Bumper multi-section Sunday-paper edition Etape 2010 'FINAL' blog! - Travel!! - Food!!! - Fashion!!!! - Music!!!!! - Sport!!!!!!!

SECTION 1. NEWS
WE MADE IT.

SECTION 2. TRAVEL
Ideal preparation Part 1
Up at 4 o’clock on Friday morning, sit in van (yes, but what a van the Live2ride van is, sleek, black, mighty comfy) to Poole, lurch up and down for 2 hours on the ferry, sit in van till 11 at night.

SECTION 3. FOOD
Ideal preparation Part 2
Forget your normal pre-ride menu.

Oh yes, we talked the talk, of bowls of steaming pasta, of freshly-hooked tuna, of eating at a sensible hour. But what did we actually do? Well, we chased around and found not a restaurant open - on a Saturday night - and, after much ummming (and an not inconsiderable amount of aaahing), after weighing up the relative merits of pizza (but another 50 minutes wait) against somehow conjuring up a Cordon Bleu pasta blow-out from one packet of spaghetti, a tin of tomatoes and a vague possibility of borrowing a gas ring at the B&B, we finally ended up scoffing a sausage baguette and a plastic tray of chips each, while watching the locals indulge in a friendly bout of beach rugby. Oooh la la! Les crazee Anglais!

And that essential post-ride nosh…

Ah yes, another story of failure. Having sat for hours in a near-stationary queue of traffic coming down from the Tourmalet, we eventually found a restaurant with a spare table. We should have seen it in Madame’s eyes, in the plaintive cry of ‘But we have no bread!’, but led by our stomachs we made the near-fatal decision to sit. And wait. And wait. Ah, the art of ignoring people - perfected by the haughty staff of provincial French eating establishments (on espying some of the food available - to other people - we decided that ‘restaurant’ was not actually a suitable description of the place). We got the message. We left. Nobody cared. So, at 11 pm we ended up at an unlikely Nirvana: McDonalds in Lourdes. Yes, it felt like a miracle to be eating anything at all. What is the French for ‘milkshake’? asked Duncan. ‘Le milkshake’, replied the smug bastard with a French O-Level, tucking into his Le Main Meal.

Le petit saucisson. Say no more.

SECTION 4.
FASHION
Courtesy of Trek, very fetching two-piece in white, with black, grey and red highlights. Perfect match for a certain Madone 5.2. Tres chic, mes amis. And not just a skin-tight lycra piece of cycling art (yup, might put it in a frame in the toilet), but also a magic password (see below).
End of Fashion Section.

SECTION 5.
MUSIC
Unfortunately, vuvuzelas were banned from the van. Some attempt was made to convert the captive audience to the harmonious sound of the open-throat singers of the Bulgarian National Choir, but somehow that did not seem to go down too well.

Other musical highlights: the sound of AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' pounding out halfway up the Tourmalet. Amazing what can sound inspirational when you are halfway up that very same highway... Mr White danced on his pedals.

Oh, and cow bells. We like cow bells.

SECTION 6.
SPORT(including Statistics Corner)

What a brilliant day. Glorious sunshine, max temperature 95 degrees, average 78 degrees - but we would take that over the rain and cloud that the Tour went through in any day.

Rolled out of the B&B in the dark, immediately met a convoy of biked-up cars and vans heading for Pau. Parked and prepared as the sun slowly rose over polite English people sneaking off to a tree in the corner to have a pee while the French just whipped it out next to their car and decorated the tyres, paintwork, anything that happened to be in the way. Joined the silent convoy into the start, numbers increasing all the time, snuck Duncan into our starting pen thanks to a perfectly timed emerging ambulance (oh, and what thanks we got for that - see below). Joined the multi-multi-coloured snake of thousands of stationary cyclists - turned round 2 minutes later and found a few thousand more strung out behind us. Oh yes, this is it. French, English, Irish, Americans (‘Awwwww, I just LOVE the paint job on your bike!) around us. One bloke’s bike was still at Toulouse airport, so he had bought a secondhand one from a bike shop for 156 Euros (good luck, mate).

7 o’clock was the starting time for the elite and the privileged - we rolled over the line about 15 minutes later, nice cushion of 4,000 riders (and the poor bastard who punctured in the first 500 metres…) between us and the dreaded Broom Wagon. The cheering crowds lining the roads just a taster of what was to come for the next 10 hours. Allez! Allez! I am! I am!

‘Right’, said Duncan, a few comfortable shoulder-to-shoulder miles in, ‘let’s all stay together’ - and that was the last we saw of Duncan I-Haven’t-Done-Any-Training McInbloodyerney (see Statistics Corner, and Hail the King). Oh well, it was his idea to do this thing in the first place.

He caught an express train and was wafted away; Messrs Green, Red and White carried on at a less frantic pace.

Just a glorious day, really. Flowing along the first miles surrounded by hundreds of bikes, weaving through them up the inclines, overtaking 20 riders by slipping up the inside of a hairpin. Stop for a wee, hear the approaching swishing-roar of the bike trains pouring past your back. Even Mr White enjoyed whizzing down the mountains. Hope the woman who forgot to brake on one hairpin is OK.

What felt like whole villages turning out to cheer us on. High-fiving kids hanging over their garden fence. (P.S. Come to think of it, are they just shouting Allez! Allez! because they are desperate for us to get the hell out of their town, so they can open the roads again and get back to normal Pyrenean weekend business? Forgot to ask, so will continue to dream.)

Seemed to be a lot of priests out and about, perhaps ready to counsel the mad cyclists, or bless their wheels at the bottoms of the mountains. Father, I confess, I have scoffed multiple energy gels; I have looked with envy in my heart and murderous thoughts in my helmeted head at a Campagnolo Super Record crankset.

One puncture - Mr Red. Just dribbling some air back in to the new tube with his ever-so-small-and-light-but-it’s-going-to-take-me-bloody-hours-just-to-get-to-40psi pump, when nobly assisted by the shining yellow knight Sir Mavic roaring up out of the sun, unholstering his track pump, giving it some air: Voila, Monsieur!

Courtesy of Trek (very very well done there, Rich), we did not have to join the scrum at the official rest stops. Our Trek tops were our magic passport to the paradise-on-earth known as the Trek Travel rest stop: Can I take your bike for you? What would you like me to put in your water bottles? Can I put some sun cream onto the back of your neck for you? Piles of fruit, nuts, gels, energy bars, cakes, you name it, they had it with a smile (especially that pair of cheerleaders at the second stop…). Perfect. So perfect that our stops were at least double the time what they needed to be, but, hey, why not, we were not in a mega-hurry, this was one to enjoy once the Broom Wagon was left way behind us.

Snippets:

Man sitting outside his villa across the valley, playing his accordion for us as we passed by.

Cyclist stopped under the shade of a tree halfway up the Soulor, taking ten, listening to something inspirational on his headphones.

Couple of cyclists stopped at a roadside café, sipping on a café au lait.

Man and bike just stop and drop sideways on the Tourmalet, legs crippled with cramp, motionless next to near-vertical drop.

Oh, yes, and a bit of climbing.

Now that’s nice, spectators lining the road offering to shower you with icy cold water on the Tourmalet. I’m having some of that, just like on TV, now we are proper cyclists. Cooling effect lasted for about 18.5 seconds, but it all helps (except when poured over your back when you are not looking, and destroying your phone and i-Pod - zut alors!).

Anyone want a cheer? asked the English kid as we ground past. Me!

Stop for a quick rest near the top of the Tourmalet, look back down the mountain littered with riders on bikes, off bikes. What a beautiful view, a fantastic sight. F**k me, I just climbed up that! Look round and up: Oh s**t, I’m just about to go up THAT! Just how long can one measly kilometre keep going on?

Quite a few spent cyclists on those last mighty slopes, legs gone, minds gone; sitting motionless; being sick; walking the long walk.

Choose a phrase, a mantra, chant it with every pedal revolution, ‘I’m not walking, I’m not walking…’

‘500 metres to go’, they shout, ‘Only 400 metres to go!’, ‘Keep going, nearly there!’, ‘100 metres!’

Mr Green found a bike-walker in his path, middle of the road, 100 metres from the line, had to give him a ‘gentle’ push out of the way…

Over the line. Exhilarating. Green and Red arm in arm. Sweet.

Not the end, just the beginning.

BIG thanks to Rup, AKA 'The Pistonator', for his creative pen and Stuart for driving us safely on our journey.

Statistics Corner

181 kilometres (114 miles). Over 4,400 metres of climbing, up three Pyrenean mountains (Marie-Blanque 9.5 km at 7.5 % average gradient; Soulor 22 km at 4.9% average; Tourmalet 19 km at 7.4 % average).
10,000 started; 6,888 made it over the finish line (over 3,000 made close acquaintance with the inside of the dreaded Broom Wagon).
Duncan - Time: 8.44.25. Place: 2437th. Tourmalet climb: 1.59.45.
Rupert - Time: 9.51.25 (moving time 8.49; average speed 13 mph; max speed 46 mph). Place: 4392nd. Tourmalet climb: 2.02.59.
Rich - Time: 10.40.09. Place: 5776th. Tourmalet climb: 2.29.58.
Christian - Time: 10.40.09. Place: 5777th. Tourmalet climb: 2.29.58.