Stage 9

Sorry for the delay, but Stage 9 was a bit of a killer.  Longest ride so far and 8 categorized climbs, plus a few more that could have easily been 3's or 4's.  Started out the day riding in the rain with a crew of Belgians, one of whom (Jerome) is also planning to ride every stage the day before, like me.  The others are along to help him out for a few days, then when they leave others will be joining him.  A couple of others had just left, so he had some fresh legs with him and put them to work riding ahead of us until we hit the first hill.  Felt pretty good to be taken care of like that, but I also felt a little bad unceremoniously dropping his helpers at the foot of the climb.

Jerome and I cruised over the first climb (cat 3) only to find that the top of the climb led to a long gradual ascent at grades between 3 and 5%.  It looked flat and it took us both a few minutes to realize why we were going so slow.  Then we hit another roadblock.  I sent dad around to a village on the other side of the climbs (which proved a little too far around in the end) and Jerome and I rode on over the two cat 2 climbs.  These beasts had lots of sections in the 10-14% range and they really hurt.  On the bright side, the descents were super fun, maybe a bit scary.  They were wet and technical, lots of sharp turns and cliff edges, but that made us keep the speeds down around 50 or 60kph.  Still, nothing like these twisting descents!  So much fun!  The first descent led straight into the second climb and I was pretty sacked by the top of that one.  Dad was still two cat 3 climbs up the road, so the Jerome's buddy Jonas (driving their camper) was kind enough to feed and water us both.

Once we caught up to dad I sat down for a sandwich and Jerome decided to press on.  This break was followed by a short descent to the foot of the next cat 2, then a couple of cat 4's and the finish.  Dad was planning to meet me after the cat 2 in about an hour.  In the end I saw him 3 hours later when he rolled into the finish about 5 minutes behind me!  Barely saw him all day!

We had a beer and packed up, then drove to Fegiac, a nice little medieval town 2 hours down the road.  We got there just after midnight, so I went straight to sleep.


207.7km in 9:13:36 for  an avg speed of 22.6km/h and avg power of 136W (173W normalized).  For those who don't get it, the normalized power is based on accelerations etc and gives a better approximation of the overall effort.  So I'm not surprised to be pretty tired after 9 hours of 173, but that makes sense for over 12000ft of climbing.  It's got me a little worried about the Pyrenees stages coming up in a few days.

PS: the hotel is from the night after stage 8.  Nicest staff ever!  I rolled in around 9 and they had closed the kitchen about 20min earlier but offered to keep going and cook dinner for us anyways!  Really great rooms too!  And on the lake... can't say enough about these guys, was sorry to leave.