I am delighted to report that I managed to drag my sorry carcass all the way around the E'tape yesterday. It wasn't pretty, it certainly was painful and yes I did shed a tear or two - but in happiness rather than in pain (I think, the emotions were becoming somewhat indistinguishable by the end).
We arrived in Pau on Friday morning to a very hot day, 35 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I suffer in the heat, my performance drops right off and I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it around the course if it remained this hot - but it was forecast to get cooler by Sunday (though not quite as cool as it actually got...). The hotel we were in was stunning, with views out of my bedroom window onto the still snow capped Pyrenees. My low resolution pic from my phone (attached) doesn't really do the picture postcard view justice. Unfortunately the downside of having this view was that when I lay down on my bed to relax and try and take my mind off the task ahead all I could see were a bunch of nasty jagged looking peaks right ahead, two of which we had to climb - this did not help the nerves....
We arrived in Pau on Friday morning to a very hot day, 35 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I suffer in the heat, my performance drops right off and I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it around the course if it remained this hot - but it was forecast to get cooler by Sunday (though not quite as cool as it actually got...). The hotel we were in was stunning, with views out of my bedroom window onto the still snow capped Pyrenees. My low resolution pic from my phone (attached) doesn't really do the picture postcard view justice. Unfortunately the downside of having this view was that when I lay down on my bed to relax and try and take my mind off the task ahead all I could see were a bunch of nasty jagged looking peaks right ahead, two of which we had to climb - this did not help the nerves....
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Also staying in the hotel and on the same ride was Hugh Dennis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Dennis, I sat over the dinner table from him on both Friday and Saturday night, along with around a dozen or so other cyclists, all of them English, all of them really nice.
Saturday was spent popping over to the sign-in village, putting my bike together and taking it for a quick spin. Everyone was very nervy by this stage, a lot of people (myself included) were clearly quite on edge about the task ahead. None were as nervy however as the crowd of 20 or so people in some of the other hotels who came out on Friday morning but there was no room on the plane for their bikes, nor on the Friday afternoon flight, nor Friday evening... nor Saturday morning or afternoon - their bikes finally arrived at the hotels at 2.30am on Sunday morning, they then had to build them (usually around a 30 to 45 minute job) and then try and get an hour or two sleep before getting to the start line for 6.30am. Their plight alas was worsened by a huge thunderstorm which came over at 3.30am, waking the entire town up and deluging it for an hour. I felt really really sorry for that bunch of 20 people, what a horrible way to prepare for a race. Even worse, one of the 20 only got a few miles into the race when someone piled into the back of him, smashing his bike into bits in the resulting crash. End of race. Horrible.
So Sunday morning arrives and oh boy is it cooler... some 30 degrees cooler... Bearing in mind this was the south of France in July, the weather was akin to one of those really miserable English October days - thick cloud, persistent rain, around 12 degrees in Pau, down to about 5 degrees at the top of the mountains. We set off from the hotel at 6am for our brief ride to the start line, passing three cyclists from Costa Rica - we could hear their teeth chattering uncontrollably already - god knows how much they must have suffered in the mountains later on. There were a good scattering of people there from Brasil, Columbia, New Zealand and of course continental Europe, along with around 1,000 British riders. Not many of the other riders seemed overly amused with the weather... Personally I was entirely happy, I much prefer (cycling in) the rain to the sun but it seemed that my view was shared by precisely none of the other riders.
The atmosphere at the start was fantastic, a bunch of 7,500 cycles, all penned up raring to go, standing there in the early morning darkness getting more than a little bit wet. The start was at 7am and we were released in groups of 1,000, I was in the 2,000-3,000 group (random, apart from the seeded riders at the front) and crossed the line at 7.05. The "sweeper van" started at 7.40, so I had a 35 minute head start from the van of doom. The final group apparently crossed the line at 7.30 - that would have been scary - get a puncture or other small problem and that's it, you're gone, not enough time to fix it.
The first 100k were a nice blast through the countryside and several villages / towns, including Lourdes, with a couple of small climbs (300m and 500m altitude) to slow you down. It's a shame though that there wasn't the time or ability to look around, all the time being spent concentrating on riding and what was going on with other cyclists around you - the idea being to get as close as possible to the bike in front to slipstream them, but then you've got to be ultra aware of what's going on in your vicinity as any small problem can quickly wipe out the whole group.
The sweeper van sets off at a predetermined pace - fast on the flat, slow on the hills etc, the times are published in advance so I knew what needed to be done. I also knew that to maintain the 35 minute gap I had to maintain a pace which was right at the top end of my scale, around 17.5mph average for 3.5 hours, including the two small hills. Sure enough when I got to the base of Tourmalet I was a little below this and the van had made about 5 or 10 minutes on me, so it was still a little touch at this stage and go and I was still pretty nervy. I was however still feeling pretty strong at his stage, the sessions in the gym and the many hours on the road paying dividends. I figured that for every mile of this race I'd done 15 miles in training and a further hour in the gym in either Spin or Pump. I knew if I failed to finish I would never try again - not because I could not have trained harder but that I wasn't willing to sacrifice personal / family life more than I had already done in order to train even harder next time around.
The crowds in the villages were fantastic. Not quite the 100,000 who have apparently turned up in previous years, the miserable weather put pay to that, but the ones who were there cheered and clapped us all through, made me feel really proud and bought a tear to my eye more than once with the realization that they would give up their Sunday morning to go and get wet and miserable on a street corner to cheer a a bunch of amateur cyclists though their village. Very humbling.
All the way up to the base of Tourmalet the group was quite chatty but it was very noticeable that the mood changed as we neared the foothills, becoming almost silent as people focused on the task ahead. So we take a sharp right turn and that's it, onto the Tourmalet, one of the legendary Tour climbs and up which the Tour riders will go next weekend (they will do virtually the same route as we did, albeit they cut out 13km somewhere). I've done mountains before, last year in the Alps, so I knew I could climb them but there's a subtle but important difference - Alpine ascents tend to be hairpinned i.e. they zig-zag up the mountain - so the average gradient is lower but the distance greater to reach the same altitude, they can also have small flat sections to give you some brief respite. Pyrenean ascents however (or at least both Tourmalet and Hautacam) are one long road, forging it's way ever upwards - the climb is relentless, 2 hours just plugging away painfully in the lowest gear you've got. You're legs cry out for the little flat section for a tiny break but it never comes, it just goes up and up and up. As we gained altitude we went into the cloud base and the rain (which had relented a little by then, thankfully) turned to a misty dank drizzle. I found it hard to believe that in July in the South of France here I was wearing almost full winter kit. I though was the lucky one, many people had only taken their summer cycling shirt and by then were sporting a rather fetching bin liner in a desperate attempt to keep the rain out and heat in. Everyone was totally silent now, the only noise being the occasional clicking of gears.
Megan who was also staying in the hotel (and who I knew already, we only found out a few days before the event that we were both doing the event, and both staying in the same hotel - spooky eh?) introduced me to the delights of Red Tonic http://www.overstims.com/int_produit.php?id=13&lang=eng which is basically a massive dose of caffeine in a small gel tube. I took one of those at the base of Tourmalet and it certainly cleared my head (climbing a mountain to me is more of a mental thing than a physical thing) and gave me a little lift. I definitely wasn't the quickest up the mountain and it was a long slow and miserable grind up through the clouds but finally I made it. The views from the top are apparently spectacular but alas our visiblity was around 30 metres at best. Checking on the pace of the sweeper van I also knew I'd gained at least 30 minutes on it up the mountain and so by then barring either physiological or equipment failure I knew I was going to make it to the end. My mood then lifted considerably, from nervously fretting about the ride and what might go wrong, whether I might get eliminated etc to one of almost exhausted euphoria. Another tear was shed when I knew I should be able to finish the whole ride.
So we've already established that I'm a reasonable but not great cruiser on the flat and a pretty crappy climber but on the descent I found my true calling. I was helped I think by my lovely waterproof jacket and proper gloves, keeping both my body and hands warm - almost everyone else complained of the cold (if you get cold hands you lose feel of the brakes, and that's pretty terminal going down a mountain...) but I was lovely and toasty. The descent was about 35km in total, about 15km coming sharply down the mountain then 20km down along the valley. I must have passed hundreds and hundreds of other cyclists in that 30 minute descent, it was a fantastic adrenalin rush flying down a mountain at just shy of 50mph, not even turning the pedals, flying past other people.
And so we arrive at the base of Hautacam, just 13km now between us and the end. Unfortunately it's a pretty nasty 13km, a long relentless grim slog on already tired legs. I was also getting quite spaced out by now (it often happens to me once body salts and sugars are depleted etc). I downed a second red tonic but to no real effect this time. I was sufficiently spaced to have a chat with Megan part way up the mountain (we had bumped into each other at the bottom and had a quick chat so I knew she was somewhere nearby) except that I then find out over the dinner table that it wasn't Megan after all, it was some completely random girl who had just overtaken me. Poor lass must have thought I was being rather overfamiliar "have a great one, see you at the top...".
I had stopped two or three times going up Tourmalet (stopped, but not walked) and with my mood lifted and being more relaxed I wondered if I could make up all the way up Hautacam without stopping. By now there was a constant string of people walking up the side of the road and I was grimly determined not to join them. A few of them put a smile on my face, there they were with their hand built bikes and their freshly shaven legs - but my friend, you are walking, I'm still pedaling... by that stage of the proceedings every little distraction to take your mind off the pain for a moment helps a little bit.
Psychologically I find it easier to climb a mountain when I can't see the top and once again we were soon up in the clouds and this helped even more, grinding away km after km, all in the lowest gear, knowing the top was up there somewhere but not being able to see the people miles and miles ahead of me on the road ahead. Without getting too personal it was about 5km from the top that I noticed that my butt was hurting - my shorts had got so wet and then with the effort being put into the climb I had rubbed the skin off great patches of my bum. I can assure you this is not a pleasant experience either then or now, 24 hours later.
And so after 8 hours and 45 minutes I finally made it, the pain was over. I had guessed before the race that if I managed to finish I'd do it in around 8 or 9 hours so I was pretty spot on there and almost everyone in the hotel also finished in around the 8.5 to 9 hour mark, apart from one who (also his first Etape) did it in 7.30 - a truly fantastic achievement.
So I finished a full 90 minutes ahead of the dreaded sweeper van. On my decent back down Hautacam (it is a dead end, so they split the road into two, so you descend back down and watch the other riders struggle up - that's sorta fun in a sadistic sense) I saw the sweeper van - with one guy just 10 metres in front of it, giving it his all. I'd love to think he kept it at bay all the way to the top but I doubt he made it, he still had 10km (or around 1.5 hours) to go, but I've never seen a look of such determination on anyones face before.
So overall of the 7,500 riders, the first guy made it round in 5 hours 38 mins which is just shy of Tour standard. I reckon he finished an entire mountain ahead of me... I finished in 4,748th place. Around 20% of the starters were eliminated (less than previous years where it's been up to 40%) and I am so so proud to say that I wasn't one of them. Today, well my back hurts, my neck hurts, my knees hurt, my butt REALLY hurts and I feel totally drained and fatigued but I also am in possession of a nice shiny medal to say that I've done (and finished) a leg of the Tour de France which makes up for all the pain both on the day itself and in training over the last nine months.
Attached are some photos of me on various parts of the course. They don't really convey properly just how miserable the weather was, just how wet through I was or just how hard I was trying to keep the pedals turning but hopefully they will give some sense of the day.
Chris.
