The final build up and the big day!

(The story so far… By now, I’m in Pau ready for the race on Sunday. It’s Friday lunchtime.)

I decided to go out with the local guide and the guys from the Cyclomondo tour. There were about 20 of us and the start was a very gentle warm up – perfect, I thought. Then we hit the hills,..
I was clearly the slowest and was immediately dropped off the back. Everybody waited at the top of the climb, and then it was descent and climb. The weather was beautiful and the views of the Pyrennes in the distance were stunning. We did around 35 miles or so in about 2.5 hours — it was a good workout although I was getting embarassed by making everyone wait by the end. Fred from Reading hunted me down when I lost the back of the peleton coming in to Pau, and we made our way back to the hotel.
After we got back, we went up to the ‘Etape village’ at the Hippodrome and registered, got our freebie rucksacks & T-shirts and timing chips. We wandered around the village and then back to the hotel. In total, about 50 miles of training which was perfect.
Dinner was good, a short walk away and then it was a good night’s rest.

The next morning, I decided that I would do the ‘easy’ loop that had been suggested for the afternoon. I had been having a few problems with software for the Garmin so I spent some time working out a couple of processes for quickly downloading routes from www.bikeroutetoaster.com and www.mapmyride.com. Once I got them downloaded, I was having problems uploading them to the Garmin. In the end, I had to do a ‘hard reset’ to get the routes to download OK. It was working well, so I downloaded the afternoon’s route which was about 35 miles.
At about mid-day, I set off. The first thing I discovered was that Gerard’s idea of ‘easy’ and mine were somewhat different. While there were no mountains, there were lots of hills. I took it very easily to avoid getting the heart rate up, but that meant the ride took a long time In contrast to the Friday run, it was cool and eventually rainy. It was a longer ride than ideal and my rear derailleur was playing up by the end, so when I got back to Pau, I went up to the Hippodrome and the guys from Mavic sorted the problem out.
Fred had spoken highly of his measurement with Cyclefit – and the shoe beds that he got from them. I had seen that they were offering these at the event, and as my shoes have developed an uncomfortable area on the left foot, I thought I might try some. However €100 for a par of insoles seemed a little rich!!! I was tempted by a special offer on clear glasses, as I only had dark lenses with me, but the deal wasn’t quite good enough.
The Garmin started to play up – I suspected that water had got in during the ride, so I left it in the fan output of my notebook to try to dry it out. However, it still wouldn’t work reliably, although I did get it charged.
Anyway, back to the hotel and dinner. Each night was a different restaurant and the food gradually got worse over the trip. On the Saturday evening, there was indeed ‘endless pasta’, but the service was very poor. Still, we certainly ‘carb loaded’.
When I got back to the hotel, I got everything ready for the morning. The bike cases had been taken earlier and baggage was due to be taken on the Sunday morning.
I slept really badly – a combination of stress and overeating. At one point I had a nightmare that I had had to return to the UK for a family emergency and then couldn’t get back in time for the start. Fortunately, it was only a nightmare, but I woke in a panic…
Race Day
Breakfast was at 5.00 and I really wasn’t hungry, but, somehow, I forced some food down
Then we left the hotel about 5.45 for the start and got to the starting pens about 6.00. The organisation of the Etape is brutal and the organisers said that anyone arriving after 6.30 would not be allowed into the pens to start.
The organisation was amazing. There were huge wired ‘pens’ of riders, 1,000 at a time in columns. It seemed that fast riders were in the first 1000-2000, but other numbers seemed distributed fairly randomly. I was 6257 and the early arrival meant I was near the front of the 6,000s. At 7.00 precisely, the first pen was opened and the first 1,000 started to move out through the start gate and over the timing system.
It took until 7.20 to get to our ‘pen’ and we were away. I had taken a bottle of sports drink to carb load again and left this at the start.
Off we went and almost immediately it started to rain. Being early it was fairly cold as well – I already had my rain jacket on as well as arm warmers. Sadly, the Garmin could not be revived. I think it has had its day, which is sad.
It was fantastic to ride through Pau on closed roads and peletons were forming all over the place. After a kilometre or so, I found myself behind a couple of girls that were going at just the same pace. They tucked in behind a couple of guys that were riding togeher and I tacked on the back. The pace felt fast, although I didn’t have my Garmin so had no way to check my heart rate or speed. I felt as though I wasn’t pushing too hard, but was going well. Lots of really fast riders were passing us, with plenty of club peletons, The gruppo stayed together for around 15-20km, but eventually broke up – I think the girls stopped to take their waterproof tops off. That was a bad move as it started to rain again almost immediately!
About an hour in, an Irish guy asked if he could ride with me, but he couldn’t even hold my pace and told me that he was really tired. There’s no way he was even going to get up the first hills, let alone Tourmalet.
I felt good on the first hills, although there was a fairly horrible ‘traffic jam’ at Rebenac that forced everybody to walk. The guys that were going for fast times were getting very frustrated!
Anyway, things were fairly uneventful, and I felt as though I was making good progress. After about three hours, I got to the food stop at Lourdes and made the mistake of checking the schedule. It looked as though I was already past the elimination time! Maybe the organisers allowed for the time in the traffic jam, as nobody was stopping anybody and there were lots of riders still coming in. However, it did put me into a state of fear. (on checking this when I got back, it looked as though I escaped by just a couple of minutes at that stage)
During the fourth hour, I really upped the pace and tried to hold my place in peletons, chasing wheels and getting into groups whenever possible. That was a fast hour, almost certainly the fastest hour I have had on a bike, although I still felt that I was below my LT. Finally the road started to tip up as we headed for Tourmalet, with the rain still coming down. The start of the climb was not marked as far as I could see, but the gradient gradually picked up.
Soon there was no question that we were on the climb and I realised that the fast pace had definitely had an effect on my power. However, for the first few kilometres, I made good progress. I caught the back wheel of one frenchman, but we were going very slow and no harm was done, as far as either of us could tell. Fairly early on the climb we passed a hotel. I found myself wondering if they had a nice dry warm bed – after all, I had a credit card with me!
Gradually, the clouds got closer and soon the rain was replaced by cloud. It was still wet and very cold. There were still a lot of kilometres to go and the legs were starting to lose power, my pace dropped. It got to the point where I was only barely able to move forward. Somebody fell off just behind me and I stopped. I got a minute or two of rest as I checked he was OK and when I started the pain in my back and shoulders had eased a lot.
It’s strange, the legs weren’t hurting but my back and shoulders really did. Occasionally getting out of the saddle eased things for a little while. The idea of stopping seemed an increasingly attractive proposition! I decided that as the pain wasn’t getting worse and I had survived so far, then there was no reason not to keep going, Some were starting to fall by the wayside and simply give up, either going back down the mountain or just waiting to be picked up.
There were photographers out and there are some pix here.
The Great Escape
After what felt like an age, I got to the feed station at La Mongie. A guy thrust a sandwich in my hand and it started to go down well. Just nearby a lady was saying that those that had finished at that point could go to a bus. I filled a bottle with water and sports drink and then realised that the lady was working her way towards me. I heard someone say that they didn’t want to stop, but she made it clear that this wasn’t an option – this was elimination time. There was no way I planned to be hauled in at that point, so I leapt (well relatively) onto the bike and set off for the last 4k or so towards the summit of the Tourmalet.
However, just outside the feed area there was a barrier across the road. There were people at the barrier stopping riders from going through. Arguments were taking place between riders that wanted to go on and the officials.
There was no way I wanted to stop, so when someone squeezed through a gap in the barrier, I was on his wheel and, relatively anyway, sprinted off up the hill. Actually the next kilometre or so went very well. I had good pace and went past quite a few others. However, soon I weakened and it was just sheer bloody mindedness that got me to the top. I stopped once or twice just to ‘catch my breath’. There was a timing station about a kilometre short of the summit and that was still working. It was great to hear the beep as I went over (although it’s not clear at the time of writing whether I will be able to get a record of the time at that point)
I fully expected to be stopped at the summit and not be allowed to descend. However, there was no barrier and although some seemed to be giving up, the police at the top didn’t try to stop us.
The descent was horrible. The visibility didn’t seem to be much more than 30-40m at most so I was on the brakes all the time. If I had thought it was cold on the way up, the relative lack of effort allied to the windchill and wet clothes made it absolutely freezing on the way down. I took it reasonably carefully. Someone that obviously knew the descent went flying past me at one point and for a couple of kilometres I managed to follow an ambulance down – the blue flashing lights really helped to see what was coming up. Unfortunately, we got to an uphill section and I couldn’t stay with it.
The descent was horrible even when I got below the cloud layer – it was so cold I had to stop a couple of times to restore the feeling in my fingers and to stop shaking – I was worried I would lose control of the bike. Several times I wondered if it would not have been better to allow myself to go in the bus.
Out of the clouds
Towards the bottom, the route swung through some little villages and everyone seemed to have come out to cheer. It really gave a sense of how fantastic it must be to do such a descent in the real Tour. I’ve never been to a mountain stage to watch, but I think I’d like to now!
Finally, I got to the bottom of the last climb to Hautacam. I had hoped to recover on the descent and had to a very limited extent, but at the base of the climb they were stopping everyone and not allowing anyone to go up to the top. So that was the end of my race. Eliiminated just 20km short. Having said that, most of those 20kms were with a tough gradient uphill, so I doubt that I would have got even half way.
Cyclomundo had a gite rented very close to the bottom and there was a warm drink and loads of food. It was great to tuck into some good food at last….
I called Yvette and gave her the news. Already I was thinking about next year. I couldn’t let the Etape beat me!
After recovering for half an hour or so, I went down to the village to hand in my transponder. I saw Nigel from the Farnborough club. He got round in just over 8 hours so it was definitely a tough event. We agreed it was significantly harder than the Dragon ride.
I set out for the hotel at Lourdes. This was around 10-12km away and it probably helped the legs to recover.
At the hotel it was almost dinner time. I showered, which was great and got changed into clean clothes. What a joy! I didn’t dare lie on the bed as I wouldn’t have woken up!
Despite the food just a couple of hours before, there was no problem with eating. The first beer of the evening was absolute nectar. The food at the hotel was very average, but the red wine was adequate and very cheap, so I ‘relaxed’ nicely and in good company. A couple of us ended in the bar for a nightcap. Or two.
I was the only one from the group at the hotel that got eliminated. Fred was just 15 minutes outside his target time for a gold – a really tough one as he probably lost ten minutes at the traffic jam. Another friend, Jack, broke his saddle on the descent and had to ride up Tourmalet ‘out of the saddle’.
I half thought about delaying the return home by a day so that I could have a go at Tourmalet, but in the end I decided that it was not a great idea. It wasn’t quite as cold and wet today, but I didn’t have clean riding gear etc.
In the end, I think I blame those that made me shave my legs for charity. Clearly, the insulation would have kept my legs warmer and I suspect some kind of ‘Samson’ effect.
The morning after…
This morning, I was woken by some people going to catch the 6.00am shuttle and didn’t get back to sleep again. So it was up for breakfast and to pack up the bike. I just about managed to get it into the box. I had a few aches, but nothing too bad, considering. Most of the people at the breakfast table still had tingling in their fingertips from the cold of the previous day!
I’m writing this on the TGV on the way to Bordeaux to catch the plane and looking forward to lunch – it’s amazing how hungry you get the day after a long ride!
So, the question is ‘Should I try again next year?’. No real question. I set out to do the Etape, and do it I will. I’ve started to understand quite how tough it is and so I’m going to have to really boost my speed and lose the last 10 pounds or so, I plan to see the physio again to get a test and a new training plan for the second half of the year. I’m going to have to get to the speed to hang with the ‘fast group’ at the club. If I can’t keep up with Nigel and his friends, I don’t think I’ll be able to do the Etape at all. I also need to build up my back and shoulder strength. Pilates is looking a good option, if I can find a class locally. I may also check out Cyclefit although if they tell me I have the wrong size bike, I’m in trouble! On the other hand, I might be able to get a new frame and transfer the hardware across. I’m generally happy with the Ultegra SL stuff on my Roubaix. That would limit the financial damage
I’ll have to get a new Garmin – I really can’t rely on the current one if it gets wet. I’ll probably just get an out of warranty replacement one from them, or even look for a new one if the price is right. I don’t think I’ll bother with the 705 yet – maybe next year.
Another question is whether to go with Cyclomundo next year. I probably will as the general organisation was pretty good. It was a shame that the food detiorated steadily over the four days, but the company was great and not having to worry about logistics was a real bonus.
Before the event, I thought that the professionals that will cover the course in four hours or so were very fit and strong, but now I’m in complete awe at what they do for three weeks on the Tour de France.
As they say in these parts, “Chapeau!’.
(Watch the professionals cover the same course in Stage 10 of the tour on Monday 14th July – a good day for the French!)

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