This day was going to be an epic day, it is currently 1930 and PC and Ingun still haven't finished, all the German riders are in. Today would have been another 150 km and 3,900 meters of elevation gain. My legs would n or be able to handle it.
The disqualifies me for the Raid Pyrenees Randomee, but I still saw some beautiful scenery, and worked with Andrew to get the bike road worthy.c
We started the day with a visit to a bike shop to get handle as and a new stem. I France, this isn't' taste easy as it sounds. The shop should of opened at 9:00, we were there, but the manager didn't open until 9:30. Then they spend 20 minutes moving bike outside for display. Finally we were invited in to look around. We waited while they had their coffee. Finally we got someone's attention. Andrew explained what we needed, he went in the back and came back with aluminum handle bars as we requested. When we asked the price he disappeared for about 15 minutes. Got the price and asked for a stem. Finally got the price for the parts (100 euros), paid and we were on our way. Andrew explained that this was the French way.
Today I rode with Andrew to support the riders. About 30 km into the ride they reached the peak of Col de Marie Blanque, this was probably the steepest climb for the day, peaking at 13%, but was much shorter than the others.
The next climb started "up" after 47 km to Col d'Aubisque at an altitude of 1,709 meters, this has goes uphill for 25 km.
We met the riders at the top of each climb and had two lunch breaks between the climbs (they burned a lot of calories).
The final climb was to Col de Tourmalet (2,115 m). The climb started at about 100 km and went up for 35km. After the two prior climbs everyone said their legs felt like lead on the last 2 km of this climb. Fortunately the final 20 km were down hill.
This is called the "giant" a larger than life size cyclists.
Tomorrow I plan on riding 163 km with 2,700 vertical meters of climbing, should be a piece of cake.
No comments:
Post a Comment