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Etape 2004
by Marek Siwiki
11th July 2004, DDay the start of the 2004 Etape Du Tour. This was my
chance to emulate my heroes in undertaking a stage of the Tour De France,
and what a stage they chose. The stage chosen by the organisers was the
longest of the 2004 tour, the 237km stage between Limoges and St Flour in
the Massif Centrale region.
I started the ride with Max another keen ACC member and we left Limoges
at about 6.45am. With thousands of people lining the street in Limoges
people were hanging out of there windows waving us off.
For the first 20km we spent most of the time spent going past people on
the little hills out of Limoges. I say little hills but it was actually
quite rolling and this was meant to be the flat part of the course. I got
a bit of pain in my right knee and therefore Max and I stopped as I
thought that my seat was too high. After adjusting I tightened up the bolt
too far and ripped the thread on the seat clamp. Whoops. I told Max to
head off while I scratched my head thinking about possible ways of mending
this. After trying a few things I decided to ride with the saddle down and
to think about my situation. I therefore spent 20km riding standing up and
then to my relief I came upon a Mavic Mechanic stop. They fixed my bike
and I was ready to go. This is when the real adventure started.
There is a minimum time for the first section of 30kmph and I had just
exceeded it due to my problems. A guy on a motorbike wanted me to stop,
but I insisted that I was a very strong rider and would have no problem
catching the main group. He was very adamant in me stopping, pulling the
motorbike in front of me. I stopped and I was meant to wait for a car to
come and take my transponder. As the motorcyclist went around the next
corner I headed off in pursuit. He was stopped chatting to a few others
telling them to stop so I blasted past. He shouted for me to stop but I
think he got the message that I was no way going to stop. I then spent the
next 40km at full speed trying to catch up with the main part of the race
and overtaking a lot of the slower people. After 90km I was back in with a
reasonable group and felt more comfortable. Only problem being that I had
wasted a lot of energy on catching the race and the mountains were yet to
start.
The first stop came round at about the 90km mark. This was a huge
supermarket car park absolutely jam packed with hungry cyclists. Down one
side of the supermarket was a long line of lycra clad cyclists relieving
themselves and in the middle of the car park it was a free for all for all
the goodies on offer. The food stallls were really well stocked with
Sandwiches, power bars, dried fruit, energy drinks and water. I filled up
my water bottles, had an energy gel, ham and cheese sandwich and a power
bar and got back under way.
There were a number of really long climbs of 5km or 6km after the food
stop. In the little villages along the way people had come out to cheer
everyone on and every now and then there was a band playing.
At the next stop I bumped into a few other Addiscombe riders, Nick,
Steph and Rich. We were all feeling the strains of the day and were aware
that there was plenty more to come.
The serious stuff started at Puy Marie. This was about 8km of climbing.
In the UK you cannot really prepare for a climb of this length, purely due
to the fact that there aren't any that long. It was quite a slog but you
just have to take it slow in a nice easy gear and gradually make the
ground up to the top. We then had an excellent fast descent down into a
beautiful valley and then we were faced with the killer hill of the day.
A first category climb of 17% for 2.5km, Puy de Peyrol. This was a
challenge but I managed to get up without getting off unlike many others
who were walking. All the training around the surrey lanes had paid off as
there are quite a few 17% or 18%ers if you really go looking, so it was
something that I was more used to than the really long climbs. This climb
came at about 170km into the race so I was not too surprised to see a lot
of people stepping off, this is probably the furthest I had ever ridden
and there was still plenty more to come.
A couple more 5km climbs was what was next in store. These were really
tough as you had kind of got it into your mind that the race was nearly
finished after Puy Marie. The long drags were really painful but I have to
admit the views were superb if you could see through the sweat dripping
sunglasses. After the last climb we then had the relief of the flat
section into St Flour.
As we came into the town people were lining the streets, they even had
the one km to go banner up as they do in the main race. I managed to
sprint the finish and it felt superb coming over the line with many people
at the side of the road cheering and clapping all the riders as they came
in.
My leg pain stayed with me the whole race which was a bit of a shame
but overall the whole experience was awesome. I highly recommend this.
With a lot of training this is a brilliant event and I cannot wait until
next year.
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