Downhill in Romagna, beautiful landscapes and a lot of effort

in Pinmapple2 years ago (edited)

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With the beginning of spring, I decided to go out a little more often with my mountain bike, to take advantage of both the slightly higher temperature and the fact that with the change of daylight saving time the days have become longer. Luckily for me, now that I work as a researcher at the university, I no longer have the constraint of having to organize my free time according to my work schedule, but I can organize myself as I see fit. Today I would like to share with you two different experiences that I had in the last weeks, with my mountain bike.

Struggling in Meldola

The first one I want to share happened last week, I left the office at 5:30 am and after loading my bike and that of a friend into my car (which I must admit took a bit of time, since my car is a small Ford Fiesta, and to fit two mountain bikes we had to disassemble both wheels), we left towards our destination. After about a half-hour drive we arrived at the starting point of our route, pulled the bikes out of the car, and remounted the tires.

Usually when you hear about downhill what you imagine are high-speed descents down steep trails and of course this is true, but the thing that most people do not perceive of this sport is that in order to get to make the descents you must first go uphill, and this usually requires a physical effort not indifferent. Obviously during the winter outings by bike are very infrequent, given the cold and even the prohibitive weather conditions, then when the summer season begins, it usually starts gradually with paths initially a bit 'easier and especially less demanding from the physical point of view, and then slowly when the condition improves, go to face increasingly difficult challenges.
This would be the ideal condition ... but usually, it never happens, in fact, you always end up making trips that are clearly outside your reach.

Our tour in Meldola started softly at the beginning, with a nice Sun which warmed the temperature a little bit, a beautiful environment and also a cute dog.

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So, at the beginning we were really relaxed and full of energy.

The sunset was also approaching and the view was really great.

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But then, the ascent started, and I wasn't at all ready 😅.

The difference in altitude wasn't too prohibitive either (500 meters in all), and I had done some much more prohibitive ones in previous years. The problem, however, was the slope of the climb, which spread those 500 meters over a very short distance, and so this, combined with my poor physical condition, led me to cramp when we were still about 70% of the way up. So I had to walk the rest of the way pushing the bike by hand. And I assure you that even walking uphill pushing the bike is not very pleasant. Fortunately, you strain slightly different muscles, so you can alternate between the two (pushing the bike on foot and pedaling) so you don't tire too much.

To help us during the climb, fortunately, there were some very beautiful landscapes.

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And finally, we made it to the top 💪.

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Galeata by night

The second tour was in the town of Galeata, near Forli, where I live. In this case, the prearranged tour should have lasted about three hours, so we were set to leave around 5 o'clock in order to return home with acceptable lighting conditions.

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Obviously, when you make these plans, surprises are always on the agenda. In fact, as soon as we arrived at the starting point of our trail, we realized that one of our bikes had a flat tire and we had to change it.

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This obviously caused us to lose some time and so our tour started about an hour late. We finally managed to start and after a small stretch on the asphalt, we finally entered the part of the trail that is unpaved.

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Obviously, the first part as usual is purely muscular, and it's a matter of climbing slowly up to the top of the mountain. Fortunately this time the slopes were not too prohibitive and the difference in altitude was spread over several kilometers, so although it was a longer distance than the first route was still less tiring because you had more time to deal with it.

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Obviously, however, it could not be all roses and flowers, and in fact in this case the difficult part was not the climb but the descent.

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Some points of the path were really very steep and for someone like me, who does not yet have all the confidence and experience to deal with them, they are very dangerous. So I had to get off the bike quite often and simply walk down.

And in this case, you might think that getting off the bike on foot is much easier, but actually, it is not really so because having to carry the bike with you while walking on a very steep path is not as easy as it seems and it is not so impossible to slip. One of the tricks that we usually take to avoid accidents is to always keep the bike towards the valley so as not to risk that in the case of a fall even the bike comes on us. Apart from a few minor difficulties, we managed to complete the first part of the route.

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But once this was completed, a second ascent-descent awaited us.

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The problem was, of course, that it was now past 8.00 in the evening and the light was beginning to fail. In all of this, we had both forgotten our helmets at home.

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a quite creepy house in the middle of nowhere with the inscription "Jesus is love".

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Fortunately, we had at least had the foresight to bring small flashlights that attach to the bike, but I must admit that even with those it was really difficult to see the path.

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In addition, it had rained quite a bit on the previous days, so the ground was really muddy and the back of the bike was slipping a lot. This deadly combo of poor lighting and poor grip made the descent really dangerous, so much so that in many places I was really afraid of falling and hurting myself, but luckily this did not happen and we were both able to arrive safely at the end of the trail.
We even tried some jumps on some artificial platforms that were present on the path 😅.

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From this experience, we learned that first of all, we must always bring helmets and protections with us, and that when calculating the travel time of any path we must always take into account an extra time that may be due to unforeseen events.
At the end of the day, we were still on our feet and we didn't hurt ourselves. Ironically enough, some days after our trip to Galeata, we went for another trial, and this time I had my helmet, but I fell from the bicycle and hurt my left leg with a quite deep cut... But this is a story for another post.

If you enjoyed the post, please leave an upvote and/or a comment, and feel free to follow me (at the link below) if you want to see my next post.

➡️ hive.blog/@aurzeq ⬅️

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The light during your ride is so beautiful
Looks a tough ride with those climbs

Thanks for joining Wednesday Walk :), I truly enjoy exploring the world virtually each Wednesday seeing walks from all around the globe and feeling I am there and experiencing it all myself, such as I did in your post just now :)

Thanks for the comment @tattoodjay, and sorry for the late replay

Avete fatto proprio un ottima escursione! Un giorno di salute… anch’io dovrei regalarmi qualche giorno così. Ottimo post e foto bellissime

Grazie @stefano.massari per il commento... andare in natura è sempre un ottima idea, aiuta a ricaricare le batterie

Vero… stare a contatto con la natura ci aiuta a rigenerarsi, forse la natura ha un energia che non vediamo e quando siamo a contatto con lei ci dona un pezzo di questa energia.

E' un bel modo di pensarla, magari è veramente così

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Well traveled.
I've never tried to ride on a mountain... although we don't have mountains around me, lol.

@tipu curate

Thanks for the upvote @ashikstd. Well there is always a first time, and if you don't have mountains around you this could be a good reason for a vacation 😊