The title kind of works…anyway.
It’s about a month since I returned from the Alps and after the disappointment of bailing out of going for Paris-Brest-Paris this was the main thing I was looking forward to this summer.
I thought rather than going through all the details of the trip I’d do a ranking of some of the good and bad points of riding in the alps, maybe it’ll give you some tips and help you not make the same mistakes and possibly give you a better insight into what you’re getting yourself into before you go.
So here goes!
Top 5 Ascents
- Col du Galibier (from Valloire) The sense of achievement and the views all the way up the climb make it a very rewarding climb. The final view kilometres are the hardest with the final kilometre hardpining and steep to say the least as you summit the 18.1 kilometre beast!
- Col du Glandon (from Saint-Etienne-de-Cuines)
- Col de la Croix de Fer (from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne) Another beast but the road gives variety and some slight descents as it makes it’s way to Saint-Sorlin-d’Arves, just before the town there is a 5 kilometre section offering a false flat that offers a feeling of ease to your legs…although the last 6 kilometres of the climb are brutal so it’s good to take advantage of the ease in terrain.
- Col du Telegraphe
- Alpe d’Heuz
Top 5 Descents
- Col due Telegraphe
- Col de la Croix de Fer (to Allemond)
- Col du Mollard Very scary!!!
- Col du Galibier (to Valloire) Think this would have been higher but I got soaked on the way back down to Valloire and couldn’t really enjoy it over the shivering.
- Col du la Toussuire I’m going to count it but we didn’t start from the top as we didn’t get a chance to ascend (police stopped us 3 km from the top!!!) the whole thing but the road was sweeping and wide on the way down, easy to read (no blind corners to make mistakes on).
5 things I would have done differently
- Taken a compact gearing It was a daft move to take the smallest gearing of a 39 inner ring. I’ll never do it again. Spending near to 2 hours riding up a mountain with that gear nearly broke me on the first day and I was cursing myself for not changing it over. I would recommend taking a 36 at least just so you can enjoy the ride rather than feel like it’s a slog.
- Filled my bottles at the bottom of Alpe d’Heuz A mistake made on the first day to not fill my bottle at the bottom of this famous climb. It meant I had to stop in Heuz about 4km from the top which resulted in me finishing the climb in just over 1 hour which really p*ssed me off!
- Taken more hot weather base layers Not really knowing what it was like in the alps I only took 1 hot weather base layer. The base layer that I washed and used again day after day when I realised it was too hot out there to wear anything other than a string vest!
- Take a full rain jacket…just in case I found out the very hard way when I only took a shower gilet on our ride to the Galibier. When on our way back down to Valloire for lunch a couple of us hit a major storm which resulted in a soaking. Not fun at all. It took a few coffees, couple of sandwiches and some borrowed armwarmers with me down to my baselayer in the sun (not a good look) to get warm again before setting off.
- Learnt how to stop sweat getting in my eyes Think this is more of
a room 101 scenario but going up mountains for a long time make you sweat, as a result that sweat from your forehead gets in your eyes and there’s nothing you
can do about it. I resorted to taking place sunglasses off and wiping my eyes with my mitts but eventually that just leads to more sweat getting in your eyes! Honestly it was more painful than my legs at points. It did result in this very funny selfie at the top of the Galibier, though the saying “if the wind blows you’ll stick like that!” did cross my mind… (any ideas on how to stop this one let me know, please!!!)
Throw the Bike 