Trip Report from Le Tour: Day 3
Friday, July 16th 2010
Serotta's Scott Hock's Day 3 in France, "starts off sore...like I just rode a century with almost 13,000
feet of climbing. Luckily our planned ride today is only 60 miles...almost
forgot it is going to have 7000 feet of climbing. Tim my friend and trip
guide drops me off to ride with a few of his friends because, the lucky
guy gets to ride in a vehicle with the race, he didn't even know which care he
would be in...But who cares, what a chance of a lifetime! The rest of us
were able to get some VIP passes to the finish area, which would turn out to be
an amazing situation. But first we had to get to the end of the race in
Avoriaz.
I meet Tim's friends, who live in Chamonix and we made the short drive to the start of our ride. We had about a 5-mile warm up before we hit the slopes of the Col de Ramaz. The cool thing about Le Tour is that they actually let you ride on the course before the racers come through. There are already people lining the roads, and we are still 4 hours away from the peloton's arrival. Just about everyone is shouting "ALLEZ, ALLEZ" and "BON COURAGE.” The climb meanders its way up through a few towns and after about 10 km it starts to get rather steep even though the average grade is only 6.1 percent over its 16 km's. There is a rather cruel false summit near the top, and then it continues for about another 2 km, where we take a break and regroup.
We had a ripper of a descent down the backside, very fast and flowing with a few off camber switchbacks thrown in to keep you honest. I especially liked the piles of hay bails in a few of these corners, which remind you to stay in control. After this there was a small "uncategorized" climb to Les Gets, which looks like an amazing ski town. The lifts were still running when we arrived, full of mountain bikers. We filled up our bottles at a great spring in town and continued on the ascent to Avoriaz. It was starting to get really hot as the sun moved in; I can only imagine how the racers will feel, as they would be coming through in the hottest part of the day.
A quick descent and we were on the final climb of the day. Again it was filled with spectators most already yelling at the top of their lungs at us. A few had satellites to view the race before they were there in person, and a lot were starting up their barbeques which was rather rude as I still had 14 km's to climb before I could enjoy some real food. This section was beautiful with great views of the town of Morzine off of the switchbacks. As I approached the 1 km to go sign, the gendarmes were telling everyone to get off their bikes and get behind the barriers. I waited a few minutes and our group was back together.
Here we feast and make our way up to the VIP tent. We show our tickets and walk right in and immediately realize how great this will be. It is a huge white tent that is fully staffed and catered with food and crazy fancy desserts, Coke, wine, water, and champagne. There is even a spot where they are scooping at least 20 different flavors of ice cream. We are already in heaven, and then we realize that there are also two 60-inch plasma screens to watch the race from. Now all we had to do was wait in this luxury for the race to arrive.
The racers came up the climb incredibly fast, with sprint finish won by Andy Schleck. We had to wait almost two more hours before we could start on our descent back to the car. Once the gendarmes finally let us go, it was total pandemonium. This was probably one of the sketchiest things that I have ever done, weaving in and out of traffic and cyclists. I actually got a flat on my carbon clinchers at about 30 mph because of the rim surface overheating. We meet up with Tim who fillsiytiuy us in on all of the craziness of riding in the vehicle along with the race. He ended up in a French TV car that was doing a story on Cofidis. The driver was absolutely mad, he said, and he got to see the likes of Fabian Cancellara and George Hincapie totally hating life up the climb to Avoriaz as they were off the back in a bad way. Amazing...."
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I meet Tim's friends, who live in Chamonix and we made the short drive to the start of our ride. We had about a 5-mile warm up before we hit the slopes of the Col de Ramaz. The cool thing about Le Tour is that they actually let you ride on the course before the racers come through. There are already people lining the roads, and we are still 4 hours away from the peloton's arrival. Just about everyone is shouting "ALLEZ, ALLEZ" and "BON COURAGE.” The climb meanders its way up through a few towns and after about 10 km it starts to get rather steep even though the average grade is only 6.1 percent over its 16 km's. There is a rather cruel false summit near the top, and then it continues for about another 2 km, where we take a break and regroup.
We had a ripper of a descent down the backside, very fast and flowing with a few off camber switchbacks thrown in to keep you honest. I especially liked the piles of hay bails in a few of these corners, which remind you to stay in control. After this there was a small "uncategorized" climb to Les Gets, which looks like an amazing ski town. The lifts were still running when we arrived, full of mountain bikers. We filled up our bottles at a great spring in town and continued on the ascent to Avoriaz. It was starting to get really hot as the sun moved in; I can only imagine how the racers will feel, as they would be coming through in the hottest part of the day.
A quick descent and we were on the final climb of the day. Again it was filled with spectators most already yelling at the top of their lungs at us. A few had satellites to view the race before they were there in person, and a lot were starting up their barbeques which was rather rude as I still had 14 km's to climb before I could enjoy some real food. This section was beautiful with great views of the town of Morzine off of the switchbacks. As I approached the 1 km to go sign, the gendarmes were telling everyone to get off their bikes and get behind the barriers. I waited a few minutes and our group was back together.
Here we feast and make our way up to the VIP tent. We show our tickets and walk right in and immediately realize how great this will be. It is a huge white tent that is fully staffed and catered with food and crazy fancy desserts, Coke, wine, water, and champagne. There is even a spot where they are scooping at least 20 different flavors of ice cream. We are already in heaven, and then we realize that there are also two 60-inch plasma screens to watch the race from. Now all we had to do was wait in this luxury for the race to arrive.
The racers came up the climb incredibly fast, with sprint finish won by Andy Schleck. We had to wait almost two more hours before we could start on our descent back to the car. Once the gendarmes finally let us go, it was total pandemonium. This was probably one of the sketchiest things that I have ever done, weaving in and out of traffic and cyclists. I actually got a flat on my carbon clinchers at about 30 mph because of the rim surface overheating. We meet up with Tim who fillsiytiuy us in on all of the craziness of riding in the vehicle along with the race. He ended up in a French TV car that was doing a story on Cofidis. The driver was absolutely mad, he said, and he got to see the likes of Fabian Cancellara and George Hincapie totally hating life up the climb to Avoriaz as they were off the back in a bad way. Amazing...."
