BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

wow, good for you. Sounds like a really special experience experience.

Man, that sounds incredible. I have never had a bucket list, but if I did I think that would have to be on it.

I did some riding in the alps when I was younger, I rode the Grossglockner pass in Austria which goes to like 2500 meters and found it to be un-challenging, I got to the top about 1 1/2 hrs before my estimated time and had to wait for the rest of my group, but I was 14, weighed about 130, and had a resting pulse of 40. Now I would be one of the old guys in the lawn chairs with the beer!

F'n awsome! I agree with Bill, this is going on my bucket list. Of course it could lead to the bucket too..

That is so neat! So the locals were pretty chill, or did you have three men in Borat swimsuits followed by a giant soda bottle sprinting after you?

Wow- what an awesome experience. Glad you finished healthy!

Chapeau!

That's awesome. I would love to ride that. Did you get an entry by signing up with an organized tour group of some kind? I thought it could be hard to get a place.

VS should televise THAT event.

Agreed. As cool as watching the tour is, it would be as cool/cooler watching some pluggers like me complete an event like that.

Complete it? Oh, no, the ratings would be from watching people fail...

Probably true - like the YouTube Canton Avenue video.

Went with a group of 6 - we got entry only spots through Cyclomundo back in November, a few weeks after the event opened up. Other logistics were left up to us... flight from London to Bordeaux, rental vans for transport of bikes & bodies, hotel arrangements. The day before the race we scouted the Tourmalet (in dense fog) and dropped the vans in a town 25 mi from the finish. Total ride for the event day was 140 mi... at least much of the extra mileage was Tourmalet descent, but ended up worming through a huge traffic jam with rider vehicles trying to get off the mountain.

No crazy Borat costumes... those nuts were following the tour. Most of the folks camped out on Tourmalet for Etape seemed to be retiree aged... and definitely had good vantage spots for the Tues & Thurs stages.

If you want to do it, I recommend staying away from the group packages... a lot more freedom when you're not in a group with 2 busses going from place to place. Takes a little more footwork but saves a bunch of money too.

I have to stress the point that the event is guaranteed to be extremely difficult... they always pick one of the hardest days of the tour. I felt horrible on Tourmalet, but failure was not an option... particularly when considering the stresses I'd placed on my family during training. Count on at least 5 months of interval training during the week & long weekend rides building up endurance beforehand. I thought I was training pretty hard, but only managed to beat the last time cutoff (bottom of Tourmalet) by 20 minutes. I'm convinced there's no way to train for the required effort of Pyrenees or Alps climbs around here.

I'm curious - could you describe your training regimen in more detail?

Prior to this year I generally rode 2500 mi per year commuting & some 2 to 3 hour weekend rides. For Etape I started riding the trainer in late December through Feb, 2 or 3 one hour hard spins per week plus commuting when possible. I was loosely following a plan from a book on training for Etape and other sportives. Also modified my diet slightly, cutting out most fried & fatty foods & getting good proteins from fish & chicken rather than red meat in an effort to shed some weight (went from 195 at the beginning of the year to 173 the week before the race).

To build endurance, in march I started going out for 40 - 50 mi on Sundays, April 50 - 60, May 70 - 90 plus 1st century. June and 1st week of July went on 100 to 115 mi rides every Sunday, except for one rest/recovery week in mid June with an easy 60 mi ride. Taper week prior to the event was a fast group ride of about 65 mi. Generally would try to keep heart rate around 70% of max for an average century, which for me is about 135 bpm. In retrospect, I should have been putting in harder efforts every other week to get used to the long times I spent in the 80 to 90% range on race day (150 to 170 bpm). After 90 mi and 10,000 ft of climbing I still had to deal with Tourmalet, which took me 2.5 hrs at 80 to 90% hr zone, and at that point I barely had anything left in the tank for that effort.

In addition to the long Sunday rides & commuting, I did 1 or 2 hill interval sessions per week + 1 speed session on the flats. That started in April after getting in some base miles. For hills, I would do 3 to 5 sets of 5 to 10 minute intervals at my lactate threshold (170 bpm), with about 5 mins of recovery time between sets. I used Stanton Ave between Negley & Butler for those rides. Similar effort on the flats, used the jail trail.

With my hodgepodge training system, I managed to complete the event, but not excel. I was utterly crushed at the finish, pushed well past the point where I was anything near comfortable on the bike. The last 5 mi or so was pure suffering & despair. I may have made some nutritional & hydration mistakes during the day - should have taken on more liquid & eaten an extra clif bar on Tourmalet.

My goal was to get 2500 miles in my legs before the event, which was the advice I saw out on the internets regarding Etape. I made that goal, but am now questioning the quality of some of those miles. Probably should have gone harder on my long rides.

If I do a huge event like this again, I would most likely use an online coaching system, send in my stats, and follow their recommendations & plan. There were 2 weeks in June where I felt freaking fantastic on the century rides... my timing was off for hitting a physical peak on the Etape.

this is incredible. good for you for completing it and doing all of that training. i would really like to do this in the next 5 years. were there any women doing it?

Sounds to me like you excelled -- this was the first time you'd ever done something like this and you completed it. If you hadn't been crushed at the finish, you'd be kicking yourself for not trying harder! Anyway, those other guys were probably doping.

Had you ever done anything at altitude before? I've never tried to ride in mountains like that, but I found that hiking above 8500 ft was like strapping an extra 60 pounds on my ankles.

How tall are you, BTW? I'd have an awful hard time getting down to my target weight for an event like that. I'd have to give up beer

Some of these things need to be on the short-bucket-list. If they get postponed until you're 70, it's too late...

@stefb - 300 women, 3% of entrants

@Lyle - I'm 6' tall. Beer was definitely an obstacle to dropping a few more pounds. 10% of the riders were over 60. A 67 yo in my group did the ride an hour faster than me!

Also, a few did kick the bucket. I heard that there were 3 casualties - one from a crash into a ravine, 2 from heat exhaustion.

I agree with Lyle. You "Did It." That in itself is a huge accomplishment. Made all the more impressive by the knowledge that some who tried DIED.

Way to go. Really awesome. I don't think I could do it without liquiefieng my intestines, melting my brain and shredding my quads.

Way to go Quizbot!! I figured I was too old to consider something like that (I'm 59). You have to go and burst my inflatable sofa by telling us that guys 60+ did it. If I started training now I might be ready by the time I'm 65. LOL. Seriously; congrats on a trip-of-a-lifetime. Would you consider doing a presentation sometime on the experience?