Marika's Tour de France

Andorra Arcalis Rest Day

June 12th, 2009

Today was a scheduled rest day but I had a mountain to conquer and a stage to finish. This mountain itself was 10.6km with an average grade of 7.1%.

I set off at about 11.30. John and Nancy were going to meet me at the top. The climb was quite surreal. Amazing scenery, not too steep, not too many cars, just a really pleasant climb with many stops for photos (unfortunately I left my camera in Switzerland so I can’t show you these photos).

There was a lot of road works going on with heaps off trucks and a lot of ogling workers. The worst part of the climb was the tunnels where you had to wait for traffic lights to change before you could enter, but you also knew that you weren’t going to be fast enough to get through the tunnel before it was the opposite traffic directions turn. This meant you spent most of the second half of the tunnel squinting, weaving in and out of traffic hats and praying.

Eventually though I made it to almost the top but pulled up when I noticed the road ahead of me was wet tar. What should have crossed my mind was “don’t be stupid, don’t ride on wet tar.” But instead what went through my head was “but the boys did. And what the boys can do so can I.” So I trudged on through the wet tar for a km before I hit the top. Well, 200m from the top, the tar trucks had taken up the rest of the way so I had no choice but to claim my location as the finish line.

It was fantastic to have reached the top, however now it meant I had to come back down again, through the wet tar. So back on I trudged through the sticky black stuff that settled nicely on my tyres as I descended back down the mountain. I took it a little slower this time, hands on the breaks most of the way, pulling over to uncramp my hands every twenty minutes or so. Nance and John and Damian met me half way down. I have to admit I was tempted to put the bike on the car and get a lift down as it was proving to be a little bit steep but I kept going and made it back to the motel.

When we regrouped I found out that the finish line actually finished 2km before the tar started so my new slicks weren’t necessary after all. I was extremely pleased about that.