Race day dawned chilly and cloudy – rain forecast throughout the day. We walked to the store first and got a paper that shows the start order for the ITT, then back to the bar across the road from us for a delicious cappuccino.

I chose to continue further back down the road and around a few corners to see the top of that climb – it’s just about at the ‘7km to go’ sign and has booths setup selling over-priced food and beer.

I decided against taking a chair and watching from there as the spot we’d parked at overnight, being almost across the road from a bar with food was just too good to move from.

The beagle that belonged to the folks in one of the campervans just down from us agreed.

We went to the bar and sat inside until the first riders started arriving, then went outside and sat at a table under an awning. It was drizzling off and on so sometimes we were right at the roadside and sometimes under the awning.

At one point I noticed that one of my earrings were missing – they were made for me by Tony, a friend of Colin’s, and I have two pairs – one with regular bikes, and one with time trial bikes which I was wearing. Some of the bar folks saw me looking around on the ground and asked why – when I told them they all pitched in to help look. Half of the people that were sitting outside were all scouring the ground for my lost treasure – but alas, not one of us was successful.

By the time the last 15 or so racers came by it was pouring so hard we could barely see across the road – they still had over 6 km to go to the top at the town of San Marino.

As soon as the last one passed we scurried back inside the bar to watch the finale on tv. They started serving tapas, which I, of course, tried several of – they were quite tasty.

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