Category Archives: Tdf trip planning

Information on seeing the Tour de France in person, including the process I go through myself each year- figuring out the TdF route, finding places to stay, rental cars, trains & more.

Oof. Easy ride, hard ride, regular ride.

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Interesting last few days as Kevin and I get ready to head to France. Originally, we were going to do big ride on Sunday, followed by an exploratory ride Monday where we’d be looking for commute routes from Foster City to Redwood City (because Kevin’s moving to Fosher City). But the weather wasn’t cooperating Sunday; the coast was almost cold and definitely damp.

So Sunday we did a dual-purpose ride. Not just mapping out the convoluted route between Foster City and Redwood City (and yeah, it’s really kind of nuts!), but also a shakedown cruise of the Bike Fridays, making sure they were ready for France. Not much needed aside from having to replace the front wheel on mine, a victim of the insane thunderstorm we descended through in 2020 (literally wore away enough of the rim’s side that it was beginning to distort). These bikes are now 12 years old; who knew? Their first trip to France was in 2010! Hard to believe. They’ve held up pretty well despite a whole lot of folding & reassembly. Over those years they’ve saved is about $3000 in extra bike fees each, although United recently changed their policies and now allow bikes as a standard piece of luggage.

Monday. Time to do reverse-Pescadero with the West Alpine “kicker.” Neither of us really felt in shape for it, but with France coming up in a week, not much choice! Felt kinda sorta ok going up Old LaHonda, and kinda sorta ok heading out to the coast. With a mild tailwind the Stage Road section to Pescadero was a bit nicer than the normal direction, and I was finally beginning to feel a bit lively, able to put Kevin on the ropes on the first climb. Something I don’t get to do very often anymore! Standard lunch in Pescadero (splitting a sandwich, cookie for Kevin, pastry for me) before heading out over Haskins the hard way, and then a real tough grind up West Alpine. Kevin was not feeling it, not at all. Thankfully it was at least warm, which is something we need to get used to; it’s going to be VERY warm in France. Beautiful views up on Skyline!

We returned home pretty tired, wondering how we were going to survive the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, just 15 hours away. Especially when my Garmin said I was supposed to take it easy for… 87 hours!!!???

This morning we woke up to really gray skies, although pretty warm. Kind of like… France. Karen showed up, so it wasn’t going to be as easy as it would have been otherwise. Surprisingly, it didn’t go too badly. I was expecting 35 minutes, maybe worse, and it was “only” 31:30 or so. But really, really wet up top. Bike’s a mess! But we really felt better than we thought we would. One thing I did notice later- I was a lot hungrier than normal.

One more good ride to go, then we get onto a plane Sunday flying from San Francisco to Munich, which we hope is on time because there’s only 50 minutes between landing and the flight to Lyon. Then we take a train straight from the airport (Europe’s really good that way, having train stations built into airports) to Grenoble, where a 300ft walk puts us right at our favorite apartment. More to come!

This is summer, right?

Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

As we’re watching the clock run down on time left to get ready for our annual trip to the Tour de France, we have to wonder… is riding in cold muck preparing us for what’s coming? Hope not! But it’s not as if we haven’t had some epic weather days on the bike. Two really stand out; first, going to bed in Lourdes to a raging thunderstorm, the morning before riding out to the Tourmalet stage. Fortunately no thunderstorms while riding, but we did get a fair amount of rain. But nothing compared to the torrential rains we had descending from the Galibier to Bourg d’Oisans (base of Alpe d’Huez), half an hour of insanity, could hardly see the road, just following a ton of bikes ahead of you and hoping other bikes didn’t run into you. I pretty much destroyed my front wheel, grinding through the rim. Later that day, someone responded to my Strava post that, just 10 minutes behind us, two landslides cut off 400 cyclists from the rest of the world. They were stuck for two days, staying in churches and schools, no clothes or supplies. Dodged a close one!

Of course, last year I broke two ribs sliding out in the rain (yeah, while carrying a pizza, I know…), my most serious incident to date. Maybe 10 years ago I was climbing near Foix and a rider descending lost control and clipped me, putting us both to the ground. I didn’t think much of it when it happened, but looking back, and how I rode the next 5 or so days, it’s possible I might have done more damage to myself than I thought.

Thankfully, I’ve not practiced crashing (away from France) for several years.

So how did this morning’s ride go? Well, pretty slow. Kevin and Kevin showed up, with Kevin (ex-pilot Kevin that is) finally slowing down a bit as he’s gotten older. I’m ok with that. Kevin (younger) rode on ahead, and I’m ok with that, too. A bit annoying that we had to go long sleeve and leg warmers again; it’s only been three weeks, I think, that we’ve been able to ride without them.

Am I in shape for France? I figure I’ll ride myself into shape while there. Yeah, right. We’ll be starting out pretty hard the day after we get there, staying in Grenoble for the Alps stages. Then we take a few trains from Grenoble to Lourdes, to see a couple stages in the Pyrenees, before flying home. We’ll be missing both the final time trial and Paris, but staffing at the shop is very tight and missing two Saturdays didn’t seem like a good idea. Also, it wasn’t practical to spend a lot of time in the Pyrenees because there are really just two stages there.

Flying won’t be nearly as easy as last year; planes and airports were pretty empty, with upgrades easy to come by. This year, we’ll be in economy plus, no chance to upgrade even to premium economy, and the flights were expensive! We did get smarter and won’t be connecting within the US like we did last year, flying SFO-Newark-Paris, getting delayed in Newark 4 hours and missing the only possible train to Lourdes. Had to stay overnight in Paris then fly to Toulouse, via Munich I think, where Lufthansa lost some of our luggage. Not great memories. Hope for better ones this year!