Marika's Tour de France

Stage 5 - Le Cap d'Agde > Perpignan - 195.5km
Stats: Distance 196.10 Time 9:53:00
Average Speed: 19.83 Max Speed: 45.00

June 8th, 2009

Last night in an attempt to be organised we drove to the starting point for Stage 5 so that we knew where we were going in the morning. We also found an entertaining restaurant for tea where the waiters tried to teach us the names of French desserts and we all pretended that we knew what each other was saying. I think they may have figured us out though when our faces clearly said “what the hell is this?” upon arrival of the desserts.

After tea we managed a bed time around 12 but still set the alarm for 5:30. Chris was the first one knocking at our door in the morning. Even though he’d pitched a tent out the front of the hotel the night before he was still dressed and awake which was far more than any of us. He settled for memorising the route while the three riders marched in a silent procession of breakfast eating, dressing and packing.

We found ourselves at the starting point just before 8:00am. I think it was about 8.15 when we got lost. Le Cap d’Agde, like most French towns, was not easy to negotiate. If there were signs it wasn’t too clear which way they were pointing. We lost john and turned to Chris for help but he was struggling as well. We somehow managed to get through it, although it involved riding the wrong direction down a one way street, and regrouped just on the outside of town.

However not too long after that we found ourselves in a similar situation. John went on ahead to see if he could figure out the right direction, Chris told us he was going to go it alone and meet up with us at the end of the day and I fall off my bike. Nothing too impressive, in fact it was highly unimpressive. I couldn’t unclip my shoes and went down on the pavement while a little girl watched with shocked amusement. Unfortunately I have a habit of screaming while I do this, just to let everybody know to look at me at that exact moment.

Whilst I was on the ground I look up to see Damian waving madly at John coming towards us. I thought hang on, I’m ok, I’ve done this before and then realised that John was driving on the wrong side of the road and Damian was politely trying to get him to move across.

Once everything was sorted we continued on. 500m down the road John wanted to turn one way, Chris the other and so we separated with Chris and planned to meet up that night.

We finally got out of towns and into the French countryside. Here Dale took front, Damian next and then me and we started to actually watch the ground move underneath us as my speedo hovered around 30km an hour. We kept this up for an hour or so on a road that was lined with old trees and hay paddocks and started to feel good about riding again.

With 40k’s under our belt we stopped at a petrol station for a quick break. We topped up on lollies and banana’s, pit stop, fuel stop and were back on our way.

Next town was Beziers. We spent a bit of time getting acquainted with the round a abouts here as we tried to determine which way to go. The good thing is though you get to see more of the town than you normally would if you had of stayed on track.

Not too long after that we found ourselves out on the road again, surrounded in countryside and this time even a little French canal beside us. The roads were pretty narrow and not in the best condition but we enjoyed watching the boats swim up along side us. At one stage Damian noticed a boat was called crusader so he chased it up the river enthusiastically letting the people on the boat know about the coincidence. However I think it was lost in translation and he received the same polite smiles and head nods as we’d been dishing out recently.

Between the canal and lunch we got lost twice again. The first time an old French man who spoke as much English as we spoke French helped us out, and then a dutch couple who were also riding pointed us in the right direction. We noticed some beautiful windmills off in the distance and some writing on the road from a previous tour. That lifted our spirits and today’s stage was shaping up to be alright afterall.

We stopped for lunch at 130km at 4:00pm in an old disused petrol station. This also helped lift our spirits. Dale anonymously seasoned the air and upon complaint from Nancy insisted it was her cooking so she should deal with it. Tara filmed Damian’s video diary and Nancy walked straight though between the camera and Damian, unaware that filming was in progress.

We set off again and I became increasingly aware that our path was leading us towards the windmills, which were on a hill. But this was a flat stage. It said so on the website. We can’t be doing hills? Two in fact, two category fours. And on completion of the two category fours I was again drafting the letter to the tour organisers about classification of stages and climbs! These were somewhat tough for me and this was a flat stage. I started to get a bit worried about the Pyrenees that were looming just two stages away.

There were some positives to the climb though. The view was fantastic, I saw my favourite little French town to date (due to a wrong turn off by me) and we got a close up of the windmills. Plus the descent was pretty good too.

My riding average dropped dramatically and then in turn the guys did as well. I tried to push myself being acutely aware of how much I slow up the guys but I was getting nowhere fast. That’s when Dale came up with the idea that there was no point expending so much energy, we should get Nancy to drive just in front of us to block the wind. He rode ahead to let her know the plan and she was on it. He dropped back besides us and Nancy took off. She drove about 50m infront of us and we all got the giggles. Dale tried to chase her down and raised his arm for her to stop but everytime she saw him coming she took off again, increasing her lead. We decided to wait until a traffic light to regroup but we were on something similar to a major highway and it took a while until there was an opportunity to catch up. Finally we did and Dale explained drafting to her. No worries, she was on it and took off again, this time reducing her lead to about 25m. She lifted our spirits again and we giggled like school girls for awhile, something I didn’t think possible after riding for two hours in a head wind as heavy as that.

We continued on into the night pushing against the head wind that lasted for the rest of the 40km. I have to thank the guys here for staying with me even though they could have finished up hours beforehand. We did eventually finish at 9.30. We chucked the bikes on the roof and headed off to find our hotel which was an hours drive away. Well it would have been had we not got lost.

We ended the night by spending 47 Euro’s at Hungry Jacks and headed off to bed at 1.00am, exhausted and spent. I was happy though that I’d managed to ride my longest day ever. 196km, 30 more than my best in Melbourne.