When you are a cyclist with a day job, there are several ways in which
you can be serious about that non-professional part of your life. Of course,
you shave your guns, keep your material in proper working order, and generally
demonstrate an awareness of the Rules, but ultimately it comes down to the
quality of the riding that you do. Maintaining your license and racing a full
schedule from week-to-week remains the standard. But if for one reason or
another (lack of time on the weekends, not willing to risk a crash) that's not
happening, it is not only important to get out three or more times a week and,
as my own cycling mentor once put it, make sure that come May 100 kilometers doesn't
take you much longer than three hours, you also look for opportunities to test
yourself, preferably against others.
It
is hard to think of a better way to do this, even when you do race regularly,
than participation in Haute Route. A relatively new phenomenon, Haute Route is
perhaps the logical latest development in the growth of semi-competitive
cycling events (cyclos, granfondos, and the like). They're competitive because
they are timed; semi because entry is open to almost anyone. There are plenty
of hairy legs, European posterior man satchels, and burly upper bodies in these
events, but you'd better be a very good amateur if you want to ride at the
front. Where most of these are one-day races, Haute Route takes a whole week,
crossing the Alps all the way from Geneva to Nice. This seven-day stage race is
the closest anyone not racing for a living can get to the real thing.
One
reason that's is not just a hollow phrase, I can report from personal experience,
is how they run the event. Haute Route Alps 2013 was the third edition (this
year the organizers, OC Sport, have added an Haute Route Pyrenees, and for next
year they're also working on a Dolomites version), and they make it all about
the rider. It is actually a slightly disorienting experience if you don't go
through life thinking it's all about you, because at every moment of every day,
every aspect of the event, every staff person or volunteer you run into, is there
to let you ride as well as you can. And when that's done, everything is geared
toward helping you recover as efficiently and completely as possible and focus
on the next day's stage. You're able to be in your own little world, worrying
only about the riding (or racing)--everything else, all the logistics, anything
that could possibly come up, is taken care of.
This
is not just very nice, it's also important because the stages are hard enough
to require your constant and full attention, which must be another definition
of a full-time cyclist's life. "Take lots of pictures," a friend
urged me. Pictures? I barely had time to look around (honestly!), let alone
stop and pull out a camera. The same with the famous towns where we finished
(Megève, Val d'Isère, Serre Chevalier, Pra Loup, Auron). One of the selling
points of this event is the beauty of the terrain covered, but if you want to
see the beauty of the Alps, I suggest you take a vacation there. I'm usually
one to look at several newspapers or news sites a day, but for the entire week
of Haute Route, I never even wondered what might be going on outside of our little
cocoon. The same with email or Facebook: no interest in reading or writing
anything. The other riders? It would have been nice to talk to them longer, but
I just did not have the required interest or energy. When you're in a tough
stage race--and I suppose we were--the world becomes a narrow place, and for a
week, it's great. Much longer, and alienation may set in, if race-related
pressures don't get to you first.
Part
of the pressure is self-created, but the race has a way of reinforcing it. One
of the many fine aspects of Haute Route's organization, for example, is the
speed with which race results become public. People following the race at home
can see how you got over the first and second climbs of the day well before you
cross the finish line, but once you've arrived you can see your own placing and
your position in the general classification within a few hours. Your sense of
how you did on the bike gets matched with the reality at the finish line (to
say nothing of your awareness of the excitement and expectations at the home
front), and this immediately becomes part of how you approach the next stage.
But
we always approached Haute Route as a race. It wasn't a race we thought we
could win, but in a way it was one we had prepared for all of our cycling lives.
Cees, Gerard, and I have been going to the mountains to ride our bikes since
the 1980s. As part of the full Team Cacolac we have organized our own races up
the cols year in and year out, and in most years we organize our family
vacations around cycling in the mountains. All this on top of trying hard to
live like Cyclists in our daily lives. Well into middle age, we weren't going
to waste a unique opportunity to see where we really stood.
This
does not mean that we all showed up as fully prepared as possible. Gerard
injured himself twice in the run-up, losing precious weeks of training time,
most debilitatingly when he bruised his shoulder in a crash three weeks before
the start of the race. Grinding it out every day in his condition, he made the
competition for the hard man award a very one-sided affair. Aside from having found
it necessary to become a triathlete in recent years, Cees also undermined his
otherwise solid preparation by choosing an extreme form of tapering by way of a
three-week, bikeless family vacation to the United States shortly before the
race. I myself had done less training, certainly of the uphill kind, than I
would have liked prior to July, but was fortunate to make up a lot of ground
during our vacation near Mont Ventoux and north of Verona.
And
so we arrived in Geneva the day before the start of the race--getting away with
parking the car on the promenade alongside Lake Geneva, right at the entrance
of the Haute Route village--to get our bikes checked, drop off our bike bags,
and pick up our race numbers, Haute Route cycling kit, and Haute Route travel
bag and back pack. The big bag would hold all our stuff and would be
transported by the organization from one lodging place to the next; the backpack
we were to leave at the start packed with a towel and a set of clean clothes,
so that the organizers could have it available for us at the finish line.
There, every day we would also find showers, massages, and a hot lunch--all
(and much more) included with the 1,500 Euro entry fee. Ahead of the event, the
entry fee seemed steep, also because the lodging/breakfast package came in
separately at another few hundred Euros, but after just a few days in Haute
Route we felt we were getting more than our money's worth.
Having
chosen the basic lodging package, we spent the night at an underground bomb
shelter in a Geneva park, where we found clean sheets, plenty of room in the
bunk-style sleeping areas, and several Haute Route staff guiding things along. Breakfast
the next morning began at 5am at the starting line next to the lake. The 7am start
itself, as always with everything the entire week, occurred on time. We rode
the first hour in convoy formation, guided by cars and motorcycles, something
we'd repeat from time to time in the following days. With more than 500 riders,
some portions of the route simply were not suited for racing, and sometimes
riders stayed at different locations and had to be brought together at the
start line first. It wasn't a fun way to ride, but the organizers made sure to
keep these neutralized, non-timed sections to a minimum.
In
the town of Taninges--France now--we were finally let off the leash to tackle
the first climb of the week, the Col de l'Encrenaz. It's a nice climb, but it
takes work, probably more so that day because most of us were still looking to
find our climbing legs. I rode up carefully, reminding myself that this was a
three-climb, 153k day, the first one of seven tough ones. Cees crested about
twenty meters ahead of me, and after grabbing a few things off the refreshment
table, we started the descent together. I felt good on the next climb that
followed quickly, the Joux Plane (up from Morzine, of which I saw nothing), but
waited for Cees at the top, only to leave him behind again on the exciting way
down. Eventually we both became part of a group that collaborated reasonably
well down in the valley riding back to Taninges for a left turn toward Araches.
This led to one of the week's infamous connecting climbs: visible on the daily
graphs as climbs but not categorized as such, even though they were just as
hard, if not harder, than some of the named cols. By this time, the day had
turned warm, with temperatures reaching 30 Celsius. We needed the feed stop in
Araches. After desending into the next valley, the one connecting to the final
climb of the day, we were unexpectedly joined by two local riders out for their
Sunday ride, and suddenly we found ourselves rotating at 40 k/h where we should
have been preserving our energy for the climb to Megève. But who is going to
pass up such an opportunity? Not us. Suppressing oncoming cramps (they stayed
away) we began what turned out to be a nasty few kilometers to the run-in toward
the finish. At the bottom, Cees declared that if "he was riding easy"
he might just bypass the final feedzone, halfway up the climb. But once there,
he took off his shoes and told me to go ahead. This I did, eventually using the
final nearly flat 5k as a kind of cool down section (unlike the pros we would
not have our trainers at the ready next to our team buses). It had been a
pretty tough first day, and, it would turn out, we had been pretty cautious,
finishing between 250th and 260th place. Gerard got through the first stage
too, but his face afterwards showed that the day had been a lot harder for him
than for us. He looked like he had been to a very bad place and back, clinging
to Rule #5 all day like a castaway to a piece of driftwood.
On
day two it became clear that where Cees and I had been cautious on the first
day, others had not. We finished about 100 places higher, and this is roughly
where we remained the rest of the week. Our advance must have been due mainly
to the retreat of others, because our basic approach ("it's still a long
way to Nice") did not change too much. We did decide to spend less time at
the feed stops, but those gains can only have been marginal (after all: at some
point one needs to pee, and one certainly needs to pick up food and keep one's
bottles filled). Perhaps we pushed the pace a little more, but we both also
backed off consciously several times when the pace of a group we had joined
seemed too ambitious. Starting near the back again we spent most of the first
climb, the pleasant Col de Saisies, passing people, next held our places on the
rather long and cumbersome Cormet de Roselend, and at the end of the day had
our hands full with the climb toward Val d'Isère. That climb is actually part
of the Col de l'Iseran, formally on the program (its final 16k) for the next
day. The organizers steered us off the main road as much as possible, but those
side roads usually are steeper. Mercifully, due to road construction on the way
into town, the timed part of the stage ended well before Val d'Isère--at the
big dam at Tinee-1800 to be precise. That left us with just over 100 timed
kilometers, notably easier than stage one.
What's
Val d'Isère like? Well, there's a big parking garage where you can (had to)
leave your bike until the next morning; there's an athletic center where you
can shower, get a massage, and eat your hot lunch; and there's also a grocery
store where you can get some food to eat when you get to your hostel after the
daily briefing. There's probably other stuff, but we didn't look for it, then
or at the 7am start of the marathon stage (164k) the next morning. At almost
1800m altitude, that early start was a bit chilly: 5C in town, and a little
less at the top (2770m) of the Iseran, which we got to enjoy immediately. I saw
enough on the way up to know that it's an absolutely beautiful pass, and I'd
say I've never done a prettier descent than going down on the other side. I was
worried about cold hands, but the main challenge came when my sunglasses fogged
up riding through some clouds a few kilometers past the summit. Next I rumbled
solo into the valley leading to the second climb, the Col du Mont Cenis. I had
good momentum for a while, but no company, and therefore sat up briefly when I
saw a group coming up from behind. Our group shattered the moment we hit the
climb, with me dropping some guys and letting others ride ahead.
The
fun in this stage really started on the way down from the Col du Mont Cenis,
however. On the pretty section by the lake at the top of the climb, Canadian
ex-mountain biker and third woman in the race, Marg Fedyna (read her report, with pictures, here), caught up with me,
stating that she could "use a buddy" for this windy, rolling section,
which we next did together on the way to the long, curvy descent into the
Italian town of Susa. About that descent, let's just say that with Marg on my
wheel I made very good progress. Suddenly, for example, a few kilometers before
Susa there was Cees at the back of a group. I just had enough time to recognize
him as we blew by before squeezing past the race ambulance assisting some
unfortunate rider in a tight, steep corner. There was lots of momentum left when
we reached Susa proper. The right turn into the town center having been
completely cleared by several carabinieri, and with quite a few locals watching
behind the barriers, I decided we might as well just dive into that turn. It
was Italy, after all, where they know a thing or two about cycling. And so we
dove, and it was great. Susa had not been completely cleared of traffic, but we
worked our way through it very quickly anyway, and then the road started going
up again for the first of several connecting climbs on a long and tough stretch
to Bardonecchia. Marg let me go here because she wanted to stop and take off
some of her warm clothing. I chose to continue, putting my vest into a pocket
of the second jersey I was wearing on top, now fully unzipped. The descent had
put me in the neighborhood of stronger riders than I had seen all week. One of
them, Christian "Spartacus" Lengyel, a big strong Austrian in his
thirties, had shared a room with us the previous two nights. He had finished in
the top 100, he had told us, and we had been much impressed. I was in a small
group chasing down another small group on the big, ugly connecting climb
everybody had forgotten about when I suddenly pulled up next to him: "hi
Christian."
But
even though the highpoints came in quick succession that day, I soon began to
wonder if I wasn't overdoing it a little. I mean, this group that formed on the
way to Bardonecchia wasn't wasting any time, they were most definitely racing.
I could hold my own in the rotation, but for me, this was more a pace for when
the finish line would actually be fifteen kilometers up the road. Or maybe it
would still have been a responsible thing to do if this stage had been the
final one. But the stage finish would not be in Bardonecchia--the third climb
of the day would begin there. And Haute Route was not scheduled to wrap up that
evening in Serre Chevalier--instead, there were four hard days still to come.
So about five kilometers outside of Bardonecchia, as I was following Christian during
one of his Cancellara pulls, I let myself drift out of the group, wishing them
well. Some were still at the feed station in Bardonecchia when I arrived (just
about out of water), but then soon Cees also arrived in a group of his own. And
as I started up the last climb, Col de l'Echelle, Marg was back too. Again she
was going to let me go, because she needed a sanitary stop. But Marg is tough,
and so she caught me again on the other side, where I had just joined forces
with two new guys. "Well, you guys weren't racing," was her response
to my incredulous look. In Briançon, just ten kilometers before the finish, I also
dropped out of this group, again choosing to play it safe. The damage remained
limited. In the final 5k a local rider suddenly came by and positioned herself
directly in front of me before starting to ride tempo for a kilometer or two.
Then she pulled off, yelling that it now was only one more kilometer to the
line, and “allez!” I finished in 131st, my highest placing so far, and again:
no cramps, and a good appetite afterwards.
The
question of whether I could have done more, if I perhaps should have stayed
with one of these groups, received a partial answer the next, 119k day, and the
answer was: probably not. After riding down convoy-style to Briançon (another
early and cold start), the first climb of stage four was the Col d'Izoard. This
went alright, but on the next one, the lovely 20k-long Col de Vars, the legs
started to feel a little stiff--as if they were tired. The feeling persisted
after the descent (where we registered the top speed for the week) when again I
was fortunate to find a good group of riders to collaborate on the way to the
final climb, the ascent to Pra Loup. Cees was there, and so were some other
guys I knew a little by now, and I told everyone that I was going to ride up
very carefully so as to avoid cramping up. Cees got a little ahead of me, and
so did Gerald O'Donoghue of Ireland and Francois Le Maut of France (the only
60+ rider to finish the week ahead of me—by half an hour, no less). But then
the cramps didn't come and a good amount of power did,
allowing me to pass all these guys again and get through the annoyingly long
and steep final kilometer in decent shape. Showers came in the form of Port-a-Johns,
cold, but they worked; my massage was so stellar it almost put me to sleep; the
local lunch crew was kind as ever, and eating lunch outdoors was simply
wonderful. But I was tired and looking forward to lying down on my bed, down at
the boarding school in Barcelonnette. It would take a little while before we
got there, because Gerard, who was having an easier time of it, (at least, we
never saw that death mask of the first day again), broke three spokes in his
rear wheel on the ride down the hill. Eventually we limped into Barcelonnette,
where the local bike shop could not help him. A little later we finally reached
our boarding school, only to learn that our room was on the fourth floor, our
overloaded Haute Route bags on the floor in the lobby, and the elevator out of
service.
But
then relaxation began--aside from those wicked stairs. Stage five the next day
would be a time trial to the Cime de la Bonnette from the nearby town of
Jausiers. Just one climb, only 23k for the day, albeit to 2802m. This meant
we'd be in Barcelonnette for two nights, and it meant a late start the next
day, at least for Cees and me. It might as well have been a rest day. Suddenly
we found ourselves eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant in the center of
town. What was this, vacation or something? Gerard left for Jausiers early in
the morning to make sure he could borrow a wheel from the Mavic support crew
(and get his cassette transferred). It was a beautiful day (we were lucky to
have nothing but beautiful weather all week) and I rode well. As I was finding
my legs in the early part of the time trial, I realized that the reason this
felt familiar was that during several vacations near Mont Ventoux in recent
years, I had done this kind of ride many times. Hey, this was my thing!
Fortunately, the legs no longer had the stiffness of the previous day and I was
able to push it a little. Even though riders started (from a podium) twenty
seconds apart with the higher-ranked people leaving later, nobody passed me on
the way up, and I finished 122nd, my best placing of the week. I was now in
158th place overall and it looked like I might be able to finish the week
higher than my race number (156).
Things
initially looked up the next day, when Cees and I did a pretty good ascent of
the awesome Col de Cayolle, cresting in 120th and 121st place respectively. For
safety reasons the organizers had decided to interrupt the timing at the top
(the same measure was in force for the rough and tricky descent later in the
day of the Col de Couillole), and so everyone did the non-timed portions differently.
Some took long breaks, others basically kept riding, everyone lost sight of how
everyone else was doing. I felt I was doing o.k., but did not push it too hard on
the second climb of the day, the Valberg. We had all talked about how
tough the final, slightly uphill, 30k section through the valley of the Tinee
was going to be, and that it would be followed by the eight kilometer climb up to the finish
in Auron. Then on the short descent from Valberg one of the security people
riding along on a motorbike pointed at my rear wheel, which indeed was wobbly.
Loose spoke, the second time after this Ambrosio wheel had been rebuilt by the
factory in June. Not supposed to happen, but what can you do? Would he call the
Mavic guys? “Non.” I suppose this wasn't serious enough, because when I opened
my brake, it was possible to continue riding.
This
I did, but without conviction. I would just ride it home if the wheel held up,
that would be good enough for the day. It had been a good week, and if this was
the worst mishap, it would still be a good week. So for the remainder of the
timed section to the top of the third climb of the day, the Col de Couillole, I
lost a good amount of time. Thinking I’d fill my bottles one more time at
Isola, in the valley, I rode by the feed station at the top, carefully made my
way down the other side, and crossed the timing mat at the bottom all alone. It
was getting warm. Up ahead in the distance I saw a small group ride away, but
there was no way I was going to bridge up. It was one of these situations where
you have to tell yourself (and I did): “so you like to ride your bike and put
in a little effort? well, it’s all here, so do quick review of Rule #5 and pursue
your passion.” Ticking off the hectometers one-by-one, I was suddenly passed
by, as his race number said, David from New Zealand. As he rode by he gestured
to his rear wheel indicating I should grab it. David was going well, and all I
could do for a few kilometers was hang on. Even that got to be too hard, and I
did the last couple of kilometers to Isola—about halfway to the final
climb—solo again. Then, just before Isola, it was back to racing. A group including
Marg caught up to me, and again I was told, by her, to pick it up. It was a
good group, and with another 15k or so to go in the valley I would have been
foolish to let them ride. I checked my bottles and decided I could probably
just make it to the line with what was left in them.
We
all rode by that last feedzone, and people kept it going as if we didn’t have
to do a fourth climb. All I could do was hold my position in the rotation, pulling
off almost immediately when getting to the front. The group was going so well
that as we approached the start of the climb, David from New Zealand came into
view again. I was worried we would pass him with me in the lead (what would I
say?), but then we were on the climb. Whether it was because this was a 143k
stage on day six, the extra energy spent due to the broken spoke, the pace in
the group, or the fact that after Isola I had put myself on a miserly ration of
one sip of water every mile (it was probably a combination of all of these),
that ascent to Auron was the toughest stretch of the week for me. It’s a real
climb, kicking up to 7-9% in the middle, but it’s relatively short and on the
whole nothing too special. But I did long parts of it in my lightest gear,
39x28, and was glad just to get there. I was also just about out of water and
therefore extremely happy, though not immediately able to express that
happiness, to find the daily post-race refreshment table right at the finish
line. From the faces of the people around me, I don’t think I was the only one
who had suffered. Also right near the finish line was the Mavic crew, and they
had my wheel fixed in ten minutes (as I told them, my next wheels, like my
previous, will be a set of trouble-free Mavics). How badly did I suffer? Not
enough to kill my appetite for either my daily scientific chocolate recovery
bar or the hot lunch. In fact, I ate the latter prior to my massage because I
worried that otherwise I’d get too hungry. So hard day shmart day. I had
dropped back to 165th place, however, and the plan of matching or
beating my race number would have to wait until another year. Further studying
the results later that day, we saw that Cees had done the Valberg one minute
faster than me. Proving that had he not hurt his shoulder prior to the race he
would have been right up there with us, Gerard turned out to have covered the
final section through the valley and up to Auron the quickest of Team Cacolac.
After
spending a remarkably restful, albeit short night on a thick gymnastics mat in the
middle of the Saint Etienne-sur-Tinee gymnasium (along with a few dozen other
riders), and a 5:30 breakfast in the stands, all that was left was the
shortened final stage. The forecast called for major thunderstorms in the
afternoon for the area north of Nice. This--at the Col de Vence, to be
precise--was where we were supposed to complete Haute Route and be escorted by
local police to our victory lap down the Boulevard des Anglais. But the police
wanted us in Nice by one o'clock, and so the race organizers had decided to cut
out the Col de Saint Martin, the first of two climbs planned for stage seven.
What was left was a long ride down the valley, convoy-style: 60+ kilometers of
being bunched up behind the motorcycles to the final climb of the week. This
was made worse by the early hour, 7am, and the fact that until the very end of
this stretch we rode in the shade, tucked away deep down between the mountains.
It was, in short, another two-jersey, plus vest, plus arm warmers start of the
day. When we finally crossed the timing mat for our ride to the Col de Vence, a
lot of pent-up energy went looking for an outlet. The fact that these were the
final 40k of the week further encouraged people just to lay it all out there,
and the modest grade made it all the easier to turn the grand finale into a
genuine hammerfest. It was something different, but it was fun, and it made missing
the Col de Saint Martin a little easier to take. Naturally, I saw Marg several
times during these 90 minutes: she, being paced by one or two riders, first
caught up with me in the early part; then she fell back when the pace went up;
next, with less than 10k to go, she caught me again, being paced by some dude
in a big hurry; and finally I got ahead of her slightly on some short hills in
the annoyingly long final kilometer. She could afford to give a little ground,
because the day before she had eliminated her entire time deficit with me, and
then some. I made a real effort in this final stage, but still lost one place
in the overall standings, finishing the week in 166th place.
Getting
off our bikes in Nice, we were very pleased—and not just because once more
there were people to watch our stuff while we swam in the
Mediterranean and wandered around town for hours until it was time to get on the bus back
to Geneva. This had been a pretty tough stage race where we had been able to
live like full-time cyclists for a week. And in a field of pretty good riders,
many younger than us, we had held our own. Whether this had been the hardest
thing we had ever done in our lives, or if Haute Route ranked among our
top-three best life experiences ever (characterizations found on the Haute
Route website), is less important than that the week was everything we hoped it
would be, and more. For most of our cycling lives, there had never been
anything like this, although subconsciciously we always wished there would. This
explains the excitement we felt, last year, when we discovered the existence of
Haute Route. And now we had done it, and the whole thing had exceeded our
expectations. In my book, that’s a pretty good definition of bliss.
Bliss.
left to right: Mediterranean, Gerard, Ruud, Cees, Mediterranean
