By Patrick Edwards

When friends ask me how my Tour de France charity ride went this summer, I usually start off by noting that the pros gave me a one day head start and I stayed one day ahead the whole of the 3 weeks.  If they’re satisfied with this, I usually go on to mention that the food in France is great, and so is the beer they import from Belgium.  That’s usually about it.  There just isn’t that much I can tell most of my friends because they don’t ride bikes.  Breaking down the details just leaves them with some abstract notion that it was harder than commuting to work. 

On the flip side, the people I ride with usually spend a few hours each day in July watching it for themselves.  I would imagine this is true for most of my fellow GS riders, so I figured it would be better if I skipped the details of the ride and got down to some pointers for those who might like to do it themselves some day.  These are mostly the mistakes I would try and avoid making if I did this again.

The first thing we screwed up was opting out of the insurance for the van.  Dad (my volunteer support vehicle driver) and I discussed the 1200 euro option and figured that was just too much money.  At some point between CDG airport and the outskirts of Paris we realized this was actually a bargain.  The French are pretty good drivers, and very aggressive.  Their cars have the scars to prove it, and we were starting to think ours would too.  I haven’t seen driving like that outside of Kathmandu!  All that was missing was the occasional cow in the middle of the road.  Somehow we only got a couple of scratches on the trip and managed to get away without being charged for them, but if I had it to do over, I’d get the insurance.

The next difficulty became apparent on day one as well.  French street signs are usually small, not lit, and on the other side of the street on a building somewhere.  They’re difficult to see until you’re passing them during the day, and near impossible during the night.  The streets also have a tendency to change names without notice as you drive along.  It took us about an hour circling around the area of Nantes where our hotel was before we finally honed in on it.  Little did we know that a one hour search would be the norm.  Sometimes it took closer to two hours due to traffic, one way streets, and even on one occasion a hotel that didn’t actually exist.  After a long day of riding, hungry bellies and fast approaching check-in deadlines, these scenic tours were not much fun. 

My original plan had been to book in the heart of the cities for some sightseeing in the evening, after a nice meal.  It turns out that we usually only had time to check in, shower, and go to sleep.  We were lucky if we were early enough to find an open restaurant to eat at and often had to eat on the road.  The best nights were spent in hotels on the outskirts of town, just off the highway.  They were easy to find, avoided traffic, and left us with an extra hour or two.  So I highly recommend being more realistic than I was about any time to sightsee at the end of the day and just stick with hotels on the outskirts of town.

The next issue to arise was the pain in my ass.  The majority of the roads the Tour uses are small farm roads and the quality is very bad.  I would say about 80% of the roads we rode were of such a low quality that we would consider them construction zones here.  It really defies explanation!  Sometimes it would be wavy and strewn with pot holes, other times it was as though they’d forgotten to add that last smooth layer when they repaved, leaving the bumpy corduroy which occasionally even went perpendicular to the direction of the road.  Even the recently repaired sections were usually problematic, with fresh asphalt sticking to tires.  In my estimation, these poor surfaces led to an increase in friction, which not only slowed me down, but also gave me a new perspective on saddle sores.  I think the best advice for avoiding this would be to embark on a trip like this only after putting in some longer rides, hardening those sensitive areas.  I hadn’t done more than a couple rides in the 160km range all year, and only one longer than that ever (180), so stage one’s 210km sort of ripped me a new one.  By stage 4 I was standing on every downhill section! 

Another quick remark on the rough roads: my friends had bought me a GoPro camera to sit on the handlebar and take pictures and videos.  The handlebar mount is pretty sturdy, but it was no match for those roads and snapped off just a few days in.  I was lucky that I caught it, as it might have been an issue had it fallen into my wheel, or under it, or whatever.  I’d take it again, but I’d recommend some combination of electrical tape and maybe a leash for redundancy.

My pace gradually slowed due to fatigue, my saddle sores gradually went away, and we got into a nice rhythm.  We learned that we had to load up at the patisserie in the morning because they don’t stay open for long.  And we would always buy some groceries and snacks if we came across an open store.  The trouble is, open stores weren’t a common occurrence.  I never did figure out what was going on with the store hours in France, but it seems that they spend most of the day closed, so you need to stock up whenever you get a chance.  Assume you won’t come across another open store all day! 

The rain is France is colder.  Well, maybe that’s not quite right, but it sure seemed that way.  I’m not sure if it was exhaustion, the long hours in the rain, or an actual temperature difference, but I seemed to get much colder riding in the rain there than here.  Stage 5 was a legitimate downpour for most of the day and I spent parts of it shivering uncontrollably.  It only got worse on Stage 12, going over the summit of La Hourquette d'Ancizan, then the Col du Tourmalet, followed up by a ride up to Luz-Ardiden, all in the rain.  I think that was the first time I’ve ever preferred to be going up rather than descending.  I had to stop at the base of each descent to get feeling back in my hands and stop my legs from shaking!  But the Pyrenees were no match for the Alps in terms of rain and cold and stage 17 had us up to the snowline!  I was drenched all day, and freezing.  Simple solution: bring winter riding gear!  July in Vancouver doesn’t get as cold as July at 9000ft in the Alpes, but I probably should have known that.  In any case, I found that lining my arms and armpits with freezer bags helped a little, as did wearing board shorts over my bibs on the descents. 

Also, I think some planning would have helped us negotiate the road closures.  There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the closures, but sometimes the mountain roads would be closed, other times they wouldn’t.  We would have to stop and map out a detour for the van as only bikes were allowed to pass.  It was mostly just a hassle, but we would have saved ourselves some headaches if we assumed the roads would be closed and planned alternate routes and a meeting place on the other side in advance.  On the bright side, the descents down the closed roads were the best of the trip.  Our first roadblock led to a hasty solution: “I’ll meet you at the hotel on the other side.”  I had a few climbs ahead of me, but I was thinking about 60min.  3 hours later I got to the hotel just after dark.   I’d underestimated the climbs (the first of the trip) and didn’t reach the top of Super Besse until dusk.  Then I got a little lost on the way down, took a wrong turn, almost hit a cow, and got really thirsty.  Better planning would have prevented all that. 

Speaking of planning, it might be worth considering the option of riding the route several days away from the Tour.  The upside of riding one day ahead for the entire route was getting caught up in all the festivities, but it was also the biggest downside.  The crowds are great.  Drunk fans lining the mountaintop finishes the night before the race are happy to practice pushing and cheering, offering beers, etc, and that can be a real boost at the end of the day.  The Basque fans on Luz-Ardiden and Plateau de Beille, and the Dutch fans on the Alpe-d'Huez were amazing.  Fans were camped out all along the route each day, and even the little cheers on the flat stages were a treat.  The downside was that hotels in the start and finish towns were often fully booked, and I was online within hours of the route announcement in October!  A few days difference would have meant better hotels, less traffic, and likely no roadblocks.  The plan to watch the race in person on rest days went out the window in the first couple of days, and was a distant memory by the first rest day, after 9 straight days on the bike.  I enjoyed the challenge of having to stay one day ahead, but if I were to do it again, I would start a few days earlier or later and find another motivation for staying on pace with the race.

Don’t let these little inconveniences discourage you though.  I highly recommend a trip like this.  The descents alone are worth the trip.  Some were like 40km-long waterslides!   The scenery is amazing and the whole thing offers a new perspective on watching the race on TV.  Some days really are gruelling.  There are plenty of climbs that aren’t categorized that could be, and others that neglect to include significant parts of a climb (like Col d’Angel: they say it’s about 24km at an avg of about 8%, but don’t mention the 40 or so kms at 4-5% that leads up to it).  And there are easy days too.  The time trials are like days off, and there were a couple nice, sunny 6 hour days that were pretty easy too.  But don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s over too soon… I had a couple of flats on the last day about 8km from the finish.  I ran out of tubes and had to walk the last 8km to the Arch de Triumph in the pouring rain!  Not exactly the nice sunny victory lap I’d been looking forward to. 

Victory laps aside, the fundraising was a success.  We raised about $5000 for mosquito nets to help prevent the spread of malaria in Africa.  If you’d like more info on the ride or the fundraising, please check out the following links:

 

TDF ride blog: http://7dollarlives.blogspot.com/
Red Cross: http://www.redcross.ca/malariabites/7dollarlives.html
Facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?gid=39642632623
If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask: Patrickofdelta@gmail.com

 

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