he will arrive in 10 minutes.  I sit down in an oh-so comfortable chair and relax in the light, relieved to have finished the Giro.  I can’t believe I’ve made it back to Venice, first.

Fulvio arrives.  Speaking softly, he congratulates me and shakes my hand.  It is great to see him after 2,200km.  Now I can go home, to my wife and kids.  Only four-and-a-half miles to the villa.

 

Next: The Damage.