Day 105 – EU – Italy [Florence to Ronta]


06/06/20

37km

  From Florence (Italy) to Ronta (Italy)

Europe


Getting my uphill legs going again today! A day in the Apennines in the company of cyclists and motorbikers

The day started with 14km of gentle-ish uphill right out of Florence. Followed by 11km of downhill and another 12km of uphill to the little village of Ronta. My legs felt rusty!

I followed the “Via Faentina” all the way, a lovely (narrow) road that was, on this Saturday morning, a playground for cyclists and bikers. Cyclists gave me a lot of encouragement and I enjoyed how very superlative they sound in Italian! “Grandissima”, “bravissima” and a lot more which I didn’t understand but sounded very musical and appreciative!

The number of bikers was a surprise. But then I got to talk with a cyclist, and he explained that we are near the Mugello Valley (Northern Tuscany) where the world famous “Mugello racing circuit” is located – and this explains why racing motorbikes is so popular in the region. I didn’t mind too much as there weren’t many cars on the road, but it was quite narrow and these machines are going really fast!

I notice how my consumption of water on the run is now 50% up from what it was up to early March. I used to drink 2 bottles of 750ml of water and some coca-cola (on the run only). I now need 3 bottles of 750ml water + coca-cola. I sweat a lot more and temperatures are quite high from the get-go at 7:30am.

I saw this sign (left) many times by the roadside today. I would have never guessed what it meant if I hadn’t used Google-translate. Quite a mysterious signage for flashfloods…!

The scenery was splendid again for my last full day in Tuscany. Tomorrow I will enter another region “Emilia-Romagna”. It is set to be a long day on the road: 9km of uphill followed by 40km of downhill… The region is wild and not very populated, I wish there had been a choice to shorten the day! I will take it easy on the uphill, likely to be near walking pace.



Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: