Granfondo Dorelan Reactive: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

Start and finish are in Peschiera del Garda at the southern tip of the lake, at just under seventy metres. The first forty kilometres run through the hills of the Garda Veneto: undulating ground between vineyards and olive groves, with a couple of short ramps at kilometres 24 and 38 but no real resistance. By then the course is at 190 metres.

At kilometre 45.4 the mountain proper begins. Eight point seven kilometres averaging six per cent for 518 metres of gain lead up towards San Zeno di Montagna - a category-two ascent and the only place all day where you genuinely climb. Its steepest part is the Muro del Garda at kilometre 52.4: five hundred metres with pitches around twenty per cent, immediately before the feed station at San Zeno at kilometre 52. The high point is around 455 metres.

After that it comes back down to the lake over more than forty kilometres, though not without stings: a short ramp at kilometre 82 touches twenty-three per cent. In total 1,287 metres over 97.1 measured kilometres; the organiser publishes 1,190. The granfondo is the eleventh edition and the core of a two-day festival: on the Saturday a non-competitive 10 km and 5 km run through Peschiera and out to the Mincio, alongside a food and show festival. Around 1,500 riders take part, from 26 nations.

Pacing Strategy

This course splits into two very unequal parts, and the first forty-five kilometres are the trap. They undulate, they roll fast and they are ridden in a bunch - exactly the conditions in which you sit in groups that are too strong for you. What comes afterwards cannot be corrected.

The granfondo is decided on the climb from kilometre 45. Eight point seven kilometres at six per cent is thirty-five to fifty-five minutes of continuous climbing for most riders, and it is unevenly distributed: the Muro del Garda does not come at the bottom but after seven kilometres of ascent, so the twenty per cent arrives exactly when the legs are already full. Choose the gearing for the Muro, not for the average - anyone without an easy gear left in reserve stops there.

The third point is the descent and the run home. More than forty kilometres from the high point back to the lake sounds like recovery, but it is undulating ground with a nasty short ramp at kilometre 82 that touches twenty-three per cent. Empty yourself on the mountain and you lose more time there, and over the last fifteen kilometres by the lake, than you ever lost on the climb.

Training plan for Granfondo Dorelan Reactive: 12-week build

For age-group riders the granfondo is a three and a half to five and a half hour ride. The demand is a long aerobic one with a single clearly bounded mountain effort in the middle third - not a climber's race but a rolling race with an hour of climbing built into it.

So the first training emphasis is threshold power over exactly that duration: twenty to forty minute intervals on a climb, around functional threshold, ideally after two hours of endurance rather than fresh. That is precisely what kilometres 45 to 54 ask for.

The second emphasis is the short, very steep effort, and granfondo training usually forgets it. The Muro del Garda at twenty per cent and the ramp at kilometre 82 at twenty-three are strength-endurance and gearing questions, not threshold ones: one to two minute repetitions on a very steep ramp, seated, at low cadence, are what prepare for them. Equipment belongs with it - on a twenty-per-cent wall after fifty kilometres, the smallest sprocket decides more than form does.

Conditions are a mid-October Sunday on Lake Garda: mild, often misty in the morning on the plain around Peschiera, and markedly colder at 455 metres up in San Zeno. The descent from the high point is long, and going into it wet with sweat and no gilet means cooling down over more than forty kilometres. Arm warmers and a thin gilet in a jersey pocket are equipment here, not caution.