Excellent ride in the Mugello hills with Joao.

I had a very nice client ride with Joao, a 47 year old contractor from Portugal, who I found through a referral from Dominick.  Thanks, Dom.  Joao came to the apartment and we set him up on the DeRosa, which worked well for him.  He had a limited amount of time, and even though I had reviewed a couple of his rides through Garmin, and it appeared he was pretty fast, we choose to stay closer in and did a fair amount of wandering in the hills to the north of Florence.  We started going through Le Cure, then up to San Domenico, then up to the turn for Maiano.  Nice descent through Maiano to the start of the Vincigliata climb.  We climbed this pretty fast and looking back on the ride, it is the only real time I dropped Joao, and when I did, I geared down one and we were together the whole time.  We were really quite compatible riders.

At the top of the Vincigliata climb, we turned to descend to Compiobbi, then stopped there for a cafe and pastry.  I had never stopped there before, but had seen lots of people at the cafe, and it was quite good.  We then rode up to the turn for Monteloro at Le Falle, climbed past Monteloro to the Fiesole road the up toward Vetta alle Croce.  I gave Joao the option for a return there, but he was happy to extend the ride.  I told him we would still be home easily within his time limit, but probably not the half hour before that he wanted to shoot for.  We rode over to Bivigliano, then down to Viliano, up through Casellina to the road to Pratolino.  We cut off in Pratolino to go toward Monte Morello, then went down and back to Via Bolognese.  We took this descent to the turn for Cercina, and enjoyed the descending and climbing to the little town.  We took option #2 for the descent, and ended up above Careggi.

I checked again on timing and he wanted to do the detour that kept us away from the main roads, so we skirted the Careggi area and added 50 meters or so of climbing.  We returned through Piazza Giorgina to Viale Venti Settembre and were back home.  Really quite a nice ride with lots of climbing.  Joao told me about the area he lived in in Portugal and invited me to come there to ride sometime, as it could be quite nice in January.  We shall see.   For now, here is the garmin link for today's ride:

Vincigliata, Compiobbi, Monteloro, Bivigliano, Pratolino, Cercina, Firenze by ridingwithcosimo at Garmin Connect - Details

Joao with the Arno valley in the background at the start

of the real descent to Compiobbi.

Joao with the DeRosa above Monteloro.

Action shot on the road to Cercina.

Another action shot on the way to Cercina.