Day 11: The day my victory was snatched from me!

I really enjoy writing these blog posts. I spoke to someone a while ago who said he would never write a blog, because he is riding for himself rather than to win approval of a whole lot of people he has never met, so there is no point writing about it afterwards. I disagree completely. For a start, the blog has nothing to do with a whole lot of people, there aren’t that many of you who read it! Secondly, writing the blog lets me relive the ride but without the pain, cold, heat, wind and rain, so I just get the enjoyment which brings a whole lot of new memories. Not all of them make it into these posts because (I admit it) I would like to keep the readers I do have but the people I see every day get to hear little extra details and stories as I relive it all and remember them. And the third point is that I love getting feedback on them. Some of it comes in comments (check how quick this post has been Anthony, less than a week!) and some through other mediums. From my last post I specifically got a lot of feedback about my variety of optimism. Some of it was even good, but my favourite bit came from one of my favourite people in the whole world, who told me that it is known in academic literature as “mental contrasting with implementation intentions”. I love it. Now on with the story, which is about to take a terrible twist!

I woke in a corn field under a transmission tower as the sky started to get light in the east. Everything seemed ok, but little did I know how disastrous the day would be for my overall race result!

I was pretty sure that this would be the day I reached CP4, and was interested to see if I was going to be there ahead of or behind the people I was near at CP3, so it wasn’t long before I looked at the race tracker. In terms of my relative position not much had changed, but what I did see was that Fiona Kolbinger (#TCRNo7Cap66) wasin the lead and heading onto the final parcour. Now of course I accepted that there were a whole lot of people several days in front of me, but I had been holding out a (very) slim hope that every single one of them would take an astonishingly poor route enabling me to slip by for victory. Once I saw Fiona’s dot on the parcours though I had to accept the terrible twist that this simply wouldn’t be my year to win. Oh well, maybe there’ll be another chance some time…

I tried not to let the realisation get me down, and happily it was a beautiful morning and I was riding through beautiful country, which made things a lot easier. At this point my navigation was mainly following the route I had planned but as I mentioned I hadn’t given that route a great deal of attention, and a lot of it was based on tourist cycling routes. Those routes are great for scenery, but it meant that sometimes I just found myself taking the long way for no benefit, so in a few spots I tried to take a slightly better route by following the signs to where I thought I was going. Sometimes this worked out well for me. Not always.

Anyway, eventually I hit Lac Leman and turned right. I’ve ridden that road before, and ridden the section between Nyon and Geneve quite a lot, and I was expecting a fairly smooth and fast trip to France.  Unfortunately it wasn’t far after Nyon that I was met with roadworks and warnings of delays and stoppages for a long distance. I was just wondering if I was got to be better off taking a different route when another cyclist came by, so I asked if he knew if the road was passable. Andrew turned out to be heading into work in Geneva, and after he reassured me that yes we should get through without a problem on bikes we headed on together. He was a strong rider and on hearing what I was doing was quick to suggest I jump onto his wheel for a bit of a break from the wind. Tempting as it was I instead explained that the rules wouldn’t allow it, so I stayed out in the wind but it became a very pleasant ride, with good conversation covering everything from Brexit and social housing issues in Scotland through the rise of e-bikes all the way to the exhaust note of a Ducati.

I really think one of the best things about this style of racing is that you get to meet great people as you race and I wish I could work out how to change the rules to allow more of that while still ensuring a level playing field. The best I can think of would be virtually impossible to enforce because every racer would interpret it differently, even though it is such a simple concept that Mike Hall put it in just four words: “Don’t be a dick”.

Rolling into Geneva brought back a lot of memories from when I briefly lived there many years ago, and it was nice to pass through some of the beautiful spots of what is still a beautiful town!

Heading out of Geneva you pretty quickly hit the French border, but I remembered that there was a service station just on the Swiss side of it. I stopped there for breakfast with the intention to spend all of my Swiss Francs, so I didn’t have to carry or change them. The attendant was pretty amused by me I think – happy enough to sell me a lot of food which I then paid for with Swiss money pulled from every pocket, and I was pleased to spend all but 25 centimes of what I had. She also handed over the key to the toilet with a smile, although she did mention as she handed it over that unfortunately there wasn’t a shower there – I can’t imagine why she thought that was relevant.

Rolling into France and it was starting to warm up into the low to mid thirties, and I was drinking a lot and stopping for icecream pretty regularly. At one stop I had a good chat with a guy who had been touring on his BMW and followed some of the same roads I had taken. Despite him having much better suspension and not being so impacted by hills we pretty much agreed on which bits were ordinary and which bits were amazing. Eventually though I reached Annecy, which was just crazy. The volume of traffic was ridiculous, with cars jammed solid in lots of places.

There wasn’t much space and I was trying to work my way along with a lot of traffic pretty close by, but after a while I became aware of a scooter that was following really very close to me. I looked over, and the guy looked straight back, called me by name, asked if I needed anything, said I was going great and then rode off with a big thumbs up. It really is a funny thing having your dot up on a web page for all the world to see!

Heading into Saint-Michel-Valloire I stopped for some food (hot chips – it was just past 7pm but all they could do for me was hot chips) and had another look at the tracker. This time, the news was brilliant. This was still 16km from the start of the parcours (specifically the 16km that covered Col du Telegraphe), but was the most practical way to get to it and I think just about everyone came through the town. Right at that moment, the guy who had been just behind me at CP3 (Innes, #TCRNo7Cap221) was stopped somewhere else in the town and the guy I had lunch with at CP3 (Herve, #TCRNo7Cap54) was on his way up Telegraphe. I knew they had both gone through Italy while I went through Switzerland, and I couldn’t believe there had been so little time difference in our journeys, but I found it wonderfully amusing!

As you get to the parcours everyone suddenly comes together and you start seeing other riders again, and there were quite a few on the parcours at that time. It is a cool way of doing it, because you know you’ve each had your own adventures and suddenly you’re facing the same challenges again side by side. Climbing Telegraphe I was slowly gaining on someone and as I got closer I recognised Katja (#TCRNo7Cap110), who I had come across several times so far in the race. I recognised her from her kit and her bike and when I got close enough from her face – basically from how she looked. She, on the other hand, told me that she recognised me without even looking, from how my rear hub sounded. Maybe I needed to do something about that after all…

Going through Valloire it was coming to dark but was still a nice night. I saw a couple of other racers who were stopping there for the night, but the forecast was for rain the following day and I was feeling alright, so I decided I wanted to at least get over Galibier before it hit.

The climb up Galibier is one I’ve done several times and tonight it was magic, it just made me feel alive. I felt pretty good going up it and it occurred to me that my achillies seemed to be hurting a little less than it had been.

At the top I stopped to put on some more clothes, because although it wasn’t raining it was now pretty cold, and then I headed down the other side. I stopped a few times to first add more clothes and then take them off, but then realised I needed to find somewhere to sleep because pretty soon I would start climbing again and I didn’t want to stop up high with the weather as it was.

Somehow it took me an age to find a spot to stop, and a couple of times I pulled over and then decided to carry on. I was down to riding really slowly by that stage as I scanned the roadside though, and decided I just needed to sleep at the next place I stopped otherwise I would spend all night looking but never actually get any sleep. It had been a pretty good day comparatively, over 300km with 3,700m of elevation, but if I now spent an age riding slowly without sleeping it would be bad for tomorrow.

The next place I stopped was far from ideal, but I stopped there anyway. Pushing my way through some brambles to get a little separation from the road I picked the clearest, flattest spot I could see, rolled out my bivy, blew up my mattress, chucked on some bandaging and lay back to go to sleep. As I closed my eyes I realised that this had been it – the last tough day. I only had a pair of hills to get over in the morning, and then I was onto the plains of France. From that point on it would basically be a fast and flat drag race straight across to the final parcours, then a couple of little bumps to take us in to the finish. The fast guys would probably hold close to 40km/h as a moving pace most of the way, and even as averagely as I had been riding 35km/h should be well within my reach. I had considered the finishers party on Sunday night to be out of reach, but now I could see that it was well within reach. My number one fan had been asking a lot when I would reach Brest so that she could be there for my arrival, and I had been holding off giving an answer. I still didn’t want to get overly confident, but I decided that I should tell her Saturday. With a happy smile on my face, I went to sleep.