Sa Calobra — The Climb I Was Afraid Of
110.8 km. 2,084 m elevation. A PR I didn't expect. And a glucose trace that tells the whole story.
Welcome or welcome back to my adventures! 🚴♀️
This one is special. This one I need to write down properly, because for a while I wasn't sure I would ever get to write it at all.
Let me take you to Mallorca. To the ATAC Cycling Club triathlon training camp. To the day that everyone at camp knew was coming — the one people talked about over dinner the night before with a mixture of excitement and dread.
Sa Calobra day!
The Context
Before I tell you about Sa Calobra, you need to understand what had already happened to my legs by the time we got there.
Triathlon training camps are not gentle. They are designed to accumulate fatigue deliberately — to push you beyond what a normal training week would ask, so that when you recover, you come back stronger. Every day at camp builds on the last. The rides get longer. The climbs stack up. The body begins to negotiate.
The Fear
I had been to Sa Calobra before. In previous years, at previous camps, I had attempted this climb.
I had never made it to the top, or at least I made it, but at what costs, at which condition, which what tools...
I am sharing this because it matters. Not as an apology — but as the honest starting point for understanding what this day actually meant. Sa Calobra is not a climb you can bluff. It does not reward wishful thinking. You either have the legs and the head for it on that particular day, or you don't. And every time before, I hadn't.
So on the morning of Sa Calobra day, I woke up carrying two fears simultaneously: the fear of the objective challenge, and the fear of my own history with it. That is a heavier weight than any gradient.
Breakfast — The Buffet Problem
Let me talk about something that does not get discussed enough in the T1D sport community: the hotel buffet breakfast.
It sounds like a minor detail. It is not. When you are at a training camp, staying in a hotel with an all-you-can-eat buffet, and you have a massive ride ahead of you, the temptation to overeat is enormous. Everyone at the table is loading up. The pastries are right there. The pancakes are warm. And your brain is saying: I have 110 kilometres ahead of me, I need fuel.
The reality with T1D is that overeating at breakfast — especially simple carbohydrates — creates a glucose spike that then requires insulin correction, which then risks a drop at the worst possible moment on the bike. I have made this mistake before. I know what it costs.
That morning, my glucose was pleasantly in range when I woke up. A small gift from the body on a big day. I chose to respect it.
My breakfast:
Greek yogurt
Ham and cheese
One pancake on the side — because glucose was good, and I allowed myself that pleasure without guilt
Protein and fat from the yogurt, ham and cheese to slow gastric emptying and provide a steady glucose rise. The pancake as a controlled fast carbohydrate top-up rather than a free-for-all. It sounds simple. When the croissants and the pain au chocolat and the full pastry station are sitting two metres away, it requires actual discipline.
I managed it. My glucose going into the ride was in a good place. That foundation matters for everything that comes after.
8:00 am — Rolling Out of Alcudia
We rolled out in the intermediate group at 8:00 am sharp. The flat section towards Sa Calobra runs at 30–32 km/h — not easy, but sustainable. The kind of pace where you are working but can still breathe, still look around, still register that you are cycling in one of the most beautiful places in the world with the Mediterranean somewhere off to your right.
The flat section is deceptive, though. It is not recovery. Sustained moderate-high intensity over distance draws down glucose steadily and reliably, even when the effort feels controlled. This is something I have learned from many long rides: the flat kilometres still cost something. They still need to be fuelled.
My on-bike fuelling strategy that day:
Around 40g of carbohydrate per hour, rotating between gels, bananas at feed stops, and protein bars. The mix matters — gels for fast delivery when I needed an immediate top-up, bananas for a more moderate release, protein bars to slow things down and provide something more sustained in the later hours. Timing approximately every 40 minutes, not waiting to feel a drop.
Omnipod 5 in Sport Mode from the start. Dexcom running continuously.
And then: the first climb. And then the second.
The Two Climbs Before The Climb
Sa Calobra does not arrive fresh. The route includes two significant climbs before you even reach its base — not warm-up hills, but proper mountain roads that ask real things from the legs. By the time you get to Sa Calobra, you have already been riding for hours and you have already climbed. The energy account has already been making withdrawals.
For glucose management in T1D, this accumulation changes everything. Prolonged effort increases the efficiency with which muscle tissue pulls glucose from the blood — a mechanism called GLUT4 translocation, where glucose transporters move to the cell surface in response to muscular contraction rather than insulin. The longer and harder the effort, the more pronounced this effect becomes. Hour four of riding is physiologically different from hour one. The body is more sensitive, the glucose moves faster and less predictably.
Sa Calobra
8 kilometres. 7% average gradient. Peaks of 13% on the hairpin bends.
At the speeds I was riding, this was not a short effort. Climbing at 10-12 km/h means 37–40 minutes of sustained, intense work at a gradient that does not allow recovery between bends. Your legs are always at their limit. The road always wants more than you have.
I want to be honest about what it felt like from the inside: I could not see the end of it. That is the truth. You come around one hairpin and there is another one above you. You come around that one and there is another. The road disappears into the mountain and reappears somewhere higher, and the only information your body is giving you is that this is very, very hard and it is not stopping.
At those moments — and there were several — I deeply needed the people next to me.
Thank you, Berta. Thank you, Tiago. 💙
They were there. They stayed. They said the things you say to someone who is suffering and needs to keep going: that the top exists, that it is closer than it feels, that the legs will carry you if you let them. I do not know if I would have finished without them. I am glad I did not have to find out.
The Summit — And the Cramps
I made it to the top.
And then, almost immediately, my legs cramped.
The kind of cramp that is not a warning — it is an announcement. Everything tightened at once: the heat, the sustained effort, the litres of sweat the body had spent over hours of climbing in Mallorcan sun, the sheer power output of Sa Calobra after two climbs and a long flat section before it. The electrolyte balance had been pushed to its limit and beyond.
Cramping after a major climb is not a failure of preparation — it is a reminder that the body is not a machine and that conditions like extreme heat, cumulative sweat loss and hours of high-intensity effort will eventually extract their price regardless of how well you planned. Salt tablets and electrolyte drinks help. But there are days when Sa Calobra simply takes what it wants from you.
I stretched. I drank. I waited for the legs to remember they were still needed.
The Glucose at the Summit
Look at my Dexcom trace for that day and you can read the entire ride in one image.
The deep drop visible. By the time I reached the summit, my glucose was at its lowest point of the day. And then — as you can see clearly in the trace — the sharp rebound upward. The spike that hits somewhere around 300 mg/dL. This is expected physiology, not a management error: carbohydrate intake at the summit combined with reduced muscular glucose uptake as the effort paused, plus the body's own glucoregulatory response to the previous low. The liver releases glucose, the muscles momentarily stop pulling it at the same rate, and the number goes up quickly.
The challenge then is managing the descent and the remaining kilometres with glucose that has spiked and needs to come back down — while also being very, very tired, and still having 50 kilometres left to ride.
The 50 km Home — And the Second Drop
The climb was done. The summit was ours.
But the ride was not finished.
And here — look at the Dexcom trace in the late afternoon section — you can see the second significant drop. This one arrived with the accumulated exhaustion of the full day. The legs were still turning. The glucose was less cooperative.
This is something experienced T1D athletes know and less experienced ones sometimes get caught by: the crash that arrives not at the hardest moment, but in the quieter kilometres afterwards. When the adrenaline of the big challenge has passed, when the effort is technically over, when the body finally lets its guard down and the glucose follows. The combination of Sport Mode doing its work on the previous spike, the ongoing muscular demand of 50 more kilometres, and simple fatigue conspired to bring it down again.
I fuelled. I managed through it. And eventually — after what felt like a very long final stretch back towards Alcudia — we arrived.
110.8 km. 2,084 m. Personal Record. 🏆
The Evening
There is a particular kind of evening that only exists after a day like Sa Calobra.
Everything hurts in a specific, satisfied way. The kind of pain that is not injury but achievement. Conversation over dinner is louder than usual. Everyone has a story from the climb. Everyone remembers a different hairpin, a different moment at which they thought about stopping.
We shared food and stories and something that is hard to name precisely — the warmth that comes from having suffered together and come out the other side of it.
Spa. Drinks. Sleep that arrived the moment my head touched the pillow.
T1D Takeaways
Buffet breakfast discipline is part of race preparation. Overeating at breakfast because the ride is long is one of the most common T1D training camp mistakes. Protein and fat first, controlled carbohydrates, and respect for a good morning glucose reading. The foundation you set at breakfast affects everything that happens on the bike.
40g CHO per hour is a good reference point for long mixed-intensity efforts. Rotating between gels, bananas and protein bars allows you to manage both speed of delivery and duration of effect. You want fast carbohydrate available when you need it, and slower release sustaining you between efforts.
Accumulated fatigue amplifies glucose sensitivity. Hour four is not hour one. Increase your fuelling frequency in the later hours of a long ride, not just at the obviously hard sections.
The rebound after a summit low is physiology, not failure. Do not overcorrect a post-climb spike aggressively when you still have kilometres to ride. The second drop is more dangerous than the first.
Cramps happen. Especially in heat, after hours of effort, on a climb like Sa Calobra. Electrolytes and salt intake during the ride help reduce the risk — but some days the body simply reaches its limit and you have to manage through it.
The mental load of a climb you have never finished is real. It counts as part of the training. And the people who stay beside you through it are worth more than any data point.
Final Data
To know more about my challenges and my day to day diabetes management:
Instagram: @glucofit360
Instagram: @elecampagnoli
Eleonora Campagnoli on Strava
📖 My Book: Nutrition and Sport with Diabetes — Santelli Editore (all proceeds to charity)
Contact: campagnolieleonora95@gmail.com
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