In three weeks time I will be lining up along with 5,000 fellow sufferers for La Marmotte - 107 miles in the French Alps starting in Bourg D’Oisans and finishing atop Alpe D’Huez with the Col du Glandon, Col de Telegraph and the Galibier in-between. Reckoned to be one of the toughest sportives on the calendar it has long been on my list of ‘must do ‘ rides but as July 5th races towards me worries about fitness, gearing, de-hydration etc crowd my mind.
My previous two wheeled Alpine experience is limited to a bike business ‘jolly’ last year courtesy of Litespeed which saw a bunch of bike shop owners pedalling up the Col du Glandon followed by an even more leisurely lunch in the cafe on the summit of the Croix de Fer. All very nice and I loved being in the mountains but I feel the Marmotte will be something alltogether different.
Riding with long time cycling buddy, Matt, will be great apart from the fact that he is still a superfit First Cat racing cyclist and I have long since lost the right to such a title! I am counting on my residual ability to get up hills and (more importantly) his patience to get us through.
Training has been a mixture of local races, a handful of Sportives (Tour of Flanders being the highlight) and rides in the Surrey Hills augmented by a week of hilly rides in the Mallorcan mountains (not quite the Alps but at leat you get the chance to ride uphil for 50 minutes).
This weekend it is a Veterans road race in Surrey which I will ride to, so should get in 90 miles or so. Here’s hoping for a sunny weekend.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 20:43:25 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.