Left or right? Left or right? Left or right? The question circles my mind like a roulette ball as I race down the descent towards a fork in the road. Which option will my mental ball land on? There’s no prize, only the difference in distance that I will have remaining before I get to the finish line. Going left leaves me with 90km, right with 155km.
The sane choice seems obvious, especially given that I’ve already amassed 145km, not to mention the fact that the string of riders ahead of me are all heading left. Yet as I reach the junction moments later, something inside compels me to turn right, reasoning that I’ve already gambled once today, so I may as well go all-in now for the full route of Croatia’s premier sportive, the Istria 300.
The first gamble was my bike choice. Some might say I’m foolish to be taking on a 300km road race on a gravel bike, even more so when the route contains over 5,000m of climbing and a strict 12-hour time limit, but I figured that such a long time on
