Today we had both dumped our useless mini-pumps and had CO2 cannisters with tiny Zefal screw-on regulators in our pockets. I weghed this in at 79g total – and since I’d lost a total of 70g with better shoes and 50g losing the pump and holders the overall setup was actually lighter and much more efficient. Chris pointed out that most of the punctures you see are in the first several kilometres and are due to people having changed their tyres before the race and pinching the inner tube. This is probably true because my only puncture has been because of that – so for this reason I changed tyres the night before to be able to verify that all was okay in the morning. There is also a good procedure for ensuring that you don’t pinch the inner tube when mounting the tyre – blow up the tube initially with your mouth when you replace it on the wheel, then before you get the last bit of the tyre on you let this air out to create more room. Next you peel off the tyre again a little while pulling it on the section where it wasn’t before. This ensures that when you finally force the last bit on it’s over a section where the tube was already correctly bedded when under some pressure. With no air in the tyre you can normally get it on fully without tyre levers. I did notice however today that people were repairing punctures at all stages of the race – but this could still be slow punctures from initial tyre fitting.
On the climb up the Aravis I had spoken to a rider on another Canyon bike. His bike was the bottom of the range aluminium model but it looked really good. He was glad to have it because the previous night in Mégève it had been stored in a garage and during the night 10 bikes had been stolen from the garage. They only took carbon bikes and left his behind! Welcome to France! Why work when you can steal?
The final climb up to Les Saisies ski station was probably not anticipated enthusiastically by many people. Audio feedback from the Endomondo software on the Xperia phone had been excellent for motivation on the climbs. Thanks to the feedback I’d managed to never let any kilometre slip over 6 minutes but the start of this climb was steep and I was horrified to be informed that the previous kilometre was over 7 minutes. That did not bode well for this climb. Rapidly the situation was brought back under control and the following kilometre was under 5 minutes. Ever since the Aravis there had been a steady trickle of people cracking and slowing right down or stopping for breaks. Predictably this was happening more and more regularly by now. Regardless of this there was a steady procession of people slowly passing me. I’d noticed however that even those who dropped me right at the bottom of the long Croix Fry were only 100m ahead at the very top. About 10km from the top of Les Saisies it became steep again and was now becoming a bit daunting. This is the point where I would have expected to experience problems – but something odd happened instead. I found that by moving my whole midsection with the pedal stroke that I could connect with a stronger pull up on the pedal – compensating to some extent for the power I’d lost though lowering the saddle to protect my back. The strange thing was though that this gave the unusual sensation that it kept power on the pedals constantly instead of my usual on/off feeling though each stroke. Amazingly I was able to maintain this and started to accelerate and quite rapidly overtake everyone in sight. My heart rate went back up to 160+ even though this was now over the 4hr 30min mark and there was already a lactic acid headache setting in. The next 10km right to the top was just a steady process of catching one person after another. I kept telling myself that this can’t be kept up and I’d end up looking pretty stupid when I explode soon – but that never happened – it was surprise after surprise.
I used the new motion to great effect on the 30km return to Mégève from Les Saisies. At one point during the descent I wanted to catch a group ahead on a slight uphill incline against the wind. Putting on the power I closed the 100m gap in seconds despite the fact that they were motoring themselves. When you know how to take a racing line in a corner then fast descending is fun – so the descent back down towards Flumet was enjoyable and once again several people lost a lot of ground though slow descending. I’d also dropped a few people at the refreshment stands because I only needed one bottle refill stop – consuming only 1.5 litres in almost 6hrs of effort – but never enduring unnecessary thirst. From the bottom of the descent it was a 10km hike back to Mégève with most of it being moderate climbs where you could still hold a good speed. The wind seemed to be behind so it wasn’t necessary to find anyone to work with and I continued to power onwards. In the last kilometre I realised that nobody had overtaken me at all in the last 40km and was feeling pretty good about that, when 3 guys flew past me. One of them broke off on his own and I was able to maintain a constant gap with the others. Arriving at the town and having to deal with cars the others were obviously going to hesitate so I turned up the aggression and tore past one of them and negotiated an advantageous position on the inside of a car on the final roundabout then sprinted past the other for the finish line. Only one had escaped in the end. The final time was 5hrs 48mins. I’d been powering as hard as possible over the last 10km to ensure breaking the 6hr barrier and was finally well inside it. Chris had done really well and finished in 5hrs 24mins.
Last year I’d been extremely apprehensive over doing the middle distance course and took 5hrs 28mins on that – so this is a massive improvement (though the courses were not the same). My apprehension for the long course this year was unfounded. The more I do these events the clearer it becomes that other than by working on training, technique and nutrition – you can’t predict what is going to happen, especially when you stretch yourself into new territory. I need to lose weight to climb faster – that’s clear. Bradley Wiggins just won the Criterium de Dauphiné because he lost 7kg bringing him down to 70kg – so with a height of 190cm (20 more than me) he weighs less than I do! I really don’t understand the technical adaptation that I stumbled upon when I was tired during this race and I’d like to video it to see what it looks like. It feels weird but most things do when you change them. Barefoot running style feels weird but looks absolutely great and natural. The one thing I know for sure is that if it makes you faster then it can’t be far wrong.
The Endomondo app appeared to work perfectly throughout but let me down at the final hurdle in that it somehow managed to fail to record any heart rate data. Other than that it seemed to do an excellent job. The phone had only used half its battery power by the end and the Garmin in contrast was already running out of power. The Endomondo app needs to improve a bit before it can replace a dedicated unit – but that shouldn’t be far away. All the data had been relayed automatically to the internet. If I’d checked with the hands-free (short button push) I may have found out there was a problem with the heart rate data – but I couldn’t do anything once the race was started and it had been displaying heart rate at the beginning. Ironically the phone GPS is the one that agrees with the course distance of 133km very accurately and the Garmin gives 128km. There are various estimates of altitude climbed from 2700 to 3968m. The organisers themselves vacillate between 3500m and 3900m. GPSies calculates 3968. Endomondo gave the ridiculously low 2700m and the Garmin is near the higher end of the spectrum.
The race was won overall in 4hrs 2mins and the front runners were mostly professionals from the AG2R and and FDJ pro teams that you see in the Tour de France. I placed 283rd out of 476 and 50th out of 104 in age category. Although Chris was only 24 minutes ahead at the end this put him at 170th overall and 21st in age group which was an excellent result.
After the race I sat down to eat the post race meal in the vast Palais du Sport in Mégève. The organisation was excellent because there was no queuing despite there being at least 1000 people in the hall. The food was reasonable too with chicken and wholemeal pasta – but it was difficult to eat while recovering from the exercise. It’s important to eat as soon as possible after finishing exercise to replenish the glycogen in the the muscles – but it’s not easy to make yourself eat under those circumstances. Chris had gone immediately down to Sallanches after the race to recover his car, though I didn’t know that. I was too tired to look for him in the hall anyway and just slowly picked my way through the food. Chris probably felt the same in that he preferred to have a break and recovery before eating. Eventually Chris turned up beside me being easily able to spot the highly visible Macot/La Plagne jersey amongst a thousand others – which is a good reason for wearing that jersey! My bike was parked up in a guarded park which used the race numbers to identify the bikes – again very well organised. After recovering it we returned to the car and drove out of Mégève towards the Val d’Arly where there is a cafe in the middle of nowhere where we could get coffees and relax a bit. More important than the coffee was the fact that the Criterium Dauphiné was finishing with Bradley Wiggins leading and we didn’t want to miss him defending the yellow jersey. The proprietor was very obliging and put the TV on and we were able to watch the final 13km of the final climb of the race – excellent timing and a great way to round off an excellent day out.