Cycling in the Time of Coronavirus

It was only ten days or so ago when France started entering lock-down, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It suddenly became clear to me that just leaving my house would be severely restricted or even completely forbidden. I had lots of questions, including 'what would I do for exercise?'. 

I hate stationary cycling (compared with the real thing it's just so boring), but that seemed the most obvious choice. So I went online and ordered a 'home trainer' so I could continue to ride my bike at home and maintain some level of fitness and sanity. It duly arrived just as France entered full confinement. Now I choose a different part of the garden each day (gotta reduce boredom) and set up my old road bike on the home trainer and cycle for 40 minutes or so. 

It's nothing like as pleasant as real cycling, of course, but it helps maintain fitness and fills my days. The confinement is a bit strange but it's not unpleasant for my wife and me. But spare a thought for families with small children stuck in small apartments without a garden. Or for the medical professionals that are likely to be overwhelmed by critical cases in the weeks to come. And all of this is likely to last at least a few months.

Cathay Paciic Moment on the Col du Pourtalet

Spot the error?

We all make mistakes, but - as Cathay Pacific has shown - sometimes a whole team needs to screw up to deliver an exceptional error. 

Today I cycled the Col du Pourtalet - a long lovely climb up the Ossau valley to the Spanish border. As usual on the popular cycling climbs, there were signposts every kilometer to tell you the distance to go, your current altitude, the gradient of the next kilometer and the altitude at the top of the col. Believe me, when you're struggling on a climb you study all this information very carefully.

View of the Pic du Midi d' Ossau from the top of the col

Getting to the last kilometer, you're able to perform a consistency check on these 4 bits of information and - well - today they didn't pass the test. It left me a little curious as to the whole process of making these signs and how many people didn't notice or didn't care about the obvious error.

But it didn't spoil my day out...

Le Tour de Pau

I've been doing a lot of cycling in Pau this summer. Today I got a chance to do a ride I've been thinking of doing for quite a while - a big circle around Pau. I had set myself a simple rule that my ride had to stay outside the 'rocade' (or ring road) around Pau. But the river (or gave, as rivers are called here) complicates that, because there are very few bridges across it. So I knew I was in for some interesting route finding and a long day in the saddle.

I headed out of town to the east and headed south. I crossed the river and was in the coteaux de Jurançon; these are steep little hills where they grow the grapes for Jurançon wine; I do a lot of cycling there and know the roads well. Later on, well to the west of Pau, I was on flatter roads I knew much less well. Eventually I got back onto familiar - and more hilly - roads near Morlaàs before completing my ride. 

At the end of the day Google Maps worked out my ride must have been around 110 km. I counted 8 non-trivial climbs, but - although some were steep - none were very long, so overheating was never a problem. More of a concern was water - in this area there are a lot fewer fountains in villages than in the southern alps, so long summer rides need some planning. But I found a new refueling stop just where I needed it, which I'm sure will help in future rides.

Revisiting the Tourmalet

At the start of the real difficulties 

The hardest climbs used in the Tour de France are classified hors categorie (or HC), meaning 'beyond categorization'. You can see a list of them here; the Tourmalet has been climbed more times in the TdF than any other HC climb. It's in the Pyrenees and, since we were staying in Pau for a couple of weeks, I decided to take my bike in order to climb it. On the only day I could really do it, the weather didn't fully co-operate; low clouds were sticking to the mountains but they were predicted to 'break up' by the middle of the afternoon.

I settled on a loop from Lourdes that let me climb the col from the east side. The first part of the day involved gradual climbing up the valley bottom to St Marie de Campan to the start of the real climbing. The climb is 17 km long, but the first 5 km or so aren't very steep but from then on it's a steady 9% or 9.5% slope to the summit. From near the start I was in the clouds; this helped by keeping me cool but hid the wonderful views on the way up. At the top I took a few pics then had a very chilly descent through the clouds - so much for the clearing forecast. The last 30 km were out of the clouds and a lot more fun, a gradual downhill back to Lourdes.

TdF memorabilia in the summit mist 

I had done the climb 23 years ago and found it hard going back then. I tried to rationalize why it would be easier this time - e.g. I've got lower gears on my bike, I'm doing it on a shorter ride - but of course I was 23 years younger back then! In any event, it didn't seem too bad this time round but it's still quite a climb.

I also took note of my climb rate - just over 700 meters per hour (more details here). This is a really simple way of measuring cycling performance and corresponds to a decent club cyclist and is less than half of the best TdF riders. It's also only a little quicker than I will climb a steep mountain path on foot (around 550 meters per hour) and way slower than I expect to thermal up on a paraglider or sailplane!

The Three Cols

Etienne (my son) was over for a stay at the start of August and we did a bunch of tough bike rides, the hardest of which was the Three Cols. You can read more about it here, but the name describes it pretty well. It's a triangle, starting in Barcelonnette and going over 3 cols, each with 1100m or so of climbing. Only 120Km, but none of it is flat.

We started early, planning to do at least the first climb in the cool of the morning. There were feed-stations on the ride, so we didn't have to carry too much food. Wonderful scenery, but as the day went on fatigue and heat seemed to obscure the view. Etienne and Ray went ahead on the last climb and I struggled on by myself.

The ride ended with a argument in a car park. A driver crushed Etienne's back wheel as we were putting the bikes back in the car. The "French" view was that it was unreasonable to expect a driver to see something that doesn't move on the ground. After 15 minutes of animated debate, sanity kicked in and a satisfactory conclusion was reached.

More pics.

Sunday Bike Ride

The paragliding conditions over the last few weeks have done wonders for my cycling. Sunday was too windy for flying, so I decided to get a decent bike ride up to the Col d'Allos. The Col is just over 50Km away from St Andre, and it is uphill all the way, about 1400m of elevation gain. 

The route starts of barely rising and gets gradually steeper all the way, with the last 5 or 6 Kms being the hardest. It was a lovely ride; starting with blue skies and sun, with the Mistral keeping things cool on the long climb. The first part of the ride passes by Colmars and Allos, both lovely villages, before the bare slopes of the final climb. I finished on the summit under gray skies. A quick snack, a pic, layer up for the descent and I was racing the approaching rain home; I got caught about 15Km from home, but it wasn't terribly heavy.

Col info for cyclists and pics.

Etienne's Visit

My son has been out visiting for the last 10 or so days. He's doing very well in the rowing team at college and wanted to use the trip for some pre-season training. So we did a lot of cycling and a little bit of hiking.

The first problem was finding a road bike that fitted him. We were really lucky and found an excellent early nineties bike; it needed some TLC but for 200 Euros we had a bike that new today would be over $6,000. 

We used to cycle together 6 or 7 years ago but hadn't since. As I expected, our "performance curves" have crossed some time in the last few years. He probably hadn't done a ride over 1 hour before coming out, but he took to it very easily. 

We had some long, hard bike rides (of course, they strangely seemed longer and harder to me). The weather was reasonably cooperative - warm but not too hot. Of course, we're in the Alps, and there are lots of steep 10 - 15 Km climbs. And we're in France, so lots of nice restos for lunch. I appreciated the latter more than the former. On the last day - accompanied by Ray - we had a 7+ hour day that left us all nicely tired - the perfect preparation for Etienne's cross-atlantic flight!

A few pics

Leisurely Bike Ride

One of the problems with flying in St Andre is the timing of the forecasts; Aeroweb's forecast is pretty good, but only appears at 9.45. That leaves plenty of time to go flying - even if you walk up the hill - but, at this time of year, it complicates things if you decide not to fly. Alternative activities like hiking and cycling are a lot more pleasant if you start them in the cool of the morning.

Today was one of those days. The flying forecasts had a lot of good things; hot, unstable, not a huge risk of overdevelopment. But it also looked pretty windy. Maybe not too windy, but right on the upper limit. One of these days where it could be very good or very bad....

There were three options;

1. give it a go at St Andre
2. drive about 1.5 hrs to Montclar (which is more sheltered than St Andre), take the chairlift up and fly there (possibly back to St Andre...)
3. do something else

In the end, I decided to go a bike ride. I'd flown the last two days and the forecast for Sunday wasn't bad; I think I would have gone to Montclar otherwise. But by the time I was ready, it was already hot. Around here, most rides involve a lot of climbing, and that is tough when it's hot. So I took one of the flattest rides around; heading up the Verdon valley to Allos. The outbound route involved fighting gravity (which has got strangely stronger over the last few years) and I knew the return route would involve fighting the valley wind.

On the way back, I stopped at Villars-Colmars for lunch, and a very nice lunch it was too. I limited my wine intake for obvious reasons and had a very sedate ride back to St Andre. By then, the valley winds were stronger (or maybe they just seemed stronger), but I had taken onboard enough ballast to get through them. Back home, I was able to watch the Tour de France on the tele and feel I was some sort of 'insider' after my bike ride.

I looked to see if there were any wings in the sky and didn't see any; it's after 8 pm and I haven't seen anything other than birds flying today. Unfortunately, the balise (wind-talker) at St Andre isn't working, but neighboring balises all show high winds this afternoon. So I think I made a smart choice - but maybe I will find out tomorrow that a bunch of pilots had 100K flights!

Cycle Ride to Peyresq

One of the things I hope to be able to do in France is pursue a range of outdoor activities in addition to paragliding. Many years and quite a few pounds ago, I used to ride my bike a lot. I'm starting to ride it again but somehow it would appear that gravity has got stronger in the last few years.

A lot of the climbs here are long and steep, and I'm trying to get myself used to dealing with them. I had my first reasonably long climb for many years here today; around 2,000 feet, but not too steep. It went reasonably well, ending in a tiny village called Peyresq.

The village has been rebuilt by a belgian community and all the buildings are named after famous belgians (Brel, de Broglie - can't remember any other ones...). You can read more about it here http://www.pik-potsdam.de/infodesk/education/alter-net/2009/05.09.2009/peyresq/index_html

Long descents (when you aren't used to them) get a little scary - you want to avoid using the brakes too much incase the wheel overheats. I found myself wondering if I could fit a lightweight reserve for them.

On the way back I stopped and said hello to Ray - he had been on a similar bike ride an hour or so ahead of me.
 

Windy Bike Ride

Today's forecast was right on the limit for some epic XC; sunny, relatively dry air and unstable - but the Mistral hadn't completely blown out. A couple of forecasts were optimistic but most weren't. I might have gone up the hill if I had a few more big flights under my belt this year. But even if it turned out to be flyable it was going to be rough, so I took the prudent coarse and went for a bike ride.

Valley winds are just as problematic on a bike as on a paraglider (even if the stakes are a bit lower). Uphill and into the wind, followed by downhill and with the wind behind me. I went over the Col du Defends and found an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture in the middle of nowhere (more details -> http://www.resgeol04.org/andy.html)

As I looped back to St Andre I couldn't help checking to see if there were wings in the air, but I didn't expect to see any and wasn't surprised. I got a shock when passing the LZ, it looked as though a paraglider pilot had just landed. But no, it was a German pilot getting ready to kite; I suggested the wind was a little strong and left quickly.