Haute Route Alps, stage 7.

Haute Route Alps. Stage 7. Short but sharp

I woke up 3 minutes before my alarm, ideal. Good start, then even before the standard coffee I felt I need to a visit to the lavatory, the day was getting better by the second. Once dressed I headed down to the breakfast room to do my usual pleading for the use of the hotels microwave to make my beloved porridge. I stayed at the same place the year before and the owner is a bit of a character, he gave me the look which said "God this guys a twat, what's wrong with the huge spread we have done". After the look on my face was desperation he pointed to the microwave and a got to work on my porridge (and a good one it was).

The final stage of the Alps was as usual shorter and easier than the rest, we had 2 real climbs and I'd guess 2 lumps on the route. It was still advertised as 2400m of climbing so a decent amount of ascents.

From Megeve we rolled 9k, then bang... Col du aravis, this started with a pitch up and then a descent (which was a little scary with still a large group)! Then the climb reared up again. The usual suspects went away and I tried the best I could to hold some decent wheels, it seemed I was a little out my depth getting dropped. After the usual few k things calends down and i overtook a couple of dozen riders. Over the summit we had a short descent where I actually caught a few people and dropped the guys I was with. The day before Me, Andrea and Fredie spent an hour in the Spa and chatted descending so this may have helped.

Once this 4-5 minute descent was dealt with we were onto a short climb of a few k where time was turned off. No heroics here, just a steady ride to the top. Bleep and time off, then a 15k descent and a bit of town riding until the time was back on again. I would say lumpy 30k then up the last ascent of the Alps edition. This was another climb that had a few flat sections in, they said it was 22k i think but really the actual climb did not start until the 10k marker. A more steady grade overall helped the bigger guys and the group I was in had quite a few of these guys in. We had rolled the lumpy section, unfortunately similar to other days there did not seem to be much out rider support on the road and especially with our group being top 25-45 you would have thought a group of 30+ riders would get at least one bike for the busy town sections.

The final climb was called Col de Pitons. A nice climb, mostly in the trees which gave a little bit of cover from the sun. I lost most of my group early on but started to pick them off as the climb continued, then from a group further back a friend from last years route Raphael came past like a train, he shouted me to jump on his wheel. This seemed insane as he was going so much faster but I did what I was told instinctively. Within a minute I was puffing and blowing but stayed focused on his rear tire. We were literally flying past all the people I had been dropped by earlier in the climb and no one could match his speed. I believe I lasted 5 minutes on his wheel doing well over threshold power until I told him I was cooked and to crack on (which he sure did)!

I had 2k to go and soon enough this was over. Another Haute Route finished, certainly the worse result I have had by a mile compared to what I had expected to be decent form pre racing. All in all I did have one ok day, but even that was not that great. I never came here to scrape top 20’s on my “good” days. I will try to write a debrief tomorrow on our day off.

One last little bit, once over the finish line I saw Freddie and Andrea who had finished a few minutes earlier as usual. So from there we had to descent into Annematte, We rolled out chatting about this and that, the weather or something. Then the road dropped down to a proper descent, Andrea leading, Freddie second wheel and me 20m back. I then saw Andrea summons me to sit on his wheel... I could see that coming. So we had 5-6k of lessons, really very beneficial! He even showed me how to get out of a possible crash by deliberately out braking himself. The man is a true genius on these descents!

Anyhow, enough of that... Off for dinner now. Thanks for reading.