Spending five days in the hospital with my son has left little time for riding or writing or anything else for that matter. I did manage to watch a recording of Sunday’s stage of the Tour de France which went up the Col du Tourmalet. Ten years ago, I had the, uhm, pleasure of tackling the Tourmalet in La Hubert Arbes, a French cyclosportive.
Hubert Arbes
Riding for Gitane, which became Renaut-Elf-Gitane, Hubert Arbes was a domestique for the Tour winner on four separate occasions, once for Lucien Van Impe and three times for Bernard Hinault. He now owns a bike shop in Lourdes, France, and on the first weekend in July puts on La Hubert Arbes.
Back in 1999, the race was great big loop from Lourdes to Lourdes and went up the Col de Bolderes and the Col de Solour, in addition to the Tourmalet (the Tourmalet and the Solour were included in a stage of the 1999 Tour as well). The race was on July 4th so I had on my Stars and Stripes shorts. As with most of these things, it started on a small climb to let the 800 or so riders doing the long route sort themselves out into groups. We had 20 miles to the Tourmalet, and I found myself in the second group on the road. I had to “see France” rather desperately (when my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Tanzania, our safari guide said we should tell him we needed to “see Africa” whenever we had to go to the bathroom.) Having done the Tourmalet a few days prior to find out what I was getting myself into, I knew the first four kms were relatively flat, with two of them at 3.6% and 2.4% respectively. So I stopped at the bottom, took care of business and chased like crazy to get back into my group. Where the Tourmalet gets you is as at KM 5, where it starts a string of 12km that never dip below 8.0%. The fact that the beginning of each km is announced with a sign telling you the average grade doesn’t help much either.
It took me 1 hour 15 minutes to get up the 16.9 km – to put this in perspective the pros go up it in an hour, usually in the second week or third week of the tour and somewhere in the middle of the stage so the gas isn’t completely on. That is to say, 1:15 isn’t exactly setting the world on fire.
La Hubert Arbes Profile
That said, the climbs went well for me, I would move up into the Top 50 on every climb. Unfortunately, there’s no point being a good climber if you can’t descend. Guys were passing me as if I was standing still, and I’d end up losing 50 places or so. It happened on every climb without fail, and I ended up finishing tied for 98th overall which I was rather pleased with although, I was 1 hour 15 minutes down on the guy who won. I guess I should have skipped the Tourmalet.
I had the pleasure of meeting Hubert Arbes twice. Once at his shop when we went to register and then on the stage at the post-race party. I had gone over with three friends who also raced, and we were given a prize as the only Americans to have done the race. My shorts got quite the cheering (or maybe it was quite the razzing, although my experience in the Pyrenees was that everyone was incredibly friendly and patient with my non-existent French, unlike the Parisians, but that’s an entirely different story). As with every other ex-pro I have ever met, Francesco Moser excluded, Arbes was a genuinely nice person.
The race was exceptionally well organized and the course was simply magnificent. I highly recommend it, especially if you want a little taste of what the Tour riders go through without all the pomp and circumstance of the L’Etape du Tour. The Tourmalet left an indelible mark on me. So much so that as I watched the stage the other day, I could still remember pretty much every turn. I’d love to get back there and give it another shot, although I’m sure I’d have to give up riding completely once I found out how much I’ve lost in ten years.
My son comes home from the hospital today, so I expect to be back to my regularly scheduled programming next week. Means more time looking at the wheels in front me with my view from the back.
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