http://www.mapmyride.com/route/ch/geneva/905128303053344062 I got lazy while mapping and didn't include a few detours for the bathroom or carefully map one part where I got lost and had to backtrack a bit so I'm rounding it off to an even 100 miles.
Today re-starts the mini-tour I've been doing of the Alps. The original goal was to do a new route with new climbs every day, but that's getting tougher and tougher to do without a car or train. After tomorrow I will have 3 minor climbs left, the back side of a major climb, and 2 climbs down by Annecy that I'm not sure I want to do because the ride there is boring and there is tons of traffic.
Somehow today went according to plan despite the fact that I left my maps and directions at home. It was simple enough; just ride to Bonneville, cross the river, and head towards St. Jean de Sixt. This route would take me up a nice demoralizing 12 mile climb to start the day, then two more difficult climbs including the Col de Aravis, which was used in the 2010 Tour, and the Col de la Croix Fry http://www.climbbybike.com/climb.asp?col=Col-de-la-Croix-Fry&qryMountainID=6119, which cann be seen in Floyd Landis' epic comeback in the 2006 Tour de France and the day he would be caught doping. Up the first climb, down to Thones, up the second, down to La Clusaz and up the Aravis and then back home the way I came.
Two challenging climbs on paper.
The weather was fairly cold, cloudy and shitty. There was no rain luckily, but I still don't have any winter gear and arm and leg warmers were not enough once I got into the mountains. Luckily I had my rain cape for the descents and if it wasn't for that I would have frozen to death. The temperature drop once you get to the top of the climb is quite severe and any sweat that hasn't evaporated will turn to freezing cold water on the way down the mountain. I highly advise anyone trying something like this to take a lightweight stowaway jacket and wear some kind of moisture-wicking baselayer to keep you cool and prevent you from freezing on the ride down.
The last time I rode my bike was Wednesday for a 90 minute spin and the ride previous to that was a 4.5 or something hour journey up the Col de La Faucille, down a climb on the back, up to Station Le Rouses (stage 7 finish of this year's Tour), and back up the unknown climb to Geneva. Since its not part of the Alps I won't really talk about it, but it was something like 4 hours and 20 minutes. I wasn't really keeping track or anything since it was a pretty casual pace and I was exhausted. Despite my physical exhaustion I beat my best time up the Faucille by 12 seconds, which I attribute to better gearing. I had absolutely no energy that day, but I could somehow still climb well even though it felt like I wasn't putting out much effort. After last weekend's mini-tour and my 4th consecutive 20-25 hour week in the mountains I'm beginning to see how pros ride into shape during stage races and over the season. My abilities were the opposite of how I felt and I never ran out of energy even though my legs felt like lead.
Anyways, the point is that today was my first really challenging day on the bike since last Sunday. I won't count the 6 hours in between since they weren't really hard. I spent the last two days resting up, eating tons of cereal to "carb up" for this weekend or whatever, and being bored out of my mind from not riding. Usually the first day back on the bike is the worst and today felt like that until I got to Thones about 2 hours into the ride. The first climb was 12 or 13 miles and not too steep (4 to 7%, mostly 4), but it looked like a constant false flat so it was kind of demoralizing. Descending it on the way back made me realize that it was steeper than I thought. I climbed at a high tempo pace just to see how I felt and it wasn't too good. My legs were burning and my HR was pretty high despite my pace not really matching.
The Croix Fry is supposed to be fairly hard and it definitely can be in spots. The climb hits 8% for a bit and has a bunch of steep switchbacks and portions especially after Manigod. The views were the best part. I've become accustomed to looking at ridiculous mountain peaks and beautiful landscapes around here so its not that shocking to see some cool/old/Lord of the Rings looking stuff on every ride, but this ride was far better. The climb went very well and after some of the numbness kicked in I noticed that I was climbing at a solid pace in a much bigger gear than I expected. Whereas I had been in my 39/28 for most of the Colombiere, which is about the same average on its switchbacks, I was now riding in my 34/21 in the saddle and 34/19 or 34/17 out of the saddle. Despite feeling really off a few hours before I was now climbing at a much faster rate than normal and in a higher gear.
Let me explain something to the normal people riding this. Lots of cyclists look at the pros and their training schedules and think that its bad to take days off, especially multiple days in a row. Some research somewhere once said something about your capillaries shrinking and some shit with your cardiovascular system getting less fit if you don't ride for 48 hours. As a result, many amateurs try to ride every single day no matter how tired they are. They call the easy day 'spins', which are supposed to help for recovery (but they often do them too fast), but they don't realize that riding creates stress no matter how easy you take it. If you're fatigued, riding for an hour at a boring, slow pace, will not necessarily make you recover faster. In fact, it technically slows down recovery in the long term. Such rides are usually used when people ride twice a day or after races to clear lactic acid out of the legs. Many people think that the pain you feel from fatigue and the pain after a hard ride are the same thing, but they're not and spins won't get rid of them.
So the problem becomes that many cyclists are afraid to take time off and try to get their recovery by doing the same thing that fatigued them in the first place. This odd, however, since most pros will take many days and often weeks off during the season and after big events to recover. Tejay Van Garderen of HTC Columbia took two weeks off after finishing third at the Dauphine and will start the Vuelta today. Chris Horner took a full week off after the Tour before touching his bike and raced some low profile U.S. races just for fun. Contador has been known to take time off and chill on the beach after Paris-Nice and early season stage races as well. Somewhere in there people saw Lance training and re-conning all season and thought that that's what they need to do, but they didn't realize that he HAD to do this because his racing calendar was only 1/3 to 1/2 that of an average pro.
I fell into this mindset for a really long time. It hurt me in the end because I spent much of my time digging myself into a deeper hole and ended up weaker and weaker. If you look at my calendar week I only rode 11 hours before today and 17.75 total. Not too crazy really. But then you look at the big picture and what I did the previous 3 weeks and it makes sense. So after doing what most cyclists fear and taking time off the bike to chill out and do the other things in life that need to be done, I was climbing faster/stronger than ever before after just 2 hours back on the bike. Recovery is incredibly underrated and people often try to push things too hard and not make an effort to recover just as much. Its kind of interesting that lots of these same people actually get better results later in their season and even in the off season than they do most of the year since they actually recover for once. My N=1 study has shown me that the first few hours or even day back will feel a little crappy, but then its all good from there.
The descent from the Croix Fry was the worst/scariest I have probably done. It isn't crazy steep, but the road is very patchy/uneven and there are tons of 2 inch wide cracks just wide enough to snatch your tire out from under you at 40 mph. I think its the only time that I have caught air from a pile of cow shit and it wasn't too fun. After heading back down to La Clusaz I turned right around and went up to do the Col de Aravis in its entirety. The climb had 1 or 2 rough spots and some steep hairpins, but it was not that hard overall and I felt even better than on the previous two climbs. The top is cool because its basically a barren Tundra and there is still a ton of graffiti from the Tour. People seem to love Thor Hushovd the most, Cav second, and Saxo Bank next.
The ride back down was really cold, but the descent was great. Back into some flat/boring farm country for a while then into Annemasse and the familiar cool down back home. Left at 1:20 and got home sometime around 8 for an estimated 6.75 ride time.
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