Getting to Elba

Getting to Elba The first glitch happened at Gatwick as I was checking my bags in. My bike box was overweight by approximately 5kg and BA wanted to charge me £60 extra for this. There was absolutely NO WAY that I wanted to give them this extortionate fee, especially after I'd already forked out £250 for the flights. My flight was in about 80 minutes time so I didn't have long to come up with a solution. After about 10 minutes of pondering I came up with the solution - lose the heavy hard-cased bike box use the contents of this (bike box lining, sleeping mat and rags to create to gaffa tape around the bike and create improvised padded 'case'. As the I had to work quickly but managed to bodge it together well enough. The man at the oversized luggage conveyor belt even gave me a bit of help when I was flipping the bike over so that I could tape it all around. After using virtually an entire roll of gaffa tape to ensure it was 'wrapped' well enough I popped it on the scales - it was 6kg under. I ran back to the BA desk, the lady came over and when satisfied that it was underweight issued me with the relevant baggage stickers. I then had to get rid of the empty bike box. The solution - quickly stash it in a bush outside before running back in and rushing to the departure lounge. It was a stressful period but all worked out fine in the end. The flight was fine and the bike packaging remained intact. My pen and paper came in handy on the taxi from the airport to the hostel - I had to write down the name of the hostel so that the driver could understand/look up where to go. I got to the hostel fine and checked in. By the time I'd sorted myself out it was getting quite late, so the focus switched to finding dinner. I asked the guy at reception about restaurants - he told me about a few local ones. The first place I went in and sat down only to discover that they didn't do pasta. The second one again didn't serve pasta - very disappointing. After walking around a bit more and failing to find any other restaurants I went back to the second one and got a pizza. The thin-based/average sized pizza was decent but didn't fill me up enough, so I then ordered a Calzone too. Dinner done I made the short walk back to the hostel and promptly went to bed with the alarm set for 6. I struggled to get up, and dragged myself out of bed significantly later than intended. This along with the obligatory free breakfast meant that I got to the train station very late. I hadn't researched the train route properly - I only knew that it would take the best part of the day to get down to Piombino. After liaising with the woman at the ticket office I found out that the journey would involve 3 changes and that I'd have to cycle the final 16km to get to the ferry. One consolation was that the train ticket was cheap - significantly cheaper than what the same sort of journey would have cost in the UK. So it was a long and boring day sitting on the train - the only brief highlight being catching a quick look at The Leaning Tower whilst waiting for a connecting train in Pisa. I got to the end of my train journey between 7.30-8pm. It was now dark. I got talking to another guy that was doing Elbaman, and he told me what direction to go to get to the ferry. He said something about going on some smaller roads to avoid the busier dual-carriageway. At this point I just wanted to get there ASAP so stuck on my lights and hit the dual-carriageway knowing that this would be quicker. There were very few cars so it wasn't too dodgy. I managed to find the port easily and purchased a very-reasonably priced return ferry ticket. The next (and last) ferry of the day would be leaving at 10.30pm. With over an hour to kill I went and got some pasta at the ticket office restaurant. I knew that I wouldn't be getting to my destination of Marina di Campo (the town in Elba where Elbaman was taking place) until after midnight and that there probably wouldn't be an opportunity to get food by that time. Anyway I got on the ferry fine and finally got a decent wifi signal courtesy of Toremar. So the hour on he ferry flew by with Google maps, emails and Facebook giving me something to focus on. Once off of the boat I immediately began pedalling. It took the best part of two hours to get to Marina di Campo with there being a lot of hills/me going slowly to conserve energy for Elbaman. It then took a while to locate the campsite that was well hidden at the far end of the beach. I finally popped the tent up and went to bed at 1.45am. I woke up understandably tired at about 7.30am. The English race briefing was at 10am so I had time to go to the shop and prepare my bike for leaving it in the transition area later. Everything was pretty close together for the race (the marquee for the pre-race briefing/post-race pasta party, finish line/bike mechanic/clothing stalls were in the main town square, the registration area was in a school a 5-minute walk away, the transition area in between the square and school and the swim start was on the beach very close to the transition area). I managed to get to the English race briefing on time. However I didn't absorb much information as it seemed to be mostly in other languages and I kept falling asleep. I think there may have been the English briefing directly after this - I didn't hang around to find out as the bits of the briefing I managed to stay awake for were all the standard boring race rules etc. I was now very hungry so went to a nice cafe overlooking the beach and got myself a delightful panini for breakfast. Next came the registration. I'd forgotten to bring my USA Triathlon Licence card with me from home which I needed. Trying to register without this failed and I was instructed to print off an email conformation to prove that I had the license. So back to the campsite it was - thankfully the staff at reception were very nice and allowed me to go into the office and print off what I needed free of charge. After a pasta lunch I headed back to the school and successfully registered. The race pack contained the standard stuff (numbers, t-shirt, race guide) as well as a free meal voucher to use tonight at one of the towns 3 selected restaurants. I stickered-up the bike and racked it in transition ready for the morning. After going to the supermarket and getting tomorrow's breakfast I went to one of the restaurants to use my free meal voucher. This was early evening. After the meal I was still hungry and needed the same kind of portion again. I tried to keep the free meal voucher when leaving so that I could use it in one of the other two selected restaurants - this failed and I had to give it to the waiter. There was a restaurant at the campsite so I headed back there for dinner number two. I was satisfactorily full after this so headed back to the tent for an early night. The alarm was set for 3.30am in order to give enough time for my breakfast to digest/prepare all my kit/allow enough toilet time/get down to the transition area/lay out everything by the bike and get to the beach for the start of the race at 7am.