The Alps, Day 1: Geneva

In case there was ever any doubt that we were riding what the REAL TdF riders ride, there was real painting on the road to prove it. This is just one example. The climbs were long and they were hard, but they weren't IMPOSSIBLE. The rides in the north east aren't that long, but they go straight up and over a mountain. If the mountain has a 15% grade, the road will have a 15% grade. In France, the mountains were steep, but the switchbacks meant that you kept a pretty constant grade the whole way up. So it hurt, it just never hurt MORE. Unfortunately, my Garmin deleted all the data about grade and elevation profiles, etc by the time I got home. I'm crushed about it, by the way.

Shane and I picked up our Renault Kangoo at the airport where all the EuropeCar employees said they didn't speak English... and then conducted the transaction in decent English anyway, then we packed up the car and hit the road. France was TINY! For some reason I had it in my head that it would take us 24 hours to drive across, like Texas, but in about 6 hours of driving we had crossed France and were driving through the Alps next to the Swiss border.

We were going to ride around Geneva, but then we realized that Switzerland wasn't part of the EU. So rather than dealing with customs and another currency, we just stayed on the French side of the border. We scoped out some nice, hilly stretches of highway, and pulled over on a turnout to sleep in the car for the night. The first thing we realized: We had no utensils. So Shane and I ate pasta salad and cold mashed potatoes using an empty margarine container as a spoon to shovel it into our mouths.

We didn't want to leave the bikes outside the car, so we shoved them to either side of the trunk, put all our stuff (including my bike box) in the front seat, and hunkered down for the night. It was a pretty uncomfy night, I have to admit. The bottom of the trunk was tilted, so I kept feeling like I was sliding down towards the bottom. Also, I'd skimped and bought the cheapest sleeping bag they had at Decathlon: a 15º (celcius) bag, meaning it was no match for the 40ºF night. When we woke up, I was frozen, relieved that I didn't have to lie in that car anymore, and ready to start riding.We rode a roughly 60-mile loop over some small mountains, but when we were getting back into town, we lost the road in a maze of traffic circles. "I think it's this way," Shane said, leading me over a freeway overpass, and then up a one-way street.
"I really don't think this is it," I insisted. This highway was supposed to meet up with the one we were parked on. Why would we have to take a 1-way street? We should just follow the highway down farther!
"Well town is roughly in this direction, so I think we should just see what's down this road..." Shane insisted.
"Alright, we can ride down it, but it just looks like a neighborhood down there. I really think that we should follow the highway a little further rather than getting lost in some neighborhood that may or may not get us to town..." I was willing to play along. I knew I was right, but I don't know why I HAD to make him see that he was wrong. Maybe something to do with how stupid it was to stick to your guns that going the wrong way down a one way street was the way to go.
"Fine, we'll try it your way!" (somewhat angry).

Lake Geneva, before the blow-up. This was going to be our mascot, since both Shane and I hate being in pictures. He only made it into pictures that one day though. Actually, I'm kind of glad. it was a dumb idea anyway.

I was right. We hit town, but then there was another traffic circle. "Now what do we do?" I asked.
"Well there's one of those little bike trail signs. We saw it yesterday, we should follow that."
"Shane, we've been seeing different bike trail signs all day! There are 30 different trails. That's not the same one as we saw this morning. We're on the XYZ trail, and that's pointing towards the ABC trail!" I still knew I was right, and now I didn't feel like him dragging us on a wild goose chase.
"Fine, if you know everything, then why don't you lead us back to the car!" I hadn't been mad until that point, but now I was.
"Fine!" I said, and sprinted off. I was sick of slowing down for him. I shot off west-ish (the sign was pointing south-ish and it turned out that the car was north-ish), but my temper tantrum was hindered by a light, and he caught up to me. As soon as it changed, I was off again, and when I turned around, he was gone. Fuck. I had been right and gotten us to a place that Shane recognized. But Shane had been the one driving, so he knew his way around town while I had been paying attention to maps and tour books, not the roads themselves. Pretty soon I figured out that he'd figured out where he was, and had made a turn, letting me go on and get lost by myself. I was FURIOUS! After I'd already kept him from getting lost twice!

When I finally found my way back to the car about 20 minutes later (I was only lost for about 5, but then had to climb about 8K up the road back to the car), he was already packing up the car, eating a sandwich and listening to music. I was fuming. I threw my bike on the ground and stormed off. My helmet fell out of my hand. I realized it looked like I threw it. Good! I thought. Let him know I'm mad! I huffed away, and when I'd finally calmed down, I walked back to the car and started pulling my bike apart.
"Are you done now?" he asked, like he was dealing with a child.
"ME?! That was way the fuck out of line, Shane! Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again!"
And then we had a screaming match. Knock-down, drag-out, where things that I will probably never be able to fully forget were said. But what else could we do? We were stuck in the middle of the woods outside Geneva in a place where neither of us spoke the language. We had to stick together. We sullenly climbed back in the car and set off towards Alpe d'Huez.

To see the rout we took and elevation profile, click here.

Next up: Peril and mechanical difficulties on Alpe d'Huez, and what can go wrong when you stick a banana in your cycling shorts...

The Claire Went Over the Mountain, Part II

Okay, I've used this title before, but that was over a year ago, and it was on the old blog anyway. I think I'm so damned clever that I'll use it again. I reserve the right to use this title whenever I damned well please, so there.

Several weeks ago when Anne and I climbed Mt. Wachusett, I shot my mouth off about climbing the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. Then, some anonymous little birdie whispered in my ear that Mt. Greylock, with a vertical drop of nearly three times that of Mt. Wachusett was the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. As I normally do when someone points out an error of mine, I beat myself up more than was necessary (picture Chris Farley banging his forehead yelling "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!!!"), and bitterly promised myself that I would climb Mt. Greylock, sooner rather than later if possible.

Admittedly, deciding to climb a mountain in New England in mid-November wasn't one of my most shining displays of good sense. We have had a mild fall, but the day's high was projected to be only in the mid-40's, and what this fall has lacked in low temperatures, it's made up for in wind. But this was likely my last chance for an outdoor ride for the next four months. Never one to listen to the voice of reason, I planned one last century ride up Mt. Greylock and through the Berkshires and Catskills of Massachusetts and New York.

I packed everything the night before and woke up early to make sure I had plenty of daylight. I don't know why I thought that a drive that normally takes two and a half hours would only take an hour and a half, but that's how I budgeted my time for the morning. So even though I left ahead of schedule, I was still running nearly an hour late when I arrived in Pittsfield two (not one) and a half hours later. I was a bit apprehensive about the weather at first, but the first little hill warmed me up quickly and it was a beautiful day. It wasn't even all that windy, for once. All the pavement was smooth, and there was very little debris on the wide shoulders. Still, there was the occasional shattered beer bottle, and I spent the whole first 20 miles of the ride convinced that thousands of tiny shards of glass were working their way through my tires to give me a flat. I rubbed my glove against my tires, just like you're supposed to, but wouldn't it be just my luck to get a flat...? Does that ever happen to you guys? Where you spend an entire ride convinced your tire's about to blow at any second and you'll be stranded 3 hours from your nearest lifeline?


I found the road that goes up the mountain without much fanfare and started climbing... right away. You know those roads that look more like vertical walls? The ones you look at and you think, please, oh PLEASE don't be the road I have to turn on, please don't be this one!? Well Notch road was that road. It didn't waste any time in showing me what it had in mind for me, opening with a roughly 12% grade before settling into about 7 or 8% sprinkled with double digits at the curves to keep things interesting.

Before long the houses had bigger and bigger yards, and eventually they disappeared completely. I passed a trailhead, turned a corner, passed a parking lot, and saw a big chain across the road with a big, old orange barrel smack in the middle of it. A big, reflective sign said, "ROAD CLOSED."

Clearly, they didn't mean me.

Note: The AVERAGE grade is 6%, but there are several spots that linger well above that, and even reach grades of over 20% in places.

I ducked under the chain and hopped right back on my bike. The road surface was PERFECT, newly paved and glassy smooth. It was a little bit wet and slick from yesterday's rain, with some debris and branches in the road from recent storms, but all in all it was the cleanest road I've seen in a long time.

Fucking steep though.

The average grade for the 8.8 miles to the summit is 6%, but that means STEEP segments interspersed with milder spots for recovery and a relatively flat mile across a the crest to the summit. I can push some pretty big gears for a peanut my size, and there were times that I was in my easiest gear, climbing out of the saddle, and wondering if I was going to have the strength to keep turning the pedals. For the first time I wondered if I should get a triple chainring before I go to Europe. At one point I my breathing and heartrate got so out of control that I did have to stop and stand still for a minute before I could go on. But I rode every inch of those 2,776' up the mountain.

Despite the cold temperatures (it must have been in the mid-30's by the time I was getting close to the top), I was sweating bullets. My sweat smelled unfamiliar, like my asshole brother whose stench can knock you down 3 rooms away: something like organic hippie moisturizer or something. I kept snorting my own sweat droplets and felt like I had the ocean in the back of my throat. I wondered if the sweat in my ponytail would freeze. Isn't the back of your neck one of those places that you have to keep warm because it affects your perceived temperature throughout the whole body? The whole second half of the climb I kept thinking, Fuck the true summit, I don't need those last 300 feet! When I get up there I just need to get down as quickly as possible so I don't freeze to death.

But then suddenly I came out of the woods, and I was in the middle of the sky and I could see EVERYTHING. The Berkshires were below me off to one side, the Catskills off to the other, and all these little towns nestled in through the valley. It was the kind of view that is impossible to describe without sounding cheezy. You know, when you can see for so far that you can see the shadows of all the different clouds that have the diameters of whole mountains? I am not one to be taken in by scenery, but I was taken in by this view. So when I reached a crossroads where I could go up to the summit, or just continue back down out of the park, I rode the rest of the way to the top. It turned out to be the mellowest slope on the mountain.

As I was climbing the last chunk to the top, I thought about how sad it was that I didn't know anyone else who would have been able to make this climb with me. They had no idea what they were missing. The ones who might be physically strong enough don't have the time to make such silly trips. I kept thinking about how great I was and went back and forth between feeling smug and feeling sad. It sure is lonely at the top.

Then there was nowhere to go but down, down, down. I rode slowly not because of the slick roads, or because of the sharp, hairpin turns, but because it was fucking COLD and I wanted to cut down on the wind as much as possible. Gone was the pompous satisfaction in knowing that I and I alone was badass enough to do this ride. All I could think about was whether my lips were blue or not. Ten miles and about 20 minutes later I reached the road block on the other side of the park. I had to walk my bike around the metal gate, and I was shivering so badly I had trouble walking at all. On the other side was a Visitors' Center, and there must be a God, because not only was it open, but there was a fireplace inside.

"How many of you guys are up on that road?" the ranger asked when I got in.
"I only saw one other nut case up there," I said, shivering violently.
"Road's closed. You're not supposed to be up there, but my boss hasn't seemed too upset about it so far," he said. This ranger gig was clearly how this man was spending his retirement. He was probably around 200 years old, and what coffee-colored teeth he had left were falling all over each other trying to fill the gaps that the missing ones had left. His official jacket had what looked like an ancient soup stain down the front, and he was wearing gators over his boots despite a clear lack of snow or calf-deep mud anywhere in the visitor's center. "You'd better get next to the fire," he told me.

So I rotisseried myself in front of the fire for about 20 minutes until the shivering subsided and from time to time he came over and talked to me. "You doing a loop 'round the park?" he asked.
"Sort of," I said. I pulled out my directions and read the major roads I'd be following.
"You going all the way over towards Troy?" (New York) he asked. "You know, there's an honest-to-goodness mountain range between here and there..."
"I know," I said. I'd seen the elevation profile, and had specifically planned to go off in that direction to get a little more climbing in. Now that I was out here, though, it wasn't the climbing I was afraid of, it was the descending. I wouldn't be climbing anything half as tall as what I'd just gone over, and I still had four and a half hours to do the next 60 miles before it got dark.
Despite running a hilly 17 miles yesterday, my bike and I felt great and I was mentally ready for an all-day ride. I was just so damned cold! As I walked out the door, not quite finished shivering he called after me, "You'd better cut your ride short!"

It was the last straw. I've mentioned before how the naysayers can shake my confidence and make me convinced that suddenly I can't do something that every experience in my life has told me I can. As I rode the last couple of miles down the hill to the highway I started shivering so violently that I was afraid I was going to start jerking around my handlebars. I knew I was only about 10 miles from the car, so rather than turning off towards New York, I just rode back. Of course within about 5 minutes of pedaling on flat ground I was more than warm enough and feeling like a million bucks.

As I drove back home, I was furious at myself, furious at the sunny sky, and furious that there were clearly hours and hours and hours of daylight left. I was even more furious when I looked at my thermometer and saw that it was nearly 60º outside. What a fucking loser! I know that I'm a strong cyclist, but for some reason I forget. Sometimes I convince myself that I'll never, ever be able to do things that I've done dozens of times, just like riding 100 miles today. I was really, really in need of a good ride to bolster my confidence. As you might have noticed, I've been a bit glum lately, and it's seeping into everything. I've kept up my bike volume this fall, but for some reason I don't believe I will ever be able to reach the level I was at this summer. I know it makes no sense, but I'm convinced I'm going to wake up a 15-mph rider next year and that my running and swimming are going to fall apart at a similar rate. I just really, really, really needed a good ride to feel strong again. I was feeling good today, but all the confidence I built going up the mountain had evaporated by the time I got back down.

You fucking loser, I kept telling myself on the ride home. You fucking slack off at EVERYTHING! This is one of the reasons that long drives can be a bad thing. I think too much. No wonder you suck so bad, I was convinced now that I had crossed the threshold now from being paranoid about sucking to ACTUALLY sucking, you always take the easy way out! Don't feel like doing a run? You just don't do it, you loser. Everyone ELSE is out there working their little tails off, and you're just sitting on your ass eating macaroni & cheese until doing a workout suits you. I knew that I'm in my offseason, and there was no reason to be beating myself up for going home after only 47 miles, but I was anyway. What are you even DOING going for a long ride today? It's not your biking that's the fucking problem. It's your running. Has it even occurred to you that you have a MARATHON in 2 months, and that you're supposed to be trying to qualify for Boston in 3? Don't you think you should be spending your energy actually RUNNING rather than climbing up fucking mountains in the dead of winter?! Didn't that idea fucking OCCUR to you?! My inner voice can really be a douchebag sometimes. But he's right (my inner voice is a man). If I'm so scared of sucking when the snow has melted and I'm finally set free again, maybe I should be taking this time to work on the things that I REALLY suck at, rather than wasting all my energy doing the fun stuff.

I know, I know. Lighten up.

Another brush with fame, another chace to taste my foot

I wasn't going to write a post about this. I'm supposed to be tapering. I didn't want to endure the disapproving looks that people would be giving me through cyberspace if I told you that I did a TOUGH 60-mile bike ride less than 2 weeks from my ironman. But then, circumstances forced my hand and I just HAVE to tell you about it.

Today was the Charles River Wheelmen's (CRW) Climb to the Clouds century. This is the ride that I tried to do from a cue sheet back in April and got so horribly lost. The keynote of this event, though, is the climb up Mt. Wachusett, a 2,000' ski mountain which is the highest point in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I wanted to climb that mountain.

Really bad.

So I checked out the web site and saw that there was a 50-mile option to the ride. It meant driving further, but I could still climb my mountain. 50 miles is okay for a taper, right?

I knew a whole bunch of people who were supposed to be doing the ride, but since I'd decided to do it last minute I didn't get to tell any of them and just planned on riding it alone. So imagine my delight when I pulled in and in the space next to me was George, one of the legions of straight men over 40 that I've befriended at one event or another. I got out of my car with my arms spread wide. "George! I'm so glad to see you!" I said.
He looked at me. He squinted. He raised his sunglasses off his eyes. He kept looking at me. No recognition.
"I'm Claire," I said.
"OOOOOOH! Claire! I didn't recognize you without your bike and helmet!" he said. Thank god I'm not the only one. "What are you doing here?!"
"I couldn't sit still. I really, really, really wanted to come, so here I am!"

I ran off to register and use the bathroom, and when I got back to put my bike together I saw George leaving with a whole posse dressed in matching NEBC gear (the competitive club in these here parts). That was fine. I wanted to ride easy today, and that would be a lot easier to achieve if I was alone. I put my bike together, pumped up my tires, changed my shoes, changed my watch, and realized I forgot my gloves. Fuck. Then I realized I didn't have my helmet. FUCK! I'd driven an hour to get here and there was no time to go home and get it. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I rode over to registration. "Hi, I forgot my helmet... Can I have my 20 bucks back?" I asked. They suggested I wait for the King of the Bike Geeks to come over from the 100-mile start, he usually comes with extra everything. That seemed like as good a solution as any, although the King of the Bike Geeks would never let me live it down.

Luckily, one of the volunteers took pity on me and started asking around if anyone had a spare helmet. As luck would have it, a tall, skinny guy with a small head DID have an extra helmet. If I tightened it as much as it would go and jammed my ponytail in the back, it almost fit convincingly. I thanked him profusely and set off on my own. I had to make sure I got back before he did. I had planned on doing the shortest ride, but when I found out that that rout didn't go up the mountain I traded in my 50-mile cue sheet for the metric century cue sheet. I wanted to climb that mountain!

For the first 20 miles we climbed slowly and I passed people bit by bit. No one passed me until we got to the foot of the mountain. I've said in previous posts that I'm a climber. I lied. I don't know where I got that idea. Or maybe I used to be a climber and I lost it with all this New England rolling, I don't know. But for whatever reason, I am no longer a climber. I passed a few people who were weaving drunkenly all over the road trying to make the grade less severe by turning a 4-mile road into a 10-mile rout via S-curves. But mostly still, I got passed. On the way up I spotted George coming down, but he didn't recognize me, and I didn't call out. The hill wasn't too, too steep. The grade never went above 10% and it never even stayed at that for more than a quarter mile or so. But still, it was enough to have me in my lowest gear and sweating bullets.

Then, all by himself, the guy who broke the fixed gear course record at the 24-hour race last weekend blasted out onto the road in the other direction on his fixed gear again. "HEY!" I yelled. He was the boyfriend of the other girl in the 12-hour division, Emily, who is NOT a bitch. His name is Dave, but I couldn't remember that at the time.
"Hey! Claire, right? Emily's waiting down at the visitor's center."
I couldn't for the LIFE of me remember his name. We circled each other chatting for a few seconds without getting off our bikes, and then I continued up the road and he continued down it.

I got to the top without much hooplah and just turned around. There wasn't much to do up there for a lonely girl riding all by herself. Now the descent! YESSSS! This was what I had been waiting for. This was what I was risking my fresh legs for: steep grades and hairpin turns! But the quality of the concrete was pretty shitty, and I wound up braking way more than I wanted to the whole way down. Every time I hit a divot I thought that I was going to knock my teeth out, and the corners were so rough that you had to take them slow to keep from losing your bike out from under you at some frost heave or something. Lame.

When I got to the bottom George was standing there with his group of NEBC riders, many of whom were women. Women! I thought, I HATE riding with women! But there was no way around it now, even if I didn't know George I would have fallen in with this crowd at the pace we were going. There were still some pretty significant downhills, and I got caught braking at the back of the group on the first one. This would not do! I tried to power ahead, and I got to pull for a little while, but at the first hint of an uphill they all rushed around me on all sides. I had to ride as hard as I could to keep up with them, and I was back in the ass end when we got to the next downhill. Damn. These were the same roads and hills I'd run in Stu's 30K in March (which nearly killed me), and I was having to work way, way harder than I wanted to to keep up. But I refused to let all these women get away! My rule in life is never to be dropped by a female if I can help it.

At the 25-ish mile mark I met up with George, I met up with Emily and Dave around miles 45 or 50. Note that after mile 30, the course was relatively flat! No wonder I was dying out there!

It was only about 80*, but still about 100% humidity (no exaggeration) and absolutely no breeze. I was raining sweat. My hands were so sweaty that there were times I couldn't get enough of a grip on the brakes to shift. Also my shifter cables had been kind of fucked up all week and my bike couldn't seem to pick a gear. This was a hell of a time to only have the use of half my gears.

The group stopped at the next water stop. "Way to go! You're giving 'em hell!" George said.
"Are you kidding me?!" I asked. "I try to pull ahead to get some personal space and the pack just chews me up and spits me out the back!" I tried to get a few seconds' head start when we got back out on the road again, but that was gone in a matter of seconds. What I hated most was when our group came up on another pack, because I would have to work on negotiating my way through the new pack, while still trying to keep up with my pack. God help me if we caught a group on a hill, which is exactly what was happening now! I was riding so hard that I thought that my heart was going to explode when I looked over and saw a couple of riders in "Radonneurs of New England" jerseys. Ultracyclists! As I passed the first one I looked over. It was Dave, the fixed gear guy, and Emily was right ahead. That seemed like just about the best damned excuse in the world to slow down.
"What are you doing riding with those shady NEBC characters?" Dave, the fixed gear guy asked.
"I keep trying to get away from them and it's not working!" I said. "I pass them and they catch up, I try to drop back and wind up catching them before long."
Then I caught up with Emily. "I think it's funny that we're riding with John Kerry," she said.
"What?! Really?!"
"Yeah, I was riding next to him before staring at him thinking, 'You look... familiar,' and then I realized it. It makes sense..."
The man who was allegedly John Kerry was a few riders ahead, just behind the NEBC crew, who had not dropped us after all.


We all stopped at the next water stop and I took a good look at the man who was allegedly John Kerry. He was a bigger man than I expected. Tall and solid-looking, but fit for an old guy. It was hard to recognize him with the big old sunglasses and the helmet, but it was him alright. I have a rule of never speaking to famous people, and since I was RAINING sweat, it did not seem like a good time to tell John Kerry that I voted for him, so I did not speak to John Kerry. I waved goodbye to George and rode on ahead with Emily and Dave who were going a more comfortable pace and were actually my age. "I saw John Kerry," I confided to Emily. "It looks like he's gotten fat. It's a shame that they don't have photographers at this event. Wouldn't it be great to stick with him all the way to the finish and then out-sprint him at the line? I'd ride the extra 40 miles for that photo."
"Yeah," said Emily. "When we were done I'd turn to him and say, 'Goddammit John Kerry! You lose at EVERYTHING!'"
I take back calling Emily 'Skinny Bitch' and pretty much anything bad I might have said or thought about her. It was the greatest quip ever.
"He's got a nice bike though," Emily added. He was riding a purple custom Serotta. I don't know how I feel about a presidential candidate riding a purple bike, but it doesn't get much nicer than Serotta. Maybe if he rode a manly red, white, and blue bike like mine, this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
"Sure," I said, "paid by for the tax dollars of Massachusetts."
"WHAAAT?" said Dave, who was in the front pulling.
I pulled up next to him just as we were passing a guy in a pink jersey, "PAID FOR BY THE TAX DOLLARS OF MASSACHUSETTS!" I yelled.
"EEEEASY there, killer," he said. I thought maybe he was talking to the guy that we were passing. Had he swerved? When we had put a few yards between us and the guy in the pink jersey Dave said, "That was John Kerry's aide guy right there!" Yet again, I had put my foot in my mouth. I looked up the road and sure enough, there was John Kerry's giant yellow ass atop his purple bike just a few yards up the road.
"Errrr, ummmm... I mean these wonderfully paved roads!" I said loudly, more as a joke than anything else. I wasn't sure how nice I had to be to John Kerry? Did I have to worry about hurting his feelings? Could he sick the Patriot Act on me for criticizing his bike? Maybe if John Kerry were actually president I wouldn't be afraid of my government. Luckily, just as we were coming around to pass John Kerry, we reached the 60-mile turn-off and I said goodbye to my friends.
"BYE CLAIRE!" they yelled.
Oh shit! Now John Kerry knows my name! What if he comes to my house and asks for the state tax refund back to buy himself some new carbon fiber toys?! I thought as I rode away.

And then I finished. George and the NEBC bitches came in shortly behind me. I drove home, had the bike shop fix my shifter cables, and made some lunch. So far, John Kerry has not come to demand an apology for my insulting his bike. And by the way, I'm pretty sure that if I had ridden the extra 20 miles back to Concord, I could have out-sprinted John Kerry into the parking lot. Because if John Kerry were any good at close races with photo finishes, he would have been in Washington today, not riding a purple bike through "Fruit Country" in Western Mass.

Coming soon: More brushes with greatness and more shit talking, this time about a PINK bike.