Stage 1 - Monaco Prolouge 14km, (+63km)

June 4th, 2009

Here we go. Stage one. All the talk, the hype, the training, the planning, the organising, the waiting now comes down to this moment. Yikes.

We tried to get up early for our start ride to get it over and done with but a late night and a sick Damian does not equal early. We stayed about 10km away from Monaco, up the hill, in the most amazing little apartment. At about 10.30 we rode down to the start line, letting the support cars know we’d meet them there.

After one lost support team, logistical organisation, route planning and taking photo’s we departed for the start of our 3500km ride at about 12:00pm. I would have been overwhelmed with excitement.......if the traffic hadn’t of been as intense as it was. Then when you throw into the mix the fact that we’re riding on the opposite side of the road things got a little bit crazy. We followed the route for about 1km when we reached a street that was blocked by a policeman. We tried to explain what we were doing but he replied “you’re in Monaco now, speak French.” Slight detour and we were back on track. We climbed the mountains behind Monaco before becoming lost again then kept going. The scenery was amazing but the climb was tough. We finished our loop possibly a little off course (my speedo read 16km when we got back) and we were greeted by our support cars in the port of Monaco. It was pretty cool to say that the first stage of the tour has been complete. And we celebrated in style! We’d parked the cars in a car park that contained the most expensive cars in the world, we opened the boot, pulled out the esky and enjoyed some homemade sandwiches.



On my way to the toilet I realised that if someone had of told me last year that you’ll be walking around Monaco in lycra I would have yelled at them blaspheme, and yet there I was, strutting around in the most revealing clothes possible, pointed bike shoes and a handbag.

That night we planned to have dinner with people from TXCell, a company that is doing research into treating Crohn’s disease. They were located in Sophia Antipolis which was half way on tomorrow’s stage. As we weren’t doing anything that afternoon we decided to ride to Sophia Antipolis and get half of the first stage over and done with. We rode back through to Nice and continued on along the beach until we had to veer north.



This was when I got my first introduction to these so called “flat stages.” The whole way to Sophia Antipolis was up a mountain, down a mountain, up a mountain, down a mountain...then as usual...get lost. After an extra 63km’s we’d almost reached Sophia Antipolis and were dreadfully lost. Our first support car had located the hotel, our second was with us. We continued on a bit before realising we had to go back 6 k’s, then John decided to go ahead and find the hotel. It was 5.45, we were meant to meet the TXCell team at 5.00, we still couldn’t locate the hotel and on top of that John had phoned through to say he was now lost as well.

After many phone calls, lots of “Parle vous anglais?” ’s and a French woman who was so concerned we wouldn’t find the place she drove us there herself, we made it to the hotel, and in turn, TXCell headquarters at 9.00pm. We apologised profusely for being four hours late and were very embarrassed but the people were terrific. We got a tour of their workplace and after that we all went out for tea and had a fantastic time. It was the perfect way to end a somewhat stressful yet exciting day.