Milan - Sanremo
Date of achievement: 09/09/2020
Strava recording: 49 km with 538 altitude meters
AirBnB: Sleeping on the Poggio!
We found an AirBnB room on the Poggio, how cool is that! We slept on the official race decent of the Poggio, just 500 to 600 meter before getting back to the main road. Stefano was a great host and gave us plenty of local tips. The room had all amenities that we needed and the bathroom was recently renovated and had a cool rain shower. On site Stefano sells cold beers and drinks which is quite convenient to have a last drink to close the day.
As the race Milan – Sanremo is seen as borring, we decided to concentrate on the final, which is the most important part of the race. We focussed on Cipressa, Poggio and the arrival on the Via Roma. The experience and memories will make future race on Television way cooler, as you really know how it looks, feels, what comes. This was the 4th out of 5 Cycling Monuments that was achieved.
Beach bike lane
From our AirBnB we came down of the Poggio and by crossing the busy street we had access to the beach bike and hiking lane. A very nice and safe initiative. There are 3 lanes; one for hikers and two for bikers for both directions. Here and there you had to be careful for a crossing, but most of the time you had an endless view and ride on the bike lane. From Sanremo we headed east in the direction of San Lorenzo, where the bike path ends.
Cipressa
At the end of the bike lane at San Lorenzo, you can cross the busy street at start the climb of Cipressa. A climb just above 5 kilometers long with an average of 4%. With heavy legs I gave my best and could achieve an average speed of 21.7 km/h and on today that is good for a 2343th place on Strave on 14107 riders. Happy with that result. A few hairpins, a few awesome views on the Mediterranean Sea, some villages, and more. The decent has some nice hairpins and a very nice wall of grafiti where you are welcomed at Cipressa.
Poggio di Sanremo
From the beach bike path, you have to go to the busy road. This is less convenient, but that’s how you reach the start of the climb. The climb is not that long nor is it very hard. However, I can imagine that after a race of close to 300 km, this feels not easy. We also had heavy legs for this ride, as it was the day after our Mont Ventoux adventure where I conquered the Mont Ventoux twice and Marie-Claire even obtained her “Cinglé du Mont Ventoux”!
Nevertheless I wanted to see how fast I could go with heavy legs and reached an average speed of 23.6 km/h. Which is at the moment of writing the 2863th place on 16.007 riders. I’m quite happy with that, but when you see that Greg Van Avermaet is 10th overall with an average speed of 36.9 km/h, once again you realize how impressive those professional riders are.
The climb has a few hairpins and at the end you have a part which is less steep and were each year there is an attempt of a puncher to get away from the bunch. What follows is an quite technical decent, where we had few cars which made us go slower. It must be crazy to go down here in the race when you try to stay ahead of the bunch.
Via Roma
Coming down of the decent of the Poggio we headed towards the Via Roma. Here I can be short. It’s not fun and very dangerous to ride your race bicycle in the crazy Italian traffic. So I would not add this part again to the ride. I would rather suggest that you explore that part on foot.
We quickly left the area and headed back to our AirBnB to store our bikes and go look for food and a drink. We had to ride the last 800 meters back up the Poggio to finish our ride.
Conclusion is that the beach bike lane is very nice and safe, the Cipressa and Poggio are awesome climbs, but the parts in between in the Italian busy traffic are no fun at all and please be careful when riding there.
