Day Seven

Start: Lons Le Saunier Finish: Saint Geneva

Distance: 77miles Climb: 6,800ft Moving Time: 7:10 Average Speed: 11mph Max Speed: 42mph

What. A. Day.

It turns out that the two hardest days – the two that I had been dreading the most – have been by far my favourite of the trip. We really hit the mountains today – huge climbs up to ski resorts, mountain passes and 10 mile high speed descents. Epic.

As usual – getting out of bed was one of the biggest challenges of the day, but we set off around 10am and within 6 or so miles hit ‘the wall’. Nearly 2 miles of hair-pin climbs with a significant amount of 8%+ gradient, but the morning’s adrenalin meant that we absolutely smashed it – ‘is that it? Is that all? What were you worried about?’ – said Albert, the novice. So after a bit of time lying in the sunshine we headed for the next big challenge; a long, slow, grinding 1,000ft climb over about 10miles. We took it easy with a manageable pace, stopped to refill our water bottles, sang some Carly Simon, and before we knew it we were at the top.

One of my best moments so far happened during the final 10 minutes of this climb – its hard to explain why, but Albert getting stung in the face by a wasp had me nearly crying. I’m sure he uses pollen as aftershave or something.

We were getting hungry and saw a decent looking restaurant just before a long descent back down in to the valley – the only problem was, there were other cyclists there – ‘we hate cycle nerds’. Within 30 seconds of pulling in, we were greeted with ‘wow, that’s an old bike’. The food was great though – and a long decent into Saint Claude allowed plenty of time for it to kick in.

We hit St Claude and started the climb up to the Col de Faucille. Holy crap. Three hours of uphill cycling. THREE HOURS. The road was amazing – but most of the views were behind us! Three hours took its toll – and at points we were in hysterics over absolutely nothing and our duets continue to improve, although there are probably numerous residents of small French towns who would beg to differ. Crossing the Col de Faucille was actually a bit of an anti-climax, but the descent was just as expected. 10km of fast, smooth roads – most of which spent at over 30mph, and with panoramic views out over Lake Geneva and across to the Alps.

Rolled into Geneva and checked in to a pretty plush hotel, had a sauna and steam, a nice Italian in old town, the first beer in a week, and back to the hotel to chill out.

Our final day cycling tomorrow – up into Chamonix. It’s certainly not an often ridden route – but it should be around 60miles, with some pretty steep steps up to the resort at 3,500ft. We should be able to smash this out pretty quickly, and so plan a nice relaxing morning on the Lake.

Looking forward to several celebratory drinks when we hit Chamonix and Stage 1 of the challenge is complete! I'm gonna miss cycling though - and will look in to some routes to keep the legs moving over the next couple of weeks.

Albert:

Today a wasp finally stung me in the face. So unlucky. It got jammed between my helmet-strap and temple before stinging me in front of my ear.

Apart from this, it was a cracking ride. We have started singing “I’m Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs” by REM which signals a definite mental improvement from yesterday.

There were some very tough uphill sections and some very fast downhill sections. We hit 66km/h going down and about 3km/h going up. It was fun.