Marika's Tour de France

Stage 10 - Limoges to Issoudon 194.5km

Stats: 194.74km, 8hr 36min
Average Speed 22.60, Max speed 48.28

June 16th, 2009

We’d spent the day before traveling from Tarbes to Limoges and saying goodbye to Jase who was going back to England and Robert who was heading back to Australia. They’d both helped us out and were absolutely amazing and we knew we were hugely in debt to them.

We left Limoges at 8.00 and headed out to the country and that’s where we stayed for pretty much all of the day. We had to ride 194.5km, a tally that wasn’t daunting as the profile only involved some category fours which felt like nothing compared to the last three days that we had.

The morning was extremely undulating and it felt like hard work. We hit 50k’s and pulled into a small town Marsac for a break. We lingered a lot longer than we should have, taking in the markets and the people taking in us. After mars bars, power bars and lollies were devoured we continued on.



Still extremely undulating the boys were up front, taking advantage of the downhills. So I missed seeing bucks come off his bike. The first I knew about it was seeing the lead car pulled over with John, Damian and Bucks standing around. Then I saw the bike upside down. Then I saw the blank confused look on Bucks’ face and was told that he’d come off head first into the side of the road when his chain slipped off and was going at 50k an hour.

We spent a bit of time putting him back together, (ie, bucks putting himself back together while we watched), which entailed fixing the puncture and trying to fix the wheel and spokes that were bent enough for the wheel not to spin anymore.






When he’d reassured us he was fine we rode towards lunch which was at the 115km mark. We decided not to wait for a town but to pull into some sort of a shared driveway and picnic here. Fortunately for Nance and I the shared driveway lead to a fairly dense forest, a toilet stop that ranked highly for privacy compared to what we were used to.
We were feeling confidant about the rest of the day because we only had 80km to do, not too much more than our training rides back on beach road. And not only that but we were finishing up nearly 300m below our lunch spot.

After lunch the undulating terrain continued and I lost the boys. They powered on ahead and I must have been 5k’s behind them. Again feeling the pressure of being slow I put my head down and turned my legs as fast as I could for a couple of hours. Watching my speedo hover around 31 to 33k’s I felt like I was making good ground but still couldn’t gain any on the boys. Back in the support car behind me the 30km an hour pace was taking its toll on Nance and she was getting extremely tired. She drove on ahead in search of a coke.

I eventually caught up with everyone at their rest stop. They’d managed to make friends with a local (when she caught Damian trying to take a pit stop) who kindly feed us soda water and her own cherries for energy. She wasn’t so keen to have a photo with us until she’d brushed her hair.

Thanking her and bidding her farewell we kept riding towards Issoudun, stopping along the way to take in the Louis Vuitton headquarters. I wasn’t all that excited but I was surprised to see Bucks getting a bit weepy over the sign.

We rode on into town banking nine kilometers should we need it.