The col de Bugger-All

That’s what the Brits who did l’Etape now call the col de Bagargui and I am proud to say that I rode upright to the top of this part of the Pyrénées and continued on to finish the 10^th l’Etape du Tour in what I consider a respectable 9 hours and 58 minutes. Mind you, staring at 4 kph on the odometer for an hour because that’s as fast as you can go up “Bugger-all” is not my idea of fun. I’m just glad it’s over.

Most of the cyclists came prepared for this kind of climbing. I’d never seen 30-tooth sprockets on high end bikes until yesterday and yesterday there were plenty. Folks who could read French seemed to take the advice of the people in the local newspaper who were advising “24 x 34 devant et un 13 x 28 derriere.” That’s not your pants size, but the number of sprockets on your gears, or sprocket ratios, and these numbers are definitely for uphill going. I wondered what Miguel Indurain was riding. I heard them introduce him at the start but never laid eyes on the “big Mig.”

The Pau-Bayonne l’Etape Ride

The day started with clear skies and this was after a night of terrible thunderstorms all over the eastern half of France. A fair amount of damage occurred but the area we rode through showed little. It was crystal clear and pretty as we moved into the foothills of the Pyrénées and the day promised to be rid of the awful heat of the prior weeks. That promise held although it clouded over for the last half of the ride with temperatures in the 60s and 70s Farenheit.

While standing at my holding point I looked left and saw Paul the ride leader for the Bike Park group in London. I’d ridden two days with him and 20 others through Richmond Park and then out into Surrey. Nice guy, ex-hooker (a position in rugby) who took up biking when his knees mercifully told him to quit the game at an earlier age than my own satori. He had met Indurain on a ride in Italy, so I could say after today that I’d ridden with Miguel and knew one of his close friends, right?

Paul was with a fellow he had clearly talked into doing the ride. “He’ll either hate me or love me after this” Paul said. I thought the former would certainly apply. He wasn’t the only person talked into this. As I settled into my plate of spaghetti carbonara the evening before, a tall, red-haired fellow sat next to me. He had a different guide to the ride and it prompted me to ask if I might see it. It was a guide for the officials and had a good deal more details (like how to evacuate a person who was clearly at death’s door). Turned out that James was from the Australian embassy in Paris and given the strong showing of Australians in the Tour and the fact that there were a few of them on the Français de Jeux team, some bright light thought it would be a good idea to have the more athletic of the embassy staff ride l’Etape and use it to raise money for some worthy cause. The Aussies on FDJ talked the team out of some gear and a minor celebrity event was in motion. James, also a former rugby player, joined in with several of his mates and they were off and running with uniforms and bikes supplied by the F de Jeux team. James was full of questions and I was able to advise him to: 1. not order the pizza; 2. make sure the FDJ bikes had granny gearing; 3. given he was going to wear dossard number 48 because they had no other numbers to give this surprise group of entrants, not to try to keep up with the folks in the first 100. James was keen and a very nice fellow, willing to take it on. I didn’t see him on the road, so he must have finished well. I did pass one of his mates, though, in the last 50 kilometers. I spotted the ill-fitting FDJ uniform and matching bike and asked if he was one of the Aussies who got talked into the ride. “Yup,” he said, “Howdja know that?” he asked. “I met James last night,” I said. “Oh yeh, you’re the one who told him not to eat the pizza. I wish I’d a run into you last night, I chucked mine miles ago.”

It took me, in dossard number 6664, 19 minutes to get to the start line, some folks reported taking up to 30 minutes to get across. The ride out of Pau was uneventful save for the somewhat elderly man who took a fall on the first downhill, 400 meters from the depart line, “at least I won’t finish last,” I thought to myself with a bit of ghoulish satisfaction—of course, this isn’t a race. The going was pretty fluid out of town and the narrow bridge just outside of Gan, 10 km in, didn’t clog up the group. The first little town did and we had to put pied a terre for 50 meters or so to get through Brane after our first little 4^th category climb. Things kept moving steadily through Oloron Ste. Marie where there were a fair number of early risers (it was 8 am by now) who thought it a good idea to have their café au lait in the town square while watching 8,500 spandex-clad men and women ride by. I didn’t see any crashes until we got into Aramits. This is Three Musketeers country and there were people dressed up in the style Dumas made popular. There was even a small group of kids, 6-7 years old, dressed up with tunics, swords and big hats with the feathers and this prompted a would-be photographer on a bike (American, it turned out) to cry out: “How cute” as he swerved sharply left while pulling out his digital camera from his jersey pocket. Unfortunately this unexpected turn was directly into the path of a quick moving young French fellow on a really nice Colnago who was trying to pass the slower riders. Down they both went with not a few colorful words. I’m not sure if either continued.

I was happy to make the first feed zone at the foot of the col de Soudet climb in just over 2 hours. I was thinking I might make the cut for the silver medal this year--but the real ride was yet to come. The feed zone was the usual chaos and with just a small bit of pushing and shoving I was able to top up with Vittel Energie fluid, get down a couple of orange quarters and consider, then reject the dense cake and dubious ham sandwiches and ate my Power Bar as I rolled out. The Soudet climb is really the best part of the slightly longer col de la Pierre Saint Martin climb, which carries on another 2 kilometers. The region has put nice signs on every major climb and they mark the kilometers and give you the percentage rise in each kilometer so you could gauge your progress (and pain) fairly carefully. What the little signs didn’t include was the 15% “ramp” that was clearly marked on the Michelin map, but that wasn’t too bad this early on and it was for only 100 meters or so—piece of cake.

The Bagargui climb was simply awful and it is really going to surprise some of the real Tour riders, I mean, they may have to pedal as slow as 10 kph in places! The inspiring highlight of the Bagargui climb for me was the man with an artificial arm and leg who just couldn’t make one of the steepest ramps. He got someone to help him with his bike for the 200 meters that were the toughest, then got back on and passed me 500 meters from the top. Listed on the program as 11 km and 5,6% rise, Bagargui is really 3 kilometers of nice flat valley and then 8 kilometers of 13% with three kilometers of 15%. Needless to say it turned the ride into a hike for more than half the 8,000 who made it to that point. 500 had quit by the top of the col de Soudet and another 500 were to drop out somewhere along this part of the route.

The climbs after Bagargui, like the Burdincurucheta, were harder to pronounce than to get over. It was the unannounced and unnamed little hills in and out of a series of villages that were awful. They came every 10 kilometers or so for the remainder of the ride until we were in the outskirts of Bayonne and they had me shifting into the small ring half way up each of these 10%-plus ramps.

I rode this year in the company of a fair number of women, there were less than 500 entered, this being something of a guy-thing but somehow I was slotted into their pace. What I noticed was that the local guy-thing guys were really willing to help the jeune filles up the hills with a friendly hand on their butts. No hands for me, though.

When we got to a nice big road that carried us down to the valley of the Adour river, we got some nice long fast pacelines going, which was good because the 20 kph wind was on our nose for the final hour. Piece of cake, I thought, no problem getting that silver. Then the wicked mind of the course planner for the Tour kicked back in and we took a sharp left into Mougerre, which is French for “the-suburb-of-killing-little-hills-and-sharp-turns” Dreams of silver died in these switch backs and suburban driveway-like ramps. “Just get me to the finish” was my mantra now. One guy had stopped at a local bar and was getting a Heineken down. “That would be nice” I thought, but the new plan was to beat 10 hours and I needed to keep struggling.

Somehow the twisting road in the suburb became the road down to the river and eventually we ran past the Adour on an embankment road. It was a nice route into town with the streets lined with barricades (for the real Tour) and then I could see the big air-balloon arch and the “flamme rouge” signaling one kilometer to go. Oops, a sharp left and then, oh crap, an uphill finish. But there was a big crowd along the route and too many people were shouting you along to allow you to give up. I even sprinted by myself the last 50 meters (I thought it was a sprint) and got under the banner alive and still pedaling. We were “processed” through the finish area—basically the staff held you up and walked you into the receiving area where they removed your transponder and, no doubt, did a brief sanity check “quelle date est aujourd’hui?” and “c’est dur, n’est pas?” Yes, it was hard but I had no idea what the date was.

I managed to get my final feedbag—chips, ham sandwich and blessed Perrier water—and headed for the consigne, where I picked up my backpack and struggled to sit down and call home to announce I’d made it. Diana was happy for the result—survival, but asked immediately who Dominique was, I mentioned him in my last e-mail message and there was a clear note of jealousy. “He’s a nice French guy who asked if I was American,” I said, “he loves Americans but was certain that Boosh was crazy.” That’s about the general sentiment here in France, when they do think about the U.S. There’s simply too much of France to worry about for most French people and then there’s the Tour de France which cranks back up tomorrow and I’ll be there.

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