June 23rd, 2018

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When you start riding bicycle your first ride over 100k is something special. After a while you tend to do 200k in one tour. A lot of riders can say they did the 200 - but for the next step up to 300k i think the number of riders is a jump deeper then. So therefore i registered  for the FUGA 300 - from the glacier to the sea - to get that experience.

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FUGA 300 was the idea of former Austrian Pro  Peter "Paco" Wrolich based in Carinthia. The story behind quite simple: ride the bike from the highest road in Austria, the "Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse" at 2369 m to sea level in Grado, Italy. The tour was organised as a group ride for 90 people and so a nice get together of different nationalities and types of bicycle fans.

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We all met in Villach the day before the ride to take the bus to Heiligenblut at the bottom of the highest mountain in Austria - Grossglockner 3797m. The weather was quite unstable and too cold for the time of the year and after some rain in the night we had little fresh powder on the mountains surrounding Heiligenblut. So the big question was: What is the temperature on top, and what to wear for the start?

I couldn´t imagine as i saw a sign showing -0,2^C at the start - what i am doing here? I guess it was 4 layers of functional clothes, shoe warmers and for sure gloves.

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At 6am the start and it was very chilly rolling down but fortunately dry and so no ice on the road. Nevertheless it took ages and meter by meter going downwards it became a bit warmer. Reaching the down valley we had a quick break to take off some layers and then going an average of 40 km/h through Mölltal. More and more we could feel the strenght of the sun and so it turned out to become a nice sunny riding day.

We were luck to be escorted by 2 motorcycles of the local police so we didn´t need to stop in traffic - even red lights were not valid and so we could pass full speed "Spittal an der Drau". After 135k, and normally you would end a regular tour, the first break in Villach. Well organised we got offered a nice buffet and Villacher Beer to fill our batteries for the remaining 165k.

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It was time to leave Austria and step into Italy for a short part at boarder control Arnoldstein/Tarvisio. Here also the police patrol ended and we all were greatful to had them on our way until here. But it was just the first part of 2 in Italy. Entering a valley we were passing Lago di Predil riding a few hairpins towards the only real mountain we had to climb - Passo di Predil. Reaching the top was also the time to enter the third country on our ride - Slovenia. On top we splitted in 3 groups as the downhill would have been too dangerous with 90 riders at once and had a quite fast base then to reach Kobarid. In town they had a festival going on and so we got an official welcome there to also get some snacks and drinks. Another 80 kilometers were done so the remaining distance to go went under 100 to 85k.

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Right after Kobarid we again rolled over the boarder to Italy. This time we stayed inside the country to do our last part until Grado. We were leaving more and more mountains in the area of Udine and after 7 hours we could feel in entering the flat a slight sea breeze. Nature was changing from that point and it turned out to be on a nice summer ride in a south european country.

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The whole ride already i stayed more in the front of the peloton to avoid problems when there might happen possible crashes - luckily we had no such and everyone arrived healthy. I was swapped to the front as changes were done more often to save energy. But i felt pretty good and so one by one of riders were changing on my side going a nice dual train. I was thinking also to leave the pace but then just 25 more kilometers to go i decided to end the tour in front. Finally we reached Grado and the emotions of all riders were pretty stoked. We passed the dam having a big smile in our faces. After 9 hours with an average speed of 33 km/h we reached the beach with 300 kilometers in our legs - in one piece.

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We got a big welcome and even the major of Grado was there to do a little speech to us. Italian Prosciutto and Parmesan but for sure also many liters of Peroni Beer were prepared to refill our bodies with energy. As a little surprise the organizers made it happen to bring a little piece of the glacier in a cooling box to the adriatic sea. And so many pics were done with ice and bike standing in the water on the nice sand beach in Grado.

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bike: Pretty Betty Specialized Tarmac S-Works

starring: Gerry Samer, Rene Haselbacher, Paco Wrolich, Phillip Ludescher, Martin Koch +90 more

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