Oh, the pain

Today was stage 5 of the Dauphiné Libéré: a total ball breaker with two very difficult climbs. Chloe actually volunteered (really! ask her!) to take care of kids while I rode from Grenoble to do Alpe D'Huez. It was an ambitious plan for me, as I don't ever really do any kind of long distance rides. The typical Grenoblois sandbagger cyclist will be eager to point out that it is basically flat to Bourg D'Oisans, even if it is 30 something miles ( and they themselves have either never done it or only done it once in their lives) but no matter! I was more worried about the bit at the end, of course. Unfortunately, things went wrong very early in the ride. In the first fifteen minutes, to be precise. In those first fifteen minutes, I realized that a) I had forgotten sunscreen and b) My back felt like someone had been hammer drilling it. I would be a fool to give away a rare and very generous day of babysitting though, just for a little back twinge, right? Well, by the time I go to the meeting point (ESRF), I was already in a lot of pain, and the ride up to Bourg was punctuated by my stopping and having to stretch just to regain the ability to breathe. At times the pain was very intense indeed, but like I said: babysitting! Also, this was my one chance to see a mountain stage of the Dauphiné, and I don't think I'm going to see any Tour mountain stages, so this was IT. Along the way, I discovered the key to being able to ride for more than a mile without getting doubled over in near-tears: keep the watts under 180. That is much easier said than done though, and I ended up getting passed by all manner of old, infirm and overweight rider. It was very frustrating. Eventually, we made it to bourg, where I went looking for a pharmacy for some chemical relief, but it was lunchtime, and pain can wait for lunch. We rode up to the base of the famous climb, and I told Ian to go on without me, while I paused every few hundred feet (very hard to stay under 190 watts on those first switchbacks). By the third switchback, the pain had become unbearable, and more troubling still, when the pain set in, I couldn't really breathe. so I pulled over and began stretching my back and may have made a somewhat hysterical phone call to Chloe. So I eventually made it, even though I'm sure it was not the best thing for my back. On days without pain, all the cars would make me not want to take this route though.

I settled in to a comfortable barrier, and got to talking to a french couple from Grenoble. They were staying with friends in Bourg and mentioned that during races like this, Bourg becomes a small Dutch colony. Seeing as almost every rider doing the climb before the race was Dutch, I believe it! After a long wait (I had budgeted enough time to do the climb and come halfway back down) .

Eventually, the race came by.



Two Cervelo riders had tried to escape



but were soon caught by Contador/Astana/ et al.








I was amazed by how broken up the field was. It looks like the earlier climbs (Glandon in particular) really spread them out. They generally looked like they were suffering.





Sag Wagon!!






Painful to even watch how slow I had to go:



All in all, my Dauphiné experience was wonderful this year... even with the very disappointing day today. The obvious comparison to make is with the Tour, and in my opinion this is a much, much better race to watch. There are relatively few spectators at the DL, no epic traffic jams and the atmosphere is less frenetic. There are still plenty of cols and hard rides to slow the riders down though. Having said that, nothing really beats the pageantry, scale, and pain that the Tour inflicts on the riders: The Dauphine is "only" 6 stages and a prologue. The Tour is a bit longer!