Category Archives: Personal stuff

A *BIG* first ride

Personal stuff, Tdf trip planning

This is what’s mapped out for our ride tomorrow, Friday, Stage 14 of the Tour de France. The stage everyone’s been waiting for, the first really monster, potentially decisive climb. A pretty tough one for Kevin and I to start out with, to be sure! Today and yesterday are just one big blur of sleepless travel and endless walking through airports.

The first 29 miles are pretty easy. Mild rolling stuff, no pressure to ride hard. Even if we do just 12mph average speed, we’ll get to the base of the climb in less than three hours. But from Culoz it’s up, up, up, and more up. We’ve descended this side of the mountain previously but we climbed it from the other side. None of the four ways up this beast are easy.

The caravan, that long line of vehicles tossing out trinkets to the fans… we have to make it to wherever we’re going before the caravan gets there, which is 3:32pm at the top. And it’s going to be pretty hot too, so while Kevin’s loaded down with a ton of camera gear, I’m going to be carrying a lot of food and drinks. Which, of course, slows us down. On the other hand, being able to bring all that stuff means we can hang out pretty much all day if we have to, waiting for the race to come through.

So my thinking is we get out of the apartment in Annecy at 8am, find something to eat, and be on the road by 8:30. In all likelihood that will get us there too early, but I’m OK with that, not knowing how I’m going to be doing.

We’ll be doing live updates to Facebook and eventually, hoping we get back at a reasonable hour, updating here. Cross your fingers for us!

Ah, forgot to mention the elevator here. It’s so tiny, the only way I can get my bike into it is by removing the front wheel. Which means yes, we did get our Bike Friday travel bikes built up and tested along the waterfront here in Annecy. Video below-

Breathing in context. Mine, not the Doctor’s

Personal stuff, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride


Nice to finally warm up a bit, with more on the way! Light, not heavy, base layer, no need to bring a wind breaker, could have even used lighter weight leg warmers. Still electric glove time though; anything below 68F is an issue there.

Myself, Kevin and Tom C, whom we hadn’t seen for a while, at the start. That’s two times in two weeks it wasn’t just us! Tom claims to have not been riding until recently, but I’ve never really seen him out of shape. I did get to spend a bit of time on Kings with him though, as Kevin was definitely pretending to BE in shape, posting a 26-something time. That, to me, is flying!

The context thing. My pulmonologist doesn’t think my breathing issues are that big a deal, because my total delivery of oxygen to my body is 140% of normal (VO2 Max they call it), but that’s because I work my butt off, breathing very hard and fast. My lung efficiency is appallingly low, and it’s pretty obvious that, if I let myself get out of shape, I’d be in a bad way.

Riding with Tom C gave me a chance to see how I fare against others close to my own age. Riding with “kids” (anyone below 50), you could easily argue there’s a reason I’m out of breath and they’re not. But Tom isn’t a “kid”; when I asked his age, he told me 63 & 2/3rds years old. So not too far from my 67.

And, riding with him up Kings, trying to keep up, his breathing was dead quiet. Couldn’t even be recorded. While mine…

So I’m going to send the pulmonologist a copy of the youtube posted here and see if I can get some traction, some interest, in why I sound like a steam engine while everyone else can be yakking away, no issues breathing.