Stage 17

Started off in Gap this morning, pretty flat for the first 70ish kms, but there was a headwind the whole time, and it was pouring rain after about 30kms.  Wet spandex is about as warm as wet skin, so I was shivering pretty hard.  Before the first climb of the day, I think we'd pulled over about 3 or 4 times to warm up.  My hands kept getting numb from the cold and I couldn't squeeze my water bottle or brakes.  So I didn't have much of a choice.

I really should have brought some cold weather gear with me!  After watching the snow reports closely, it looked like we'd just miss the snowline, and did.  It was just above us at our two high points (but snowing at the following day's two high points!).  After climbing up the Col de Montegenevre, the temp was down to around 3 degrees and it was trying to snow.  So I changed out of as much wet stuff as I could while eating lunch.  Had it all lying on the heaters in the car... at least things like my shoes would be warm wet instead of cold wet.  We also tried some other tricks to prepare for the descent (nothing like 60-plus km/h winds on your wet spandex)... these included some surf shorts over top of the bottoms (figured I wouldn't be pedaling anyway) and some freezer bags under my arm warmers to block the wind from my arm pits and forearms.  Top that off with dad's big summer jacket (tucked up into my jersey, since it's a few sizes too big)!  In the end this was enough to bring the sun out by the base of the descent!

The descent into Italy was really picturesque, as was the climb up to Sestrieres on the other side.  By the time we reached Sestrieres, the sun was out and the 40km descent from the summit down to Pinerolo was amazing.  I hardly had to break at all.  Riding into a headwind, I could just sit up to slow down enough for most of the turns.  All part of my plan to avoid doing any work on my bike, like replacing break pads.

Unfortunately the police were blocking the hillside about 4km into the final 6.7km climb.  On the bright side, the climb wasn't super challenging anyways and I felt like that kind of made up for my climbing detour on stage 15.  I had to turn around and ride into Pinerolo along the highway instead of descending the nice hillside, but the police weren't budging.  In the end I think I missed about 3km of the stage, but I'm still up quite a bit after the descent/climb to the hotel after Super Besse.

175.43km in 7:04:49 for an avg of 24.8km/h and total climbing of around 9000ft.