At 5am in the middle of the night after stage 1 we woke up to the most extraordinary thunder and hailstorm. It had been pretty hot the night before and we’d left the windows open and Carl came down from his little loft perch in the Airbnb to find hailstones almost the size of golf balls on the windowsill.
This did not bode well for 500 cyclists setting off up to the top of that hill two hours later.
We made a mad dash up the hill after we got everything ready and prepared to start stage 2.
This stage would be another 90 miles, back up part of the hill from the day before and then down the last hill from stage 1 so, 18 miles of downhill followed by a classic Tour de France climb, another climb and then finishing with yet another big Tour de France climb.
It was murky and grey when we started and it took about 25 minutes to get to the very top of the hill after which you wrap up, crouch on your bike and get ready for a really fast descent for about 75 minutes.
That’s when the heavens started to open with the 3 of us at different stages on the course.
First, there was the noise of thunder around you in the mountains and the lightening and then the rain.
I think biblical is probably the best way to describe it and, in the end, we were riding through streams on the road at over 30 mph and only being guided by the red lights on the back of other people’s bikes.
At the bottom of the hill many people were congregating under trees trying to figure out what to do next and I waited for a few minutes trying to figure things out before I decided it was time for me to go on. Louis had ridden right past that collection of people at the bottom and Alex was already on his way up hill too.
I started to cycle up the hill and started to chat to one of the guys next to me (this is one of the beauties of these events) who was a 30-year-old lawyer from Manchester, but it turns out he’s from Largs which is two towns down from me in Scotland on the shores of the River Clyde.
We struck up an instant friendship and an instant connection with the places we knew and the people we knew and agreed to ride together for the rest of the stage because we were at similar levels (beautiful).
We were just getting into a deep conversation about what life was life growing up in the west of Scotland when we turned a corner up the hill (travelling about 10 mph up hill) to see an unplanned feed station in the middle of the torrent of rain.
They’d called the race off because the weather at the top of the climb was so bad it was dangerous.
We waited around for a little while, I got hold of carl on the phone who was at the top of the hill and he was able to come back down, scoop up Louis (who was almost at the top and in about 30th place) and then Alex rolled down to see me and we were able to meet the car.
And so, it became an unplanned rest day with a short 2-hour ride associated with it.
We got to our beautiful Airbnb in Pau (beautiful little city/town) and we were able to chill out, eat properly, rest, relax, watch the Tour De France and get ready for the madness of stage 3.
Stage 3 is one of the biggest stages with the iconic Tourmalet climb at the end. Looking at this from a distance I never thought I’d finish any of the stages (I officially finished the stage today because it was cut short – bonus) but I got further on stage 1 than I thought I would.
Taking on stage 3 I decided I would try and have a go to get to the top of the Tourmalet and tick off another one of the iconic tour climbs on my cycling CV.
Throughout this process we decided to raise money for Cancer research in conjunction with the guys at The Campbell Clinic in our two-pronged attack.
Some of the team decided to take on the Race for Life on the 26th of June and some of the team decided to take on the Haute Route Pyrenees.
At the time of writing these blogs, our combined efforts of fundraising, including gift aid, are at about £15,000. You can still donate here for the Race for Life or here for the Haute Route Pyrenees and we’d love you to help.
Blog Post Number - 3134
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