We arrived at the Garda Bike Hotel beside a major Italian lake called Lake Garda and my right knee was only just beginning to settle down after strain put on it by the weight and configuration of my bike and barge e bike. We had signed up for four days of joining guided rides using Pinarello Nytro e road bikes. We brought our pedals and seats with us and it took the mechanics about 20 minutes to set us up. Mary's bike had a Garmin out front bracket which was great but I was glad I brought my Garmin temporary bracket which worked really well.
The Bike Hotel usually offers three rides each day, a classic (40-70 kms), an Enthusiastic (about 90 kms) and an Epic (around 125kms). The actual rides change every day but if you stay long enough you will see the same rides offered, but perhaps with a different guide. When I say guide, it's not like you would expect on a cycle tour. The Bike Hotel Guides seem to approach each ride with the desire of completing it as soon as possible, especially the last 20-30 kms! Average speeds I experienced for the last parts of my rides were around 28-32 kms and pauses were rare and usually for photos.
Our Pinarello Nytros were very good bikes, although Mary and I agreed that our Specialized Creos are better. Possibly due to the cost of purchasing Nytros and wanting to keep them affordable to rent, the Hotel had provided Nytros with Shram gearing, but no electronic gears like Shimano Di2. They also have big and small front chain rings and it was sometimes difficult to work out what gear we were in. This in turn caused each of us to drop a chain once. Easy to fix, but annoying. Nytros don't have range extenders and the main batteries had to be carefully used to ensue we had sufficient power to complete our rides. This was particularly the case with Monte Baldo with a climb of 21 kms and where spare batteries were retrieved from the supporting van to ensure we could get to the top and then back to the hotel.
Besides range, we also noticed that the three modes - green (eco), blue (sport) and pink (turbo) operate differently to our Creo system. Provided I stayed in green it provided excellent support - for example at the end of my last ride of just on 90 kms with a steady 5km climb in the middle, I had only used the green mode and I had used only about 60% of my battery power. Using blue for steeper climbs and then reverting to green, it was like hitting a barrier we switched back. It was as if I had turned the power off for a few seconds and then the lesser support kicked in. This was even more noticeable going from pink to blue and while pink certainly made it easier to deal with gradients over 10%, we didn't experience the initial surge in power that we had found with our Creos in similar circumstances while climbing in Tasmania earlier this year.
It is possible, however, that the differences in performance were the result of how the bikes were set up. The Creo's Mission Control App allows you to dictate how much support you get from each mode and after watching some You Tube stories on optimising each mode, we had changed the factory settings so that we removed the mode cross over set up and made sure that as you change up, you get the boost you are expecting. As a result, eith the Creo, if and when you go up or down a mode you notice the difference, but at the same time it's a smooth change.
Communications with the Hotel's mechanics and guides (and it seemed most guides were also mechanics) was one of the weak points of our time at the Hotel. From bike setup, to bike use and through to our rides we felt that the communication levels were pretty ordinary. Of course everyone was Italian and English was their second language. This may explains why when they did communicate it sometimes took an effort on everyone's part to get messages across. But we were offered only rudimentary advice about the ins and outs of riding the Nytros - essentially just an explanation of the modes.
This came to a head for us while climbing the first 16kms of Monte Baldo with gradients ranging from 5% to 12%. Working on the premise that we should ride the same way we would on our Creos we were moving between blue and pink as gradients changed. Then our guide appeared, saw we we in pink and chastised us for being so. At that point he advised that if we continued doing do our batteries would be empty after an hour of riding. We knew we each had a spare battery in the support van, but if he was right we would have used both by the first major stop at 16kms. So we changed to climbing using green till gradients got too steep and then we switched to blue. This way I arrived at the 16km mark with two bars left, while Mary had four. They swapped my battery then, while Mary's was changed after the second, shorter but steeper climb. So steep that we used pink for about 500m.
As I weigh about 33% more than Mary we assumed that the power consumption differences were probably weight related.
This has been a bit long winded, but an aim of this site is to hopefully fill in gaps never covered in bike or tour reviews. We had a great week of cycling, the Nytros were certainly great to ride, especially as we learned more about how to best operate them, the hotel services are fabulous including providing late lunches if you ride and washing your cycling gear overnight which makes it so easy to ride. The hotel staff were great and the guides were very good, but gave us the impression that our decision to ride e road bikes labeled us as non-serious riders. As a result we felt that notwithstanding how we rode each day, we didn't receive the accolades or feedback that the other riders we rode with received. Paranoid perhaps, but when Scott arrived, unpacked his road bike and immediately was approached by one of the owner/guides who had spent the whole week smiling at us but did not engage with us. Hopefully, the hotel will attract more riders like us and the guides will come to understand that us mature riders by using ebikes are able to join in the rides and do the climbs without falling way behind and yet still make a big effort!