God I love riding. This was an epic day. Poor old Mike did all the work up the Col du Telegraphe, but I was Menchoving so well that day, when he flicked his elbow, all he got was cold, steely Russian “Nyet”. Hhahaa.
Anyway, it was all high-larious up the Galibier then I wacked the gas on.
We awoke in the presence of divinity. The run was rising over Chamonix and its glaciers and it was just amazing. Like, TOTALLY AMAZING AND HUMBLING AND GROUNDING.
We drove to St Michel de Maurienne and then headed straight up the Col du Telegraphe, which is a really tough little climb up to I think 1570m. There is good coffee at the top.
After a very tough drive down, we arrived in St Jean de Maurienne, which is the base of the start of the climbs of all the Grands Cols (Galibier, Croix de Fer, Iseran etc), see below. It’s not though, a very nice town. Very industrial, stuff shuts early. It’s probably worth staying up the road at St Michel de Maurienne, or even better, Bourg d’Oisons and attacking Glandon+Croix de Fer, Alpe D’Huez and Galibier from that side. I’ll get a google map mashup done which shows the best places to attack climbs from.
After an horrible sleep – humid, mosquitos – we woke again without pressure to get up a hill for Le Tour – a CRACKING Hautes Alpes day – no wind and stinging hot sun at 8AM – a nice change from the gale force winds experienced over the last 3 days. We spun into Le Bourg d’Oisons for coffee and a croissant avec confiture. For a really solid coffee check out the cafe opposite the Hotel de Milan.
We headed off toward the Col d’Iseran (see below) as we were planning on getting to Bourg d’Oisans to attach the Alpe D’Huez and the only way to do that was over the cols in the wind (d’Iseran @ ~2600m or Telegraphe @ 1570m). Given the wind we could go all the way around into Italy near Bardonecchia or via Grenoble, both via very expensive tollways. We ended going via Italy which included an ~AUD$80 (€44) trip via the Tunnel de Frejus which passes for I think 31km under the Alps. It was hardly worth it as the traffic was horrendous at the toll booths. Most of the paying lanes were closed which pissed me off. What a waste. As it turns out, passing over the 1570m Col du Telegraphe would have been quicker and way more economical.
Woke after a big sleep still very, very fatigued. The 3 Ventoux climbs, L’Etape, Col du Petite St Bernard and poor dietary profile (no protein) had created a serious kilojoule deficit and leg muscles was suffering badly. All the Heineken in the world couldn’t mask the damage I was doing (it appears multiple Heinekens is actually counterproductive – who’d have thunk-ed?!).
Today I woke VERY sore after L’Etape. We had (what I thought was) a piffling little 12k climb (oops – 32km) up to the final Col of Stage 16 – the Cat 1 Col du Petite St Bernard. I decided to drag my full camera kit up – DSLR body, 1 L telephoto lense, wide angle, flash, change of clothes….see below for how ridiculous I am.
We eventually hit the first climb which broke everyone up. People cracked almost immediately – why they headed out so hard was beyond me. 170km in the southern France heat is a long, long way. The ride had some decent climbs including a tough one into Sault. I took off on that one just to test the legs. Sault is a nice little village and everyone was out. I stopped for water but some dudes charged through (clearly serious about their time).
After having camped up at free parking-only camping at the main camp ground in Bedoin, we headed for breakfast at the Hotel de Relais in the main drag in Bedoin and had very good coffee. We started off trying cafe au lait, trying to get all latte-like, but the French don’t have a bar of that. It’s noisettes (espressos), or cafe (black) or I ask for cafe with creme.
