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| Pretty churches are all over the place |
Most readers will be bored with superlatives by now, perhaps the English language has too few. Today’s ride showcased the beautiful city of Annecy next to its lake which is the cleanest in Europe.
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| More OK views |
The ride took a circular route over Mount Revard then on to a mountain top finish on Mount Semnoz. After the last 2 days our riders have taken this stage quite lightly - it includes only 125 km plus a supplementary hair raising descent to the lake and hotel.
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| They cycled from down there to up here. |
Most riders had focused on the single 1st category and one HC climbs but the route also included 4 other category 2 or 3 climbs. By the end of today all the riders would have climbed more than 13000 metres in 3 days, almost the equivalent of cycling from sea level to the top of Mont Blanc three times.
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| "Just step back a yard Dad, it will make it a better picture." |
The ride took a lot longer than most expected but the official stage finishes at the top, so the Tour de Force made full use of the available bar facilities. Here they chatted about various aspects of the ride and compared “insect events”. It is quite disconcerting when gasping for air or moving very fast to find a large insect in your helmet, behind your sunglasses or worse in your mouth! Matt commented that a he had felt a large insect disappear into the back of his throat but all he could do was swallow then hope and pray it was not a bee.
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| Matt telling his "I swallowed a bee" story. |
Nick was unusually quiet and restrained, after one small beer he set off as he needed his wits about him for the white knuckle ride to the bottom.
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| Nice bike, shame about the rider |
As the Tour has gone on the injury toll has risen, Shen fractured his collar bone, Peigi had concussion, Janice had heat exhaustion. Steve (x2), Nick (x2), Andy Donald (x2), Trevor, and Matt all had crashes and there were many more. Andy fractured his left radius in a crash and rode for 10 days without knowing that it was broken. Road rash was common and by the end about quarter of the riders were sporting the characteristic three point: knee, hip and elbow rash. Riders' hands were usually OK because of almost universal use of cycling gloves. The weeping wounds must have made a terrible mess of the hotels’ sheets and a recent Cycling Weekly review attributed the poor performance of rising star Tejay Van Garderen in this year’s Tour to the lack of sleep caused by his road rash. So our riders were in good company.
Saddles sores were a problem too, Nick was OK, Matt has a small one but some of the other riders were in severe pain and seemed to be gritting their teeth after yesterday’s prolonged spell on the saddle. Surprisingly the lifers were not the worst affected, the prospect of carrying a saddle sore for 3 weeks had made most lifers meticulously careful. The Late arrivals to the Tour for the very long and difficult Alpine days were most severely affected. The intense heart, sweat and prolonged contact with the saddle for hours on end caused havoc for some riders. The liberal use of sudocrem and good quality cycle shorts seem to offer reasonable protection.
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