Stage 18

After riding over the Alpes into Italy yesterday, the Tour organizers saw fit to have us ride back over the Alpes into France today.  And so the hardest day I've ever put in on a bike started off in the Italian town of Pinerolo.  I was missing my go-to French pastries, but getting a laugh out of the Italians and myself for misusing the few Italians words I know almost constantly.

On the bright side, the Italians make some good coffee and our day started out in the sun with a mostly flat first 40km.  On the down side, all that time spent perfecting coffee seems to have come at the expense of perfecting roadwork.  Normally this would be the trade-off I'd favour, but not this morning.  These roads would put some of our constructions sites to shame, and the fresh pavement touch-ups that were being done only made things worse.  Nothing like asphalt sticking to your tires while you ride alone uphill into a headwind for 40km!

From about 40km on the climb was a gradual 4-5%, but the first climb of the day didn't technically start until about km 86.  I met up with the Belgians just before that point and rode up the first climb with them.  It was good to suffer as a group.  It was the hardest climb I've ever done.  After those first 45-50kms of breaking me down with the gradual climb to the climb, things kicked up to an average of around 7% for the first 15km, then around 10% for the next 9km.  Some parts were in the 12-14% range!  It was brutal.

The descent was fast and fun though,  lasting about 20km and taking us straight to the base of the second HC climb of the day, the Col d'Izoard.  14km at an average of 7.3%, it also started off easier than it finished. Then we descended my favorite descent of the trip!  Very twisting at the top with lots of fun hairpins, then long and fast at towards the bottom and into Briancon.  Unfortunately the town was a mess and a group of us spent about 30min trying to figure out which direction to leave town for the Galibier.  We finally set out as a group for about 15km until dad caught up and I had a change to eat before starting up the 23km Galibier climb.

The Galibier traffic was unreal.  Campers stretched the whole first 15km of the climb on both sides of the road until a roadblock at the 8km mark, then it was just scattered beyond that.  I think I was the last one to tag the top at around 930pm, in the alpenglow, just as my computer ran out of battery.  A short frigid descent back to the car at the roadblock capped off about 11 hours on the bike and around 17000ft of climbing.  My legs started to cramp near the top, right around the snowline, but I think it was the cold more than anything. 


203.07km in 10:41:18 for an avg speed of 19.1km/h.