In the group blown together by the wind, I noticed one of Max Lelli’s uniforms, then another. Using all of my minimal Italian, I rode up beside one of them and pointed at his chest and then at mine, gesturing up the road. “Squadra Max Lelli? Io qui, Barbara là—.” (“Teammie? I’m here, Barbara’s up there … I’ve got a problem.”) He motioned to the other Max Lelli guy, who started hauling away at the front. We passed through another town and started another fast descent. He shot through the curves and I stayed glued to his wheel. When I finally had a second to look back, I saw a long line of maybe fifteen guys behind us.
We kept up the pace along a flattish section until we saw a small group in the distance. My helpful teammate redoubled his efforts at the front—I pulled through from time to time, but it was mostly a one-man effort to catch them. Imagine my relief when I saw the group we had just subsumed contained Barbara, Number 158. From then on, I didn’t let her out of my sight. But soon my luck took a turn for the worse, as we arrived at the turnoff for the medium course and my helpful teammate went that way along with a large contingent from the group. From then on, it was just me against Barbara and the rest of the Italian guys on the long course.
Marco had warned me that, as in love and war, all’s fair in gran fondos—so I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the men in our group were not neutral on the subject of the women’s race. There was only one guy in the group (of perhaps twenty) with the same uniform as 158, but most of the rest of the guys were emphatically on her side regardless of team. Patriotism, I guess. There was one Max Lelli guy in the group, but he stayed out of it and I hardly saw him the rest of the day. There was another guy with a prosthetic lower leg; his other leg and a half propelled him so well that it took me about sixty miles to realize his right leg was carbon from the knee down. I started to watch him because he was one of the few who—if not on my side—was at least not working for 158.
