The Giro’s devastating Dolomite mountains

BRESSANONE, Italy (VN) — Pain is written all over Heinrich Haussler as he sits on the back of his team car after Sunday’s stage 15 mountain time trial in the Giro d’Italia from Castelrotto to Alpe di Siusi, the stiffness in his lower back and legs confining him to remain seated.

Add the pain of a two-day-old saddle sore, and you understand why Monday’s third rest day is so welcome t0 Haussler whose suffering was probably like what many riders felt after three days in the mountains for two road stages and a time trial — the last two being in the hauntingly beautiful Dolomites of northeast Italy.

“Up until two days ago I have been okay, but now I am really badly in the box,” says Haussler. “I have got this really bad saddle sore. After the first mountain stage — stage 13 [from Palmanova to Cividale del Friuli] I could not sit. I was doing all the climbs standing up, and I stuffed my legs, stuffed my muscles and yesterday [stage 14 from Alpago to Corvara in which five of the six categorized climbs were over 2,000m in altitude] I was out the back pretty much by myself for the first 80km. You are in the box, going at altitude, going hunger flat and have all these thoughts in your head. It’s so easy to just stop, give up and go home …”

Somehow, IAM’s Haussler fended off the temptation to quit, to take the easy path. In his struggle, he thought of all the positives in his life, such as his recently born twins.

“It would be so easy to go home but yeah … somehow you get through it,” Haussler says. “You just push yourself to the limit, and it is same as today — for a time trial uphill — and you are just smashing yourself. Now I am just sitting there just thinking, ‘Why …’ [laughing].”

As for Monday’s rest day where the Giro entourage was based in the Sud Tirol of Italy? “That’s what I have been thinking about,” Haussler says, with a shake of his head. “I am just going to take that risk and take the whole day off because my butt needs it to recover a bit.”

A little earlier, fellow …

continue reading in source velonews.competitor.com