Day 7

What a difference! My posts about the rides to date have not sounded too sanguine, to say the least. Today was a TON better. Shows what 12 hours of sleep can do for you. Today's ride was no slouch, as I had previously thought. It was not a recovery ride, it was a two climb, 72 mile, 6,350 feet of climbing affair. On the first climb I was tooling along with no problems when others were struggling a bit. I checked my instrumentation and I was not working too hard, but seemed to be having a pretty good day. At the 35 mile point and one climb down, I chalked it up to finally getting some sleep. Between today and a nice comment to a post from a good friend and fellow Cincy cyclist, John Murdock, I regained confidence that I can manage the work to come, the remaining Alpine climbs and Mt Ventoux on Sunday.

The second climb was a grind, but I did it with a smile. It was an 11 mile affair offering 3000 feet of climbing, an average grade of 5.2%. But, that's not the kicker. Midway up, the grade tipped a wee bit steeper. Ms. Garmin, my cycle-computer, measured several (meaning more than my brain could recall) meaningful sections (indicating it was more than a few pedal strokes, more like 100-200 yards) registering in the 15-23% grade. For the uninitiated, this is pretty bloody steep (please see the Day 6b post for the definition of bloody). But, I was completely in tune with Ms. Veritas and we crushed this hill together. I was dropped by the lead group of 6 riders. The 25 of us in total were littered across the 11 mile hill. I was extremely happy to have some time to myself and suffer this climb. I really did enjoy this effort.

I also learned on this climb that I still have very little strength in the left arm from the collar bone break. On the +20% pitches, I tried to stand and pull on the bars to push the cranks over. Not only did I have no strength, but experienced some pretty intense pain to remind me. I climbed out of the saddle with enough strength to support my body, but the legs still had to do all the work. I concluded that this likely led to the cramping on the Tourmalet. I did very little standing as the pitch never exceeded 15%, it was just an unrelenting, constant 9.5% ass kicking. Standing on the climbs allows me to use my body mass to turn the cranks and modestly changes the muscles being used, but I cannot use much of the upper body to pull myself around the pedals. The constant repetitive motion is what likely led to the cramps; but I think the body is learning to compensate and I am concentrating more on good hydration and stretching.

The descents are where I notice the soreness in my shoulder the most, particularly the long descents of more than 8 miles. Most of the breaking is done with the front brake, which you trigger with your left hand. Recently, my rear teeth have been bothering me and I could not figure out why. Today, I learned why. While the descent was significant, the drops off the side of the road in the Pyrenees were frighteningly intense. Today, not so much. In the Pyrenees I was concentrating so hard on staying on the road and breaking at the right time to manage the corners while still enjoying the descents, I did not notice another coping technique I began using. On today's descent, while breaking, at speed, into the corners, I was grinding my teeth to compensate for the pain I was feeling from the force of breaking and managing the bike in the corners. At the end of the rides, my neck muscles and shoulder bothered me, but I chalked it up to the healing process, pumped in some aspirin and hit the sack; more than likely it is from healing and some fatigue as the muscles and bone are not that ready for this stuff. Well, the rest seems to be, so I'm planning to watch it more carefully - or, just not use the brakes and go faster down hill (just kidding mom).

The scenery and weather conditions made it all the better. The climb is on "Black Mountain" (Pic de Nore). The side we climbed was only a single lane wide road, but permitted two way traffic, cut through a dense pine forest. The ground cover was lush green vegetation. The pine tree forest was like dense packed asparagus spears; relatively bare trunks with bristly tops. The weather, by most people's standards, was awful. The entire mountain was socked in a deep fog/cloud with a constant light drizzle. Temperature was about 55-60 degrees and a slight head wind in the general direction of the road. I say general, because of the many switchbacks, you sometimes had the wind at your back, but not often. The mist was so thick and the temperature cool enough that the hair on my arms stood on end and collected the mist like grass catching the morning dew. It made my brown arm hair appear blonde. It was cold, but because I was working so hard, I was not cold in just the bib shorts, base layer and short sleeve shirt. What a great day in the saddle.

The descent was totally the opposite of the climb. We descended for 11-12 miles. It was a great descent. The first 4 or so miles were in the clouds - that was cold. As we descended, we also headed away from the weather. The last 6-8 miles were in some pretty intense sun, with temperatures pushing close to 75-80 degrees. Between the wind from the speed of the descent and the sun, I dried out pretty quickly - I used the brakes less ;-). The ride into town was awesome. We had about 10 miles of soft rollers heading back into town, a slight breeze in the face. I was on the front with a former pro, Dave McKenzie. Dave is an Aussie who won 2 stages in the Gyro d'Italia. He is a good guy and we chatted while cruising along at 22 mph into the slight headwind. My heart rate was creeping up as we hit the 1.5 mile to go point, but I was still hanging with Dave, and felt great given the long ride, hard climb and the difficult last few days. So I pressed on and finished in town. Great ride, great day.

The Carcassonne area is really beautiful. The area is surrounded by vineyards and monasteries. The roads are often lined with tall trees. The area reminds me a lot of the setting in the movie "A Good Year." This is one of my favs. Its kind of a chick flick, but I liked it.