Vaujany Masters (dummy free)

The house has now been dummy free for 3 nights and calm has been restored. DK actually slept from 7 last night until about 4:30 when he wanted his bottle and then he slept again until nearly 8 when I went to work. It looks like the worst is over and there was really only 1 night of pain. I have cleaned my bike thoroughly and it is ready for some action again tonight and hopefully tomorrow when MK and the boys are off to a mothers group thingy.

I thought I would write a short review of the races that we did in France. The first of them was the Vuajany Masters which was the Sunday morning after we arrived.

The race started at the bottom of the mountain valley that we were staying in so getting to the start line was simply a matter of rolling down the hill for 10 minutes or so. The race started early in the morning and begins with about 20km down the valley towards Grenoble, I know the road well and it was simply a matter of following the crowds and getting psyched up for the climbing ahead. The first climb is the Alpe du Grande Serre, it is getting on for 10km long and goes up about 700m from what I can see above and it is nice way to get the legs working and reassure yourself that you can still climb long hills on a bike. I took it pretty easy and enjoyed the ride. The descent is nothing scary and I soon found myself working up the col d'Ornon which is also a steady climb though by this stage it was pretty hot and the fatigue was starting to settle in. I rode with a few others on and off, a Dutch guy who I would meet several times during the week and some Danish guys who came from Roskilde! This next descent is long, fairly fast and winding and I really enjoyed it. The views are great and you really get the sense that you are in the mountains. There was of course the unpleasant knowledge of what was to come lurking in my mind, but I tried to ignore it, enjoy the ride and catch up on eating and drinking. At the bottom of the valley we headed back towards te start and a splitting point where a shorter ride returns back to the village that we stayed in for the finish and the idiots head off for another brutal climb. I was with the idiots and so we began the climb to Villard Reculas.

I was really wishing that I could just take the shorted climb back to the finish of the 109km race, but pride, stupidity and having signed for the longer race kept me going up the hill. This is a long, steep boring climb, it was very hot and really not much fun at all. It was one of those times that you hope your chain will break or something will give you a good excuse to just stop and call it a day. no excuses came along so I just kept crawling slowly up, through the village and on towards Alpe d'Huez heading towards the feed station there. When I got to the feed station, I had a little bit to eat, drank some more water and then headed for the worst part of the ride - the Col de Sarenne. This is a horrible climb on a very poor road with big drainage channels cut across it every 500m or so. THis make both the short descent and long climb pretty unpleasant and there is no shade whatsoever so you are grinding away up the steep hill wishing you were anywhere else but still getting somehow closer to the finish. By the time you get to the top, you know there is just one obstacle left to face.

The descent is really hard work because the road twists tightly down the mountainside like a clinical diagram of a small intestine and the road surface isn't much easier to handle either. On the way down you are rewarded with some great views and then get to ride 10 or 15km into the wind back to the start of the final climb of the day. The finish line is in Vuajany where we had started the day, the climb is only 4.5km long, but it is about 10-11% for about the first 3km and at this stage of the day, that is pretty hard to manage. I ground my way slowly up through the hairpin bends knowing the climb fairly well and was happy not to have to stop for a rest despite being very dehydrated and totally cooked.

In the end I crossed the line after 8 hours and 44 minutes which is not really very good given that i did it in 8 hours and 12 minutes in 2005 but I suppose that is the cost of being a fat Dad!

The final conclusion was that I don't want to do this ride again, the short one would be really nice, but the last climb is too much, the road too bad and the descent no fun at all. I also learned that a black jersey is a bad idea when there is little shade and it is very hot. Who knew?

I enjoyed the race a great deal and once I had recovered, of course had a great feeling of accomplishment and more than a little anxiety about the Marmotte coming at the end of the week...