In an attempt to make the Giro Donne better known to the non Podium Café reading world, Rapha and Outside Magazine are getting together to send out a small team to ride some stages of the race to make a film plus a series of print reports. Their team consists of (in the words of the proper one (should that be in the Miss Marple sense of proper?)) an Aussie living in England, a Texan living in England, a Seattleite living in England, a Brit, and a "proper American".
The plan was to ride six stages of the race in six days. I don't know if that originally meant six stages of this year's race but, as the route for that was only published this morning, they have either by accident, design, or desparation, chosen to follow some historic stages.
As we are great fans of any attempts to publish the Giro Donne then we think they deserve a shout out in support, which they duly got in yesterday's Giro team thread. Then in came their first report and they chose to go over the route of stage seven from the 2010 Giro, from Como to Albese, aka one of Evelyn Stevens' earlier greatest hours. In other words we've got an excuse to sit and watch Evie for fifteen minutes. As if some needed an excuse anyway.
If you want to follow the Rapha/Outside for yourself then Berne Broudy is posting daily reports. Here's the introduction, and here's stage 1. If you want to hear the inside story or send encouragement (or cheap insults for being the wrong kind of Americans), four of the riders are for sure on Twitter, Berne, Sarah Cary, Eryn Nolan and Collyn Ahart. We'll keep an eye on them looking for good excuses to post other videos.