7500 starters from 8500 entrants brave a cold and wet start to the 2008 Etape du Tour. I'm in there, somewhere...
Image scanned from the special Etape edition of La République des Pyrénées newspaper
The forbidding Col du Tourmalet was introduced to the Tour de France in 1910 when Tour organiser Henri Desgrange, under pressure to liven up the Tour, sent Alphonse Steines to investigate the feasibility of cyclists actually riding over the great passes in the Pyrenees.
By most accounts, Steines surveyed the Tourmalet when it was covered in snow. He struggled over the summit after abandoning his chauffeured car because of snow drifts, was nearly lost in the dark as night fell, but made it - only just - to the village of Barèges where he was welcomed by incredulous villagers, forewarned by his astute chauffeur who had driven a flatter route.
The next day, Steines sent his famous telegram to Desgrange: "Crossed Tourmalet. Very good road. Perfectly practicable. Steines."
98 years later, 8500 enthusiastic cyclists had a go at climbing the Tourmalet as part of the 2008 Etape du Tour, a 169km course from Pau to the mountaintop resort of Hautacam. I was one of those riders, and this is my story.
Sunday, July 6, 2008. It was a dark and stormy night. The rain eased off a bit by dawn, but it was still wet, cold and miserable at the start line. I assembled there with the 7500 other riders that turned up (out of 8500 registrants), waiting for the 7am start.
The first 100km were brilliant. I warmed up rapidly and bombed along in bunch after bunch of riders determined to put some distance between them and the broom wagon. Time after time I found myself in a paceline doing a good 38-40kph but my heart rate was still in that safe zone where I can ride for hours. The first two climbs, both of them rated category 3, were moderately challenging. The descents were ... unusual. I'm normally a slow and careful descender, but I found myself passing heaps of even slower and more careful descenders. Yay!
It took just 3 hours and 15 minutes to crank out the first 100km, which brings us to the base of the Tourmalet and the end of the good news. Before I start my rant, let's hear from Robert Mackey of the NY Times, who had a positive take on the day. See his trip report for a great writeup.
The ride was really an epic experience, in large part due to the horrible weather. It was rainy and cold throughout, particularly on the way up both of the big climbs, to the Col du Tourmalet about 60 miles in, and then to Hautacam at the end. [...] I was hoping to climb the mountains while being able to see them, and to descend them on dry roads, but, given that the weather in the Pyrenees is often a factor in mountain stages of the Tour de France, in a way this was probably the most appropriate way to ride the course.
He also took some informative pictures to illustrate the contrast. This is the view we were hoping to see from Tourmalet:
This is the view we actually saw:
Tourmalet destroyed me. The cold and wet conditions sapped all the energy I had stored for the entire remainder of the race. At the food stop in La Mongie, it was so foggy and cold that I only stopped for long enough to claw my way through the line for water, racing to get back on the bike so I could keep generating heat.
A soggy but enthusiastic crowd were gathered along the last kilometre of fogbound road to the top of Tourmalet, cheering and clapping and shouting "Allez allez allez" as bedraggled cyclists came into view in the fog and slowly hauled their way to the summit. Everyone I talked to before the Etape had the same hope: Get to the top of Tourmalet in reasonably good shape, and use the descent to recover enough to get up Hautacam to the finish line. Oh, and maybe enjoy the view from the highest summit crossing in the Pyrenees while they're there.
Sadly it was not to be. As you can see from the photo above, the descent of Tourmalet was an absolute shocker. For the non-lunatics reading this, imagine the following conditions:
- Steep, narrow mountain roads. Often with a sheer drop directly on one side and laughably tiny guard rails
- Fog sapping your body heat
- Fog coating your brake pads and rims
- Fog on your glasses
- Bloody FOG, restricting the view ahead to something like 20 to 50 metres
Now try and get a twitchy racing bicycle with slick tyres and rapidly-abrading brake pads down 19km of this as fast as possible...
Things improved once I dropped below the cloud layer, but only barely. It was still too cold to recover any energy. I was fortunate enough to find a few more pacelines to tag along in, but I was a broken man by that stage.
Hautacam finished the job. Smashed me like a nut under a hammer. Naturally, there was a photo point set up on the final climb. Here's me doing my impression of Octave Lapize:
Too tired to even cover up my number and avoid the shame! By that stage, I was just hoping to recover enough strength so I could ride across the finish line at the top of Hautacam.
My optimistic early estimate of a 7.5 to 8-hour race completely blew apart. I did recover a bit, and the gradient eased off enough so I could cycle across the finish line. I finished in 8:59, and was frankly lucky to avoid the broom wagon which came in an hour and a half later.
In contrast, the winner of the Etape finished in 5:37, and the Tour de France stage winner polished off the course in 4:19.
I made my way back down the mountain to the finish village, a descent made difficult by the fact I was shivering so hard I was having trouble controlling the bike. A few minutes wrapped in a survival blanket and all was well with the world again. I had completed the Etape, one of the most challenging rides an amateur can hope to take part in.
Read more...
