Welcome,

In the summer of 2008, I started my blogging experience. I wrote about the Epic Summer, my trip to the Tour de France. It was, for sure, a bucket list item for me. I liked blogging well enough that I thought I'd continue to blog about my cycling experiences. It will be an infrequently updated blog, but I hope the updates will be interesting. If nothing else, the exercise should prove useful to improving my rather weak writing and communication skills. Thanks for checking in and I hope you enjoy.

Take care,
Jim Dennedy

Monday, July 21, 2008

Day 11a

The TdF is heating up. Cadel is no longer in Yellow, it is Frank Schleck of Team CSC. Schleck, his brother Andy and Carlos Sastre are all on CSC and they all climb with the best in the world. On the Cat 1 final climb yesterday, they took turn punishing Cadel Evans. Towards the end Cadel looked defeated. Cadel had no mates around him. His only teammate who can climb, Yarislov Popovich, fell off the back of the lead group in the final 10 km. CSC is good, very good. If they can continue to put time on Cadel in the Alps, they will keep the Yellow jersey. Cadel's only shot is the individual time trial (TT) towards the end of this week. In the earlier, shorter TT of the TdF, Cadel put 1:30 into Schleck. This next TT is a longer, 50 km TT, on a flat course. I'd look for Cadel to put 2:00 on Schleck.

Watch for an exciting stage on Weds, it is Alpe d'Huez for the finishing climb. Twenty-one switch backs, climbing 14 km with an average gradient of 8.1%. Each hairpin bend is marked with panels honoring the winners of each stage that has finished there. The tour has had 23 stages finish on Alpe d'Huez. As a result, the French had to start again at the bottom with a double panel honoring, among others, our boy Lance (I'm sure that thrilled the French). I will do this climb on Weds AM, early, then roll back, shower and find a spot on the course to watch the action with the Fam. The mountain is already littered with people and campers. Only way I'll make it on the TV will be chasing the lead group, doing something crazy. Watch the race, I'll not make it on TV.

We leave Provence today :-( for the Alps. I love Provence, it is my favorite part of France. The Northern part of this region offers beautiful scenery of rolling hills of vineyards and olive orchards. I smile just riding thorough the area imaging living here on a small vineyard. To the South, you have Cannes, Antibes and the Mediterranean, the Cote d'Azur. If you want a treat, Google 'Antibes, Provence' and view the scenes. This is a romantic and magnificent place. Although no one really works too hard, in keeping with good French culture, the people are pretty cool. They don't speak much English, be we all manage pretty well.

With my new found confidence, and legs, I am looking to put a 'le spanking' on the monster ride tomorrow. We are doing 4 major climbs (Galibier, Telegraphe, Croix de Fer, and part of Alpe d'Huez). In addition to the climbs, we'll be knocking out 140 km in total (87 miles). It will be close to the type of climbs and distance of a mountain stage in the TdF. I took the day off today. It is a travel day for our tour group. The only ride offered was an early 40 km around the local area. I chose to celebrate a little last night with some Ventoux mountain juice and slept in this morning.

The family leaves Cincy this afternoon to arrive tomorrow morning. They'll have a time getting to the Alps. They land in Paris, take the TGV to Grenoble, rent a car, then drive to Les Deux Alpes. We plan to connect after my ride tomorrow, have some dinner and catch up. The Fam will likely sleep in on Weds as I make my trek up/back Alpe d'Huez and then we'll find a spot together to watch the race.
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