Prologue
Its hot in France this year. Really hot. Theyve had records broken all over the country. The TGV couldnt run on one line because the heat made the rails soft, said one newspaper. The highs in the south have gotten to over 40 degrees centigrade, 104 F.. Just the kind of weather you dont want to have when youre taking a 120 mile bike ride in the Pyrnes and thats what Im about to do.
Im in south west France to participate in lEtape du Tour, a cyclosportive or amateur bicycle race that traces one of the stages of the Tour de France. The event is managed by the same company that runs the Tour, the Amaury Sport Organization, and it limits entries to the first 7,500 who send in 49 euros and a doctor's certificate saying they can make the distance. The leading French cycling periodical, Velo Magazine, is the main sponsor, but it is also supported by many bicycle makers and cycling products companies. This year it was filled within a few days and they had to expand the number a little to accommodate some special requests. Being associated with the Tour brings the ride no little cach and it has attracted past Tour riders to reprise their efforts. Greg Lemond had a reunion of his old teammates a few years back and this year it is to be Miguel Indurain, the five-time Tour winner, who is to take a spin with the masses.
Pau
is where we start from, a nice town of 80,000, once a wintering place for the
more genteel English but now known as the capital of the Barn region with a fairly
strong industrial and service economy but also a place that still attracts
tourists as an entryway to the mountains and the Basque country. People
dont normally go to Pau in the summer, its too hot and moist according to
Dominique, a local hospital worker who became my accidental dinner guest when
we were seated next to each other. It is moist, humid, and raining when
we talk in broken Franglish at a pretty good seafood restaurant (Maitre de
Kanter) near the center of town. Being in the foothills of the Pyrnes
the town gets the mixed benefit of summer thunderstorms which keep the many
flower pots around town in full bloom but the air a bit heavy. Pau is a
pretty town, perched above the flowing and falling Gave de Pau. If youre
not too familiar with France, Pau is down in the lower left hand corner, near
the Spanish border. For the religious among you, its a not too far from
Lourdes, which among cyclists is known for its approaches to the high cols of
the Pyrnes rather than for Bernadettes grotto where she chatted with the
Virgin Mary.
I got help in finding a hotel in Pau and at the end of l'Etape from Bruno
Toutain who runs a sort of cyclists' concierge service, mostly in the
Pyrenes. He runs group tours, rents good bikes, and will recommend
places and routes for the individual or independent cyclist. You can
reach him at bruno@cyclomundo.com or check out his web site at www.cyclomundo.com. I notice he's
now working tours to Morocco and other exotic places. He and I
communicated via e-mail and he was very helpful.
Pau is the host of the depart of the 10th lEtape du Tour and 8,500 cyclists of all ages and their not inconsequential retinues are gathering to follow the route of the 16th stage of the Tour de France which will be held 6 days later on July 23rd. The town is gearing up for the Tour depart with banners going up and lots of festivities planned and the whole atmosphere centers on la petite reine, the little queen, a term the French use for their bicycles. There are many makeshift oversized bicycles adorning traffic circles or the entries to cafs, and some hedges are cut into bicycle shapes. The three major tour leader jersey colors, yellow, green and red polka dots, appear in various forms all over town. The Tour seems to get more attention than Bastille Day festivities, which, for the most part were rained out by the rolling thunderstorms that were plaguing the southwest of France at the time.
The Pau-Bayonne stage is the last of the mountain sections before the Tour heads back up to Paris. The really different thing this year, so far, is that the Tour result remains in doubt with Lance not quite dominating the Grande Boucle after his expected but not realized wins in the Alps.
Ive caught each of the stage finishes on television since I arrived this past Sunday and the Tour has been more than entertaining as the French favorite, Richard Virenque is Again at the Summit as the local paper says, having won a stage and taken the overall lead on time. Putting him in the yellow jersey as overall leader on Saturday was great for home town sentiments but it sure ruined the coverage of the climb up lAlpe dHuez the next day. This climb is one of the mythical rides up a winding French road, jammed with screaming, flag-waving spectators. But, given that Virenque is French, the coverage kept going back to Poor Richard as he suffered up the final climb leaving us to wonder just what was happening with the big break by Iban Mayo and the courageous Tyler Hamilton as he and Joseba Beloki attacked Lance time and again.
Former French rider and last years king of the mountains winner Laurent Jalabert, riding on a motorcycle at the head of the race and commenting for TV-2, kept trying to cut in to the All Richard coverage to describe the multiple surges, but back we went to the back of the group until it seemed like Virenque hid behind a teammate to keep the camera away from his obviously pained demeanor. Anyway, Mayo, La Force Basque announced as lEquipe put it, that there was big danger for Armstrong, by winning. Mondays result, with Vinokurov attacking and escaping, showed how right this appraisal was. Never has Armstrong been attacked so often, continued lEquipe. Mayo won the stage convincingly and he and his to Basque colleagues, Haimar Zubeldia and Roberto Laiseka, were among the top riders overallmeaning there was going to be a lot of interest in the race when it got to the Pyrnes
The Tour is big on many peoples minds and can distract you with its extensive media coverage and the fact that many towns and villages hold supporting events in the days leading up to and after the race runs through their patch. But, two days before my ride I had to put in a bit of scouting of the lEtape course and took my bike out early Monday to see what the fuss was all about. Its all about going up hill and its going to be all about suffering into the mountainsis what its all about. The start is flat enough, rolling straight out of townlikely to create some mass bouchons or traffic jams, with all the road furniture as Paul Sherwin likes to call it, in the way. These are road separators and concrete islands meant to calm traffic and frustrate cyclists. The course takes a right turn 8 or so kilometers out and passes through a really narrow bridge opening and then you start to work up a little 4th category climb before an up-and-down ride through Oloron St. Marie, a pretty town on a winding foothills river. Its more or less flat from there as you move on to Aramits then Arette. Arette is almost spelled like the French for stop (arrte) and thats not a bad idea because the road ramps up to 15 % just after you leave town and averages 10% for 6 of its 11 kilometers. I rode my bike out as far as Oloron and then later in the day drove the ascent up to the col de Soudet past Arette. It rained the whole time and I felt sorry for the riders I passed doing their own, more vigorous scouting. I hoped thered be someone feeling sorry for me when I rode this way on Wednesday.
The top is just 3 kilometers from the Spanish border, not too far from Pamplona where other crazy people were pursuing a faster route to pain, by getting gored by bulls. The slow way to pain using a bicycle gets you to the top of this mountain where the road is blocked by a herd of cows. Ill be happy to wait for them to move if they show in two days.
In Oloron, I watched the dramatic end to Mondays stage. It was wild, with Beloki falling hard and fracturing his femur, wrist and elbow and Lance making like a cyclocross rider to get back on the road. The finish gave us a race and were not likely to get a lock on the result for quite some time.
Today, Tuesday, means getting my number and figuring out how to get all my stuff to Bayonne and then get myself back to Pau and then up at 5:30 in the morning and to the start and fed and whatever, and its still hot, but they say tomorrow will be better. The organization of the race is extraordinarily smooth. In the U.S. its not unusual to wait 20 minutes or so to get your number for a race of 200 or so riders. Here, you walk up to one of 20 welcome areas, divided by your pre-set number (dossard) and you get a bag with goodies (t-shirt, two water bottles, energy bar, sun-screen), your pocket course map with the course in relief, your stick-on numbers and your transponder. The transponder gets strapped to your ankle and you get your time automatically taken at the start, in the middle, and at the end. You can even test the chip by passing through a tent and checking if your name and address show up on a computer screen.
The Village Dpart is a bicycle fair of sorts with fifty or so displays by major manufacturers of bicycles or cycling gear. You can ride on matched trainers against the clock with the resistance set to the Alpe dHuez ascent or you can have your bike tuned up by the more or less famous Mavic service crews. Theyre the ones in the yellow cars that offer replacement bikes and wheels to the riders in the Tour when their own team cars are too far behind. A strolling brass band adds a touch of levity to the crowd of mostly middle aged cyclists who are anticipating the next days rigors. The riders in this event are mostly in their 30s through 50s and well past the age when they competed for real in races
Wearing number 1 this year in lEtape will be Miguel Indurain, the five-time Tour winner. Abraham Olano, a past champion will also be riding along with other minor celebrities. Rumor had it that Arnold Schwarzenegger was riding but the local paper said he will be following the 17th stage to Toulouse the next day. Big deal. I also read that I am one of only 117 Americans in the ride this year, compared to 1,246 from England and 6,548 French-folk, three guys from New Zealand made it and the first guy from Japan has registered and is getting the attention of the announcer on the stage in the village. This is quite a show.
You can get details on the ride through the lEtape web site www.letapedutour.com which is also reachable via the main Tour de France page.
