It is amazing that 4-5 months of physical preparation, plenty of valuable advice, research and good wished final resulted in the “4 old guys” arriving at the start line at Montelimar. I apologize in advance for the poor video footage (in particular the embarrassing commentary) as I attempted to capture footage with my new Flip Video camera. The camera was very convenient, but does not have any anti-vibration correction, so you feel every bump in the road as I did. Now, on to the summary.
We were awake with the dark at about 4:30 AM, to load up our bikes in the truck and have a quick breakfast. The hotel had “organized” a special meeting room with your breakfast the night before – no one could be up that early to service us. Breakfast consisted of left over cold pasta, some ham slices, yogurt, bananas, some day old bread and coffee made the night before. The team straggled in one by one with lots of grumbling about the food.
After breakfast (and while still dark), we had to get all of our bikes from our rooms into the travel van. The bus to carry people arrived on time, but the van was a bit late and anxiety started to mount about how we were going to get our bikes to the start line. Fortunately the driver eventually arrived, and after a little bit of reorganizing, we were able to get the 20+ bikes in the van, with the remnant bikes into the aisle of the bus.
We even had a chance to see a French Ceasar at 5 in the morning ...
The bus ride over to Montelimar was fairly non-eventful. The sun was just starting to rise, and everybody was in a half-awake state while heading over. The countryside was beautiful, and as we started to get closer to Montelimar, there was a notable increase in bikes and vans with bikes attached, as well as riders commuting from their homes/hotels to the start. About 3-4 km from the start area, the traffic started to pick-up, so our group leader wisely advised us to disembark, collect our bikes and ride to the start. We pulled off to the side of the road and everybody finalized their kit and supplies for the day, took care of any last minute calls of nature and mounted the bikes to ride into town.
While we were preparing, several riders were coming through and a fairly impressive team of about 20 riders in red came by on their way into town.
Once we left the bus, it was not too obvious what the best route was to the start, so everybody just followed the flow of riders in hoping that someone up front knew the right way. Montelimar was still somewhat asleep, so it was funny to see all the riders converging on the start. There were several significant “bouchons” (traffic jams, or literally, corks) on the way in, so we had to walk/ride quite a bit on our way.
Finally, we arrived at the pre-start holding pens. Our pen was completely jammed with riders, so we spilled out into a round-about. There were already a bunch of spectators starting to arrive, and the volunteers were very friendly and accommodating. The start was animated by a couple of French commentators speaking about the history of L’Etape, the Tour de France, and what was arranged for the day. Their voices were broadcast over a loud sound system, so all 9500 riders could hear them. The line around the porta-potties was quite long, but the French also had an ingenious (although not very private) urinal system for men to use while waiting. It was essentially a pod with 3-4 separate urinals in one section – very effective, but I couldn’t see it working in the US.
Finally, the hour approached. The commentators did the count-down to 7 AM, and everybody cheered. And waited. And waited some more. Actually, we waited about 25-30 minutes before we began to roll carefully out of town. We all wore electronic chips, so it was not an issue with time, and although the delay was notable, once we started rolling, everything was fine. We passed the start with lots of beeping confirmations that our chips were being read, and the crowd cheered as we passed the first round abouts to leave the town. Spectators fully lined the roads behind barriers, and others had scrambled on top of the round abouts for a better view of their departing friends and family.
We crossed over a bridge out of town and had our first hard left that everybody was warned about, but it was not an issue. About 15 km out of town, we started our first climb, on the Col de Citelle. It was great to finally stretch out our legs and start to warm-up, as many were wearing arm warmers and light jackets on the start. Those were quickly removed as the sun started to warm the French countryside, and our bodies warmed up over the climb.
After the Col de Citelle climb, we started our first descent en masse. It was pretty crazy with many people pushing pretty hard and trying to pass on the left. The descent was not horribly technical at first, and many riders started to build up their confidence. That was probably their mistake, because the first crashes started to appear … guys clearly descending faster than they should … even on the straights … and tying up wheels with the guys in front of them. I think I counted 4 crashes on the descent, two of which were serious enough that ambulances and doctors were there to help out. After the straights, we started to get into more technical descent turns … without guardrails, of course. I must confess that at this point I decided to ride my brakes for a bit. I kept hearing my daughter’s voice in my head “now Dad, be safe, OK?” and she would not let me leave until I verbally confirmed I would be safe. I just did not have the confidence to go down the descents all out, so I would feather the brakes before every turn and definitely let a few guys go by, but I decided it was just not worth the risk.
After the first climb, we had some gorgeous scenery before our next significant climb at Col d'Ey. More to follow in Part II.
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