It's late, I'm tired, I have to get to bed. This is short and sweet--I'll come back and edit maybe on the next rest day. Today we started heading back west towards Biarritz over 8 days of riding. It was VERY windy today--the wind chill was sometimes a bit much, and it provided a few scares on some descents, but overall it was not as bad as I'd feared it might be when we first set out. At least it was DRY!
Wind most of the day 'til we got over the final pass and headed into Quillan.
SO, for now, here are a bunch of pictures, and the Relive.cc map thingy:
The longest day of the tour 128 miles, 8,700 feet. I got 130 miles and 8,425 feet. Garmin failed only once today. My Garmin anyway. You should hear everyone else's woes about their Garmins--from failing to battery life to navigation errors.
Tough, tough day. Second successive day of HR woes. Didn't feel as badly as the HR and the times I rode show. Max HR was 136. It was supposed to be a hit-or-miss thing with rain. It ended up raining for the first 2 hours, or so, and the last 3. A lot.
I had a flat about 20 miles from home. Changed it pretty quickly. In the rain. Allan stayed behind and dragged me in. We caught the rest of the group with just a couple of miles to go. I've been doing a lot of that, i.e. catching up with the group. I did that Day 1, and every day since, I think. It had been raining steadily for a long time by this point. We had been at the top of Col Fourtou for 15-20 mins and it was getting cold (mostly because I was so wet), and the descent back to sea level was a bit sketchy. Very foggy at the tip, twisty, and very very wet. It was really pretty miserable. My left eye started burning noticeably with about 10 miles to go and looked terrible this morning. Allan said that his eyes were burning, too. Road crap thrown up? Just the rain? Not sure. It's not quite so sensitive now, 15 hours later. I couldn't ride in Allan's slipstream because the rooster tail he was throwing up was more than I could handle. He stayed with me, though. One of the perks of being the organizer I guess.
The rain didn't let up on us, despite the fact we could see that it had dissipated where we'd just come from. Just our luck I guess.
I felt terrible Wednesday night, not sure if I was going to be able to keep food down. I never did throw up, but felt I could have at any time if I just thought about it. So I didn't. My thighs were KILLING me. It hurt to just touch them with my fingertip. The pedaling out of the saddle thing I mentioned in the Day 3 ride were worse Day 4. Excruciating.
Jeff Dux--a super cool guy from SFO and a friend of Allan's, shot this video. I'd taken a head start from the rest of the bunch, that's why I was alone. I don't know how to run it non-slo-mo. The climb was relatively benign, long but just 2.6% average gradient. It should have been a breeze--a lot like the road from Sutter Creek to Volcano. It wasn't fun, and the rain returned about 3/4 of the way up.
After the first climb, after the rain. We thought that we had seen all the rain for the day. Not quite.
Headed towards the intersection of D613 and D14--blurry, sorry about that.
You can just catch sight of Paul Randall (San Ramon) in the distance about to make the left turn.
No, you don't want to fall.
A religious site, l'Ermitage de Saint Antoine de Galamus, with a cave and a Virgin Mary. You can hike down to it, but we we didn't have equipment or time to go check it out.
I did NOT get the room with the huge sauna in the middle. Fine hotel, good restaurant though the smoking patrons outside on the patio managed to get their smoke from outside to inside thanks to some strategically opened/closed windows and doors.
On tap--97 miles and 5,700 feet. Per my Garmin (which crapped out twice today as described in an earlier post) I did 98 miles and 5,351 feet. This was a so-called "easy" day and, by the statistics, it is/was. Still 100 miles is 100 miles. And it wasn't flat. So, yeah, it wasn't an easy day per se. But compared to what's to come this was as easy as it gets. It was a good ride, felt ok. Pulled some. As I mentioned in the Day 2 entry, however, only afterwards did I notice that my max HR was just 135--I thought I'd worked harder than that along the way. I'm not sure how you restore the norm without rest, which we'll do Friday--for one day. Not sure one day of every four will cut it.
It was a nice looking hotel from outside, the rooms were very outdated and need some sprucing up.
I was nervous at the start of the day, not quite sure how I'd be feeling. Given the pace we were riding, I felt fine and thought everything was good. I didn't have too much trouble keeping up. I wasn't dropped. . . much. The group never had to wait more than a couple of minutes. And I keep up fine on shorter, punchier climbs, fine on flats and descents.
Decent hotel, so-so food--I can't get enough food. It had AC--that was welcome. Smoking isn't allowed indoors, but they can smoke within any distance from an entry. So they sit them just outside the door, with the door open, and a door open at the other end of the building so, naturally, the smoke comes indoors and we may as well have indoor smoking.
Not sleeping well at all. Wake up every night at 3 or 4, have trouble getting back to sleep--or I don't go back to sleep at all.
My thighs are extremely sore. The sorest I've ever felt them. You're supposed to back off when muscle tissue has been damaged like that, so it can regenerate/recover. I can't do that. Standing up to pedal is almost useless. I stand up and my thighs tell me to sit back down. I can't get the respite I'm looking for and my awesome amounts of power cannot be called upon.
Grotte du Mas d'Azil--they've built a road through it. If you can spot it there is a little deck right above the middle of the opening that they use for bungee jumping. No jumpers this day.
Col d'Aubisque was tougher than I remember from 2006. Am I just forgetting? Or is it because I'm older. . . ?
No Garmin crap outs today. A minor miracle.
I used to think I was a pretty good climber. This group of guys is pretty deep. I was feeling somewhat discouraged most of the way up the Aubisque. I did better for much of the rest of the day, but once the road heads upwards for more than, say, 1/4 mile, I'm not able to keep up. Maybe I'm just as fast as I ever was--and they're just faster, simple as that. It took me almost 90 minutes to get to the top--about 10.4 miles and 3,900 feet. Kind of middle-of-the-road. I felt OK, it wasn't too hard and I was alone virtually the entire climb so it was very beautiful.
Today's Friday, our rest day in Collioure on the Mediterranean coast. We've ridden across the Pyrenean foothills in 4 days. Now, starting tomorrow, 8 riding days back (plus another "rest" day). I have been meaning to update with the daily goings on. Day 2 was Tuesday--we got into Mane and it was kind of late, then dinner, then crappy wifi--a pretty common problem so far. I thought it would be easy to make wifi phone calls. It's easy to make the call, but the person I'm calling (my wife!) can't hear me. I can hear her but she can't hear me. It's a bit frustrating. Oh. . . to finish the thought. . . I've simply not had the time or the energy to update every day. Plus as I get writing I get to thinking, "what a bunch of crap, nobody wants to read this." It's difficult to write well.
So. . . here's the day two report. It was hard from the start with Aubisque. I finished well, descended well, aided in the pace lines. It was a good day overall. The group sticks together pretty well on these stages. We'll see how things go when the big climbs start on 9/2.
The Mane hotel was so-so. Old, but most places are. No AC, bad wifi. Poor food--not lousy, just OK and not nearly enough for what we're doing. I end up finishing the rides and downing 2 beers, make a sandwich, snag what I can from the coolers, and then wait for dinner. I have no idea how I'm doing with calories. I have a feeling I'm behind but I have no real way of telling. There are no scales to keep track of weight. I do eat better during the rides thanks to the frequent presence of the support van. Nevertheless, I can tell I'm fatigued or, rather, I can tell that my body's not recovering great since days 1 and 2 my HR was approaching 160 at peak--good for me and a sign I'm going well. The last two days the max has been 136. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. It doesn't bode well for the climbs to come. Not that I won't be able to finish them, or do them, but that everyone will have to wait for me (we tend to re-group at the summits--actually, we've been very good at that and the condition of the group as a whole is very good).
Headed towards Laruns and the base of the Aubisque.
Headed up into that. . . .
At the summit of Col d'Aubisque
After cresting the Aubisque, there's a bit of downhill before continuing on to Soulor. This is looking towards Soulor.
On D938 in, or near, Mauvezin-See if the link, below, works:
Uh. . . cows. On the road between Aubisque and Soulor summits
Sheep are out there if you enlarge the photo enough. You can hear their little bells from a long way off. Sheep are cool. Didn't manage to see any flocks crossing the road with their shepherds. Maybe on the way back.
