Rapha Rising ride

For the last couple of months I haven't been feeling great on the bike. Basically, I get dropped by people that I never had a problem keeping up with. It's been frustrating, but I've still managed some riding: Glandon from the Maurienne, Charmant som and others. Today I drove with a friend to the Alpe d'Huez for a semi organized ride from the temporary Rapha shop in town. We set off over Sarenne, down across the dam and back into the Bourg valley, and then up a climb that I had been scoping out for a long time -- up to Col du Solude. This last road turned out to be spectacular, despite having to ride through unlit tunnels. The top part is a well graded gravel road with magnificent views of the Alpe d'Huez and the valley. Somehow we managed to ride past a bunch of people who had stopped at a cafe in Villard-Notre-Dame, but we ended up waiting for them at a cafe on the other side in Villard Reymond with an American couple that we caught up to along the gravel traverse. It turned out that they were the Grubers, whose photos (link here http://gruberimages.zenfolio.com) I have really admired, so that was cool. Next, a technical descent down to the road that comes off Ornon, and back towards Allemond. I got dropped along this stretch and started up the last climb: Alpe d'Huez via Villard Reculas with just my friend. It turned out that there are a couple of alternate starts to this climb, and the rest of the group was waiting for us down the road for a while -- oops! After 1 km I waved my friend off, shifted into the biggest cog and started the grind by myself. It was slow going but ok until near the top, where I had the worst leg cramps that I have\
 ever experienced. I had to get off my bike at least ten times to let my legs unclench. It was a delicate balancing act: lean too far one way and the hamstrings would go… the other way would start the quads. It was agony, and despite the shelf road at the top being gorgeous, with Sound of Music rolling hills looking out over glaciers and peaks, the best I could do was to focus on arriving back to the car. I eventually made it, but I'll admit that those last several km were pretty dark, even with the very loud Dutch music and Swiss rap filtering out of bumper to bumper RVs. I took a little video:




This was two days before the Tour would sweep through, and there was already a continuous stream of cars and bikes going up and down the hill. By thursday, there would be close to one million people on this narrow stretch of road.

98 km (60 miles), 2565 m (8400 feet) of climbing.   I should also mention that this was part of a "Challenge" to ride ~24000 vertical feet in eight days.