An early start to what was billed to be a hot day, rolling out of the hotel at 6.45am in the pitch dark, lights a blazing, a gentle 25km roll down the valley along the same road as I went down on the Raid Pyrenee in 2009, riding alongside Dave who like me was one of the self appointed laggards of this trip.
Along comes the first climb of the day, a 17km climb at 6% up Col De Port, one which I had done before and knew not to be too bad. It's difficult to describe to non cyclists what mountain climbing is like - a good comparison would be to walk over a railway bridge or motorway bridge - the gradient up them is usually around 6 to 8% - except they go on for 100m - the mountain does the same for 17,000m - just relentless endless climbing. By the end your eyes hurts, your brain hurts and your lungs are screaming for you to stop. And you do that several times in a day.
The self appointed fast group showed us little mercy, all cruising on past us before the top of Col De Port, having covered the same 47km in some 45 minutes less than the 2 and a bit hours it took us. How humbling.
Next up the Col de Peguerre, a really really nasty 3km climb at 13%. In cycling terms anything above 10% is "into the red zone" (self obvious). This climb just killed me, smashed me to pieces.
Through to lunch and by now it's hotting up on what should be an easy ish 13km at 5% up Col de Portet. Easy except by now it is around 35 degrees, hitting a max of 40 degrees on one section. Yeah, 40 degrees and there I am suffering like crazy up the side of a mountain praying that every hairpin I go around the next little stretch of road has a little tree on it where I can stop for a few seconds in the relatative shade and cool down. Except you go around the hairpin and nope, no shade ahead - it really was the hardest climb I've ever done, truly brutal heat.
I knew at the start of the day that if it was a hot as had been predicted then I'd be suffering badly by the end of the day. It's OK to suffer badly on a one day ride but on a ten day tour it will take you the next day or two to recover, you just end up blowing yourself up a day or two down the road because of what you did to yourself previously. I had decided before the final food stop that I was going to take the easy option home - it missed out the final col of the day which was a pretty nasty one and I led a little mini train of Jenny and Scott home the flat way. Not brilliant to miss out on one of the mere 106 cols on the trip but you gotta know your limits.
Managed to turn my garmin off for an hour by mistake without noticing so stats are wrong (and the max speed is clearly a glitch). I think proper stats are: Distance 200km, climb 3,200m, cols 9 (out of 10).
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