So it happened again.
Despite several of the group above saying that it would not happen this year, it happened and larger than ever.
Last Thursday, from Ireland and Scotland and different places in England the 5 of us travelled to Provence in France to ride our bikes, we rode the Haute Route Ventoux.
Four Dentists, one Doctor and a former Policeman/Royal Marine (one of them is a Doctor and a Dentist).
I decided to book this at the end of last year after the extraordinary experience I’d had at the Haute Route Dolomites last year, you can read about that here.
Alex was the first to sign up, he is quite a cyclist.
Craig was next, one of my oldest friends and a head and neck surgeon from Glasgow.
David was next, he was supposed to do the race last year but got injured last minute. David and I cycled in Monmouth about 2 years ago.
Finally was Simon McCarthy, mine and David’s coach and a great friend who I ride a bike with a lot.
We decided, in our own ways and in completely different ways to test our self against one of the most iconic mountains in world cycling.
3 days, 3 different assents of the mountain and 3 stages of “racing”, I am not there for the racing and certainly not this year.
My goal was to get to the end and to get a medal and to ride my bike with David Nelson.
On events like this it is impossible to ride with everyone because people are inevitably at different levels of fitness.
It was clear through the year Alex’s training was just fantastic and he would be way ahead of the rest, it was also clear that Craig’s extraordinary job in head and neck surgery would restrict his training and like it is impossible for Alex to wait for me, it is impossible for me to wait for Craig.
Simon, David and I were at similar types of levels. It was hard to believe how close David and I actually were.
On the first day after 6 hours of cycling and 10,000ft of climbing, David and I shared our stats and our average heart rate was 1BPM different and our average power output was 1W different. That is quite extraordinary.
For the 3 days David and I rode side by side, peddle stroke for peddle stroke. Simon rode with us for some of the time but fell away at the end and Alex was up the road and out of sight.
Craig made his own way to his own medal, but the shared experience of a challenge like this is quite extraordinary.
Generally at events like this (and I have now done quite a few) there are points in the middle where I think “what the f*****g hell am I doing here?”
I tell myself I am never doing this again and I question what I was thinking.
I never had that once this year.
The last 6km of the assent on day 1 was brutal. The top of Mount Ventoux is bare and is notorious for high winds, it was super steep and 35MPH winds.
It felt like the last kilometre of that climb took a year.
When the second nearly closed the top 6km of the climb because the winds were even higher, but on the lead up to the top of that climb would lead up the place where we would finish was utterly brutal, just how me made it.
The final days at “time trial” it’s as fast as you can up the hill from the classic Tour de France climb.
The top of the mountain was open again and so it was 2 hours (for David and I) full on.
This year, for me, was always going to be about trying to get there.
With everything that is going on in my life and in particularly with everything that is going on in my work, I made a decision to just try to complete (triathletes have an old mantra, complete, compete, conquer).
Success for me was completion, not just completion of the event but completion of the training to get me to the event, to be able to complete it.
For the first time then, I never buried myself in the time trial.
It was hard but not too hard, it was tough but not too tough.
The 5 of us met back down in the race village on Sunday, just quietly satisfied with the different things that we had done.
Alex had put on an extraordinary performance (he had taken 20 minutes out of David and I on the time trial) Simon had participated in one of his first events such as this.
We’re all just quietly satisfied (at least that’s what it felt like) and able to begin the process to scheme about what comes next.
Blog Post Number - 2158