Shrouded in darkness, there was no gorgeous landscape to distract on those opening roads; no panoramas or idyllic farmhouses. Only the whirling clicks of the freewheel and the sound of rubber meeting road. With the very tips of the highest trees beginning to glow a golden hue, hinting at the warm sun about to rise, faint glimpses of the countryside’s beauty began to manifest themselves in the darkness, offering riders a chance to reflect on Tuscany’s unique appeal as they calmly and speedily ate up the tarmac. I hope everyone enjoyed it, because for me at least, it would be the last such moment of meditation.
Just before sunrise, myself and the small group of riders I’d joined reached a gate in the walls of the Castello di Brolio, an archaic estate that is now home to one of the world’s finest vineyards.
The crumbling stonework of the gate framed perfectly the tree-lined, torch-lit ascent away from the familiar comfort of tarmac and up towards the dusty, uneven, ragged hell of the gravel. Slowly and somewhat sheepishly working our way up the winding rise, it seemed as if some sort of magic was transporting us back in time, to the early and cruel days of cycling when the competition was more than macho, it was masochistic.
You need to pick your lines very carefully on the gravel. You need every bit of traction you can get, and on such a loose surface it ain’t going to be much. Perhaps this is the most brutal torture of the strade. On a normal ride, the suffering of the climb is soothed by the simple, unbridled joy of speed on the way down. But there, on Tuscany’s ancient byways, it can take less time to get up than it will to come back down. There simply isn’t the grip to speed down the slopes, and the way that the bikes wheels constantly shift and slip under the slightest effort serves as a constant reminder of the danger.
But even as blood and sweat turns to dark crusts, and every fiber in your muscles starts to give up, the spirit of L’Eroica drives you on. If you’re into cycling, there’s simply no way that such a strangely beautiful struggle—surrounded by all of the sport’s history and a myriad of other