Haute Route Alps, stage 6. Stressy, crash, band and wallop.

So todays blog, this is the second attempt! We got back from the three hour drive around 16:00, by the time I had got a shower, kit washed and hung up it was 17:00 so decided not to nap but instead write the blog. The massive nightmare here is the internet, which was working well when I started writing. By the time I had finished (due to my super slow typing), it had decided to be rubbish and I lost all my work! That kind of summed up the stage today, a bit of a nightmare.

So, take 2.... A stage with only one big climb on it and the climb being right at the end means a possibility of a lot of people being in the lead group who normally are not there. So we had 100k of riding, sometimes down winding road at huge speed with a group double the size of normal, and seemingly full of people who all wanted to be at the front, trying to show how they can zig zag about, blast it on the front for a few minutes, and generally make those three hours very very stressfull.

I do not know how many crashes this caused but I did see three myself with front row seats for all of them. First one out, we had gone through the starting mat and the pace goes through the roof (as normal). Then it normally calm down, it did not today. Within 10k of the start we had a narrow bridge to navigate through and as you can imagine the group was spread all across the road. The other major issue was the media bike who saw the bridge late on and darted into the middle of the road causing carnage. A good half dozen guys went down. I narrowly missed this. When I see a crash it re-establises how fast your race can be over. I think these guys were ok but it does not take much to come off and at 50kph its gunna hurt.

We proceeded along like this, accelerating and braking, accelerating and braking. I am not saying I am the best bike handler, I am probably pretty bad but I do feel I will give people space and hold my lines. There were a lot of people doing very dangerous manoeuvres, and it did not matter if you were at the front of back of the group. These guys were happy to use the wrong side of the road to get access to the front of the group then cause fun there. I would say two hours had passed and then the rain decided to pop its ugly head. Thats the last thing we needed. Shock horror, after a few minutes of water from the heavens a gentle descent with a chicaine and two more guys were sliding across the floor with yells from other riders trying to warn others, and a few swears of there being people doing silly things.

Thankfully the rain stopped as quickly as it had started, but this crash meant I had a 5 minute chase to the main group. I did not want to be stuck in the group of monkeys (as we had renamed them). We were finally approached the only other categorised climb of the day, a cat 3. Off to our left I spotted Ventoux, sure thing it is a rather random sight! A huge mountain standing on its own and it looked like it had snow on the top. The snow was actually the completely out of place bright white rock that covers the top half of the Ventoux, (hopefully picture to follow once the Wifi decides to sort its life out and uploads)!

We hit the cat 3, col notre dames des abeilles. The usual story starts, the group moves away from me then I work my way back and we are left with fifteen to twenty riders. I know there is a feed stop at the summit and look back to see no other riders there so decide as I am out of water and feeling dry I would do a super fast stop fill up a bottle and see if I could grab a banana. Success on both fronts, but I did now have a little bit of a chase to do on the descent. I wanted to be with the main group as I thought there maybe some less steep road before we hit the Ventoux climb itself. This descent was very very bumpy and twisty, I was wondering why it was not neutralised, several other riders were saying the same after. Half way down I had the group in sign, maybe 100m off. I had spotted a few damp patches on the road which had been in the shade. I instantly became very defensive and slowed up. I then saw the remains of two guys who had lost their front wheels and come off. Thankfully we turned 90 degrees and the road then had the sun on it.

We meandered through countryside for another 5k roughly and then there was the timing mat for the climb. At last, I had managed to get to this point without incident. After yesterday I just wanted to get to the end of stage 6 safely and without problems. So here we were, 20k of climbing, something like 1600m of elevation gain. People say the first section is the toughest and I think they are right, through the forest where I cannot remember seeing less than 9%. I was sticking to my plan of watts on the climb so all the top guns had wandered away form me. This was fine as after fifteen minutes I found someone who was climbing at a similar pace to me. We then found two others and we proceeded to climb this never ending forest part of the climb.

At one point I moved away from the three, then they caught me up, then I started to suffer and suffer a lot. I was distanced from the three others by 50m or more, so I quietly suffered. I think I was pretty low for twenty minutes when I noticed I was gradually catching the mini group again. 4-5 minutes after I was happily back with them, thankfully before we came out of the forest as it can be very windy on the exposed white rock section. I sat in and a guy on the front was setting a good pace, I could just hang on in there but knew if I tried to help I would be going into the red. I had noticed early on in the climb I was sweating a lot, strangely I was not that hot. So water was becoming a concern. I knew there was a feed stop with 6k to go so had to stop for a re-fill. As we approached the feed I had undone my bottle and was ready for a quick fire stop and hopefully not lose the group, then I saw Darrell one of the Sports Tour guys, he had a bottle and simply said "half bottle, water". That is all I needed to hear! I veered my bike across to him, grabbed the bottle and threw him the empty I had. Phew, I had watered and had my company still. I chinned half the water and it seemed to pump energy into me. As we neared the final 2k I was ready for what people was was the steep bit, though I feel the worse came at 500m. We hit 1k to go and the lean guy in our group attacked off the front. I waited 30 seconds assessing how i felt and decided to (very overdue) do some work on the front. The poor guy who had been leading for so long could not hold my wheel so I pushed on again in chase of the lean chap. I caught him with 400m to go and we in turn caught another guy. I went to the front and led the way into the final very steep corner. I had nothing to answer with when he kicked past me and finished a few seconds ahead of me.

It was over, I saw super dry and piled a load of water down me. The job done though, no accidents, no incidents, and not an awful finish position. I think 10th on the day and still 8th in GC.

FInal day of the Alps tomorrow and then a tiny bit of rest, shame most of it will be travelling from Nice to Barcelonna.