http://www.mapmyride.com/route/ch/geneva/935128361774569996
Remember how I talked about the fatigue catching up with me? Well, it did big time after the last ride. I took a day off to try and recover/avoid the crappy weather and I had to take care of some other things so I didn't even touch my bike in the spirit of abandoning useless recovery rides that seemed to hurt rather than help me.
My plan on this day was to to ride the Col de la Ramaz up the hard side from Mieussy, descend down the other side, ride up to L'Encranaz, then down through Taninges and back to Geneva. 2 hard/long category 1 climbs in the high mountains that I hadn't done before and a pretty solid plan.
Unfortunately my body wasn't really cooperating. As soon as I started to climb I realized that it was hurting more than it should and it wouldn't be a fun day. The climb itself is a fairly long category 1 climb and was the second to last climb of stage 8 of the 2010 Tour de France and the place where Lance Armstrong lost 10 minutes to his competitors. The irony of the climb is that it has the most anti-Lance graffiti of any climb I've ridden with such gems as "Want a Trek? Trade Lance for some dope" and "Lance Armstrong is a cycling fraud". It has to suck for your career to end in a few minutes while you're being accosted by harsh graffiti and aggressive fans.
If I were to judge cycling just by this climb then I would think that Bbox was the most popular team hands down. People think that everyone in France loves and respects cycling, but it seems apparent that many seem to respect French cycling. I made the mistake of criticizing French cycling before the Tour started, but after living around here for a while I've seen that FDJ and Bbox have enormous followings despite the fact that they don't seem to win a lot of huge races or do much else than get into breaks and try to win stages/the polka dot jersey. French riders ended up going on to win six stages- more than any other nationality, the polka dot jersey, and held the Yellow Jersey for two days. Despite having the "number 1" team in Radio Shack and the most expensive cycling team in Team Sky, its pretty impressive that teams with lower budgets, less star appeal, and less top race invitations were able to get more victories and ride much more courageously. The KOM battle consisted largely of French riders and was almost as interesting as watching Bradley Wiggins not live up to his expectations. Hats off to French Cycling.
I also have to say that I respect the KOM competition much more after riding these climbs. For most people the KOM battle is just something to watch to kill time before the GC contenders make their moves for the day. The riders aren't usually big name people and often ride for smaller teams. They won't compete for the GC battle or factor into a lot of stages, but I would argue that its tougher on the riders in terms of overall fatigue and time spent battling for the jersey than the green jersey (mainly because the action for the points jersey usually happens in the bunch sprints or perhaps on one or two stages if someone is feeling balsy). With 3 or more places to get points on the stage and 9 total stages to get points it would seem to get pretty exhausting. There are many occasions when no one has teammates and the riders seem more eager to exploit each other than work together. There were quite a few times when they would take pulls and pace each other, but other times when they were all just trying to make each other suffer as hard as possible. Also, its interesting to see a lot of different styles.
Take for example Caisse d'Epargne's Christophe Moreau, an ex-GC rider turned KOM workhorse turned KOM competitor and 2010 Polka Dot winner Anthony Chartreau. At 6 Foot 1 and 160 lbs Moreau does not have what you would call a climber's physique. He's probably 30 lbs too heavy and a few inches too tall, but if you've watched the Tour in the past 10 years its obvious that he can climb with the best of them. Re-watch the climb up the Joux Plane from the 2006 Tour and he was one of the top 5 over the climb after Floyd Landis. Chartreau himself is also fairly portly for a climber at 150lbs, but has a much different climbing style and its makes for some interesting racing. It can't be fun for either of them to try and repeatedly drop the other day in and day out over 9 days while stile riding the rest of the Tour. Some of the GC contendors might attack and battle it out on a few stages and over a few climbs, which is obviously incredibly difficult and entertaining, but the KOM guys also deserve some credit for doing the same thing more often, without as much support, more times total, and usually on back-to-back days. Its exhausting in its own right and should be thought of as more than early race entertainment that is just there so the announcers can find something else to talk about for a few minutes while almost nothing is going on in the peloton.
Anyways, the climb is one of the more entertaining because the scenery is constantly changing. It starts off in a small village, goes up through a bunch of fields on the lower mountains, through a forest, along the side of a cliff, through a tunnel, and up to a barren alpine tundra. The climb itself has a few tough sections close to or above 10%, but its the combination of the length and changing-pace that makes it difficult. Sure, there are longer and harder climbs around, but its hard to get a consistent rhythm going because as soon as you feel comfortable there's another switchback or steep pitch that disrupts any strategy you may have had. People often talk about "I did X climb and it was 10% and 5 miles long", but they don't realize that it might have one 10% section and the rest is a consistant 3% making it actually pretty easy to figure out especially if you know where the steep part is. Even if I rode this climb every day it would take me months to figure the tricks out like where to pick up the pace between hard portions, where the wind exposure is, where the false flats are, etc. These climbs are rated as high as they are for that very reason. You can't really just ride up it and change gears as it gets steeper because that's not really what makes it hard. Going around a hairpin from a 4% to a 9% grade into a headwind really makes it suck, but you'd never know that looking at an elevation map. People try to claim that the Tour of California or other domestic races have really hard climbs and I'm sure they do, but doing laps around a suburb is different than riding something like this that is both longer and steeper on average, has more difficult changes in riding conditions during the climb, and requires extensive climbing to get there. The Tour of Utah, Cascade Classic, and the queen stage of the ToC are the exceptions, but this seems more on the ability of race organizers to make really challenging stages out of what they have than anything else. I'd like to see the ToC go into the Sierras, northern coast, or even some kind of Mt. Hamilton ITT or something.
Anyways, the ride was good, the fatigue is high, and I'm going to need some much needed rest to recover. I still have 3 or 4 big routes I want to tackle after the down week and hopefully the rest of the season cooperates. Its already arm warmer/leg warmer/base layer time some of the days, but its still manageable.
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