Ventoux - The Big One

Full Etape du Tour Garmin Stats: Etape du Tour: Montelimar to Mont Ventoux

By now, even the 'easy' 4-5% section at the beginning of the official climb was starting to feel pretty hard. I guess 100 miles in the legs will do that to you. It was nice winding through the vineyards of the Cotes de Ventoux though and I wasn't filled with huge dread about what was to come.Then I hit the big left hand bend at St Esteve, and the journey into hell had begun. As you enter the forest section, the road just rears up straight ahead of you at 10%. You face plenty of similar gradients in the UK, but this was different in that there were no curves, no flats, and it didn't seem to stop. Being able to see the potential for extended pain is not good for the soul.

Almost immediately, people started walking, and I started to think that this might not be so much fun after all. I'd planned to give myself rests every half hour and that was my first target - to get through the first half hour.

My legs actually felt pretty good, no soreness or pain - apart from the usual ache in my left knee

- and I was confident that I could get through this. The real problem was the heat. The 'shelter' of the forest was the very worst kind. It meant there was absolutely no breeze to cool you down, but it seemed to offer little, if any, shade. The sun was just coming straight down through the trees doing its worst.

I got through to my first 'scheduled' rest, and just pulled over to the side of the road for a quick sit down under a tree. It was then that I noticed just how many people were walking. The 'clack-clack' of cleats on tarmac gave it away, but that was pretty much the only sound you could hear. The sheer level of exertion meant that conversation had become impossible.

There were also lots of people coming down the mountain, rather than up it. At first I thought that it might be people who had finished already, and I'm sure there were a few of those, but then I noticed that most still had their transponders round their ankles so had clearly given up en rout

e. I'd always thought that if I could get this far, then I'd get to the end, but these people had obviously got further than me and realised that it was too much...that couldn't be a good sign.

Things were starting to feel VERY hard now. I couldn't make it through to the next half hour, I had to stop after twenty minutes....then it was ten minutes....then five minutes....

Other riders were now in severe distress. I was probably up to about 10km to go now, and there were lots collapsed by the side of the road - in the middle of the road in one case - people

vomiting, even crying. When I was sat down during one of my breaks, I heard someone talking about a friend down the road who'd started to slur their words

and was clearly in a pretty bad way. There were medics on

motorbikes buzzing up and down the road every couple of minutes now, and their workload was clearly getting very heavy.

I couldn't really think about the whys and wherefores of exactly what was going on, but I was aware that there was something a bit weird about how I was feeling. My legs felt fine, and I could accelerate quickly to overtake other riders if I needed to get through a gap or get out from behind a weaving wheel. My heart rate was at a reasonable level, and my breathing wasn't particularly pained. However, every few minutes I just HAD to stop to compose myself.

I'm assuming that it was just something to do with the heat, and maybe my body was making me stop to avoid any serious damage. In the guide to 'psychological preparation for Ventoux' that we'd been given, we'd been told cheerily that 'It's very difficult to actually die on your bike'. The reasoning being that your body actually makes you stop some time before you get to the critical point...and I guess that's part of what was going on.

Finally, the road started to open out...the trees thinned and I knew that Chalet Reynard was just around the corner. The ski-station cafe marks the point at which the forest ends and the iconic lunar landscape begins. For me, more importantly, it marked 6km to the summit - 6km which are supposed to be 'easier' than the forest.

The first task was to get some water - but amazingly, they'd run out! Although I've got no quibbles with the rest of the organisation - which was amazing - this was clearly a very serious situation.

Along with some of my Sky team-mates - a big bunch of us had arrived at the Chalet at around the same time - we managed to find a guy with a hose who was dispensing water. However, not everyone was in good enough condition to go hunting around for water and many people were really suffering.

I still felt ok, but we were waiting for some more Sky people, and I wasn't particularly upset to have a bit of an extra rest. However, I was starting to become aware of the time. I'd imagined that it would take no more than 2 and a half hours to climb the Ventoux, but I'd already been going for around 2 and a quarter, and there was still a fair bit to go. 6km looks a long way when you can see almost every metre of it, and the attendant climbing that inevitably goes with it.

Despite the promises that the last 6km was 'easier' the ramp up from Chalet Reynard suggested

otherwise, and now I was going REALLY slowly. For long periods, my cadence was below 35(!) and I think I may need to look carefully at my gearing if I do similar things again.

I can't really remember very much about that last stretch. All I know is that it was really hard. In the end, I was stopping every 3-400m to get myself together. I wasn't all over the shop, but I know I wasn't thinking very hard about my 'form'. I was just turning the pedals over as best as I could, trying to look reasonably together for the official photographers and trying to convince myself that 'pain is temporary'.

I thought I was fairly 'compos mentis', but the fact that I completely forgot about the Tommy Simpson memorial gives you some idea of where I was at. You would have thought that I would at least have seen it, and then remembered...but oh no. I felt terrible about this afterwards, as I've read so much about the history of the Tour in general and the legend of Ventoux in particular over the last few years, that I really wanted to show my respects. We went back the next day in the car, but it's not the same really.

Some people are a bit surprised when clean riders like Brad Wiggins explicitly show their respect for Simpson, given that in effect he was 'doping' and this contributed to his death. However, I take the view that they were different times - when people used to think that smoking was good for you and riders in the Tour were limited to two litres of water per stage. Whatever drugs he took, it was Simpson's courage in pushing himself beyond the point of exhaustion which killed him, and I believe it's that courage which should be respected.

Finally, I got to the 500m to go sign, but the observatory at the summit still looked a long way above me. I was pretty sure I was going to have to stop again before I got there, but then suddenly the last corner was upon me. Somehow I forced myself out of the saddle for a last sprint up the ramp before sinking back into the saddle and rolling over the finish. I'd got there, somehow, but I couldn't quite take it in.

I looked south over Provence at the stunning view, finding it difficult to believe that I'd got up here under my own steam. My folks had clearly been getting worried, because I'd had a text around Chalet Reynard, and then my phone had actually started ringing just as I'd come round that final corner. It had taken me 3hrs 20 to get up there in total - worryingly longer than I'd anticpated.

I gave them a quick call to tell them I'd finished, and then got another happy cyclist to take a blurry picture of me in front of the radio mast - (I'm probably the only one that can actually tell it's me!). It was what I'd been dreaming about for the last 5 months, but had never quite believed would actually happen. I'd done it.