The biggest thing on the horizon this year for me is La Marmotte, a cyclosportive in France on the first weekend of July. A cyclosportive is a mass-participation cycling event, usually longer than 100km, where you’re given a timing chip and you cycle the route at your own pace. There are also food & drink stations set up along the route and the road may or may not be closed to traffic. However, there are cyclosportives and there’s La Marmotte!
La Marmotte is commonly regarded as the most difficult of all the European cyclosportives. It’s 175km, which in itself isn’t a huge distance as cyclosportives go, but what really sets it apart is the 5000m of climbing included in the route. This isn’t just any old climbing, it’s riding over four of the most famous cols in Tour de France history! First up is the Col de Croix de Fer (27km at 5% - yes, that’s 27km uphill!), followed by the Télégraphe (11.8km at 7.8%), the Galibier (18.1km at 6.9%) and then, after a long descent back to Bourg d’Oisans, you climb probably the most famous of them all, L’Alpe d’Huez (14.2km at 7.7%).
So, what’s an overweight sometime cyclist like me doing entering an event like that? Well, Sean & Lisa announced that they were getting married in Antibes just as Jacqui started complaining that she wanted another holiday, so we decided to make a proper holiday out of the trip to the wedding. Since we were going to France and I’m a religious follower of le Tour every year, I wanted to take my bike and ride some of the famous cols while we were there. Myself and Kevin, plus possibly Tom, Niall and Ciarán are planning a 4-day cycling trip based out of Barcelonette anyway, but I also wanted to do some of the bigger climbs in the Haute-Alpes. Jacqui refused to act as support vehicle, and I didn’t really want to be cycling around with a pannier full of camping gear, so the simplest way to accomplish my goal seemed to be to enter La Marmotte. Now that I’ve done so, the enormity of the task in front of me is slowly starting to sink in!
However, to assist me in my preparation I’ve enlisted the help of a local cycling coach, Alex Simmons, who’ll draw up a training programme for me, starting on the 24th. First up is a Maximum Aerobic Power (MAP) test, where you cycle at ever increasing power outputs until you collapse, well not really, actually until you can no longer generate the given power output! This will give a good indication of how unfit I am and will therefore allow Alex to correctly set the relevant training intensities in my program. The program fee also includes the rental of a power meter, another gadget to play with. Should be interesting! Alex has previously training people for La Marmotte, so will also be able to shed some light on what to expect and help determine what a reasonable goal would be for the event. Should be fun.
Here’s a video someone made of last year’s event: