Tour de France 2014 – The Stats

Forgive me minions, for I have slacked…

After celebrating my (54th) birthday yesterday, I realized that it has been 18 days since I last wrote a post.

Which means that my own “Tour de France 2014” ended nearly three weeks ago.

The hardship of getting back into my daily routine was eased a bit by teasing Wayne on Facebook, with a daily picture of some mountain I climbed.

Paula did a great job shooting pictures and it’s not difficult to find a jaw-dropping scenery – I could keep on driving Wayne to tears for a couple of months.

But the real Tour de France started the week after we got back and the first 10 days of that have been hectic and a pleasure to watch – most of the time anyway.

With Chris and Alberto out of the competition, the tour has not been boring and every time Sagan fails to take a stage, I’m getting more happy.

We even had a Dutch – ka-BOOM! – stage winner and that had been a long time ago too.

Hopefully the next stages will bring more spectacle – tomorrow they will climb the Izoard, which is the only pass the official Tour has in common with my own, albeit that I climbed it from the other side…

Anyway, I’ve been going through the data of my rides and it kinda looks like this:

Tour de France 2014 - Stages

Ride	Distance (km)	Elevation (m)	Climbing (km)	Avg %	Rem
Prologue (With a Twist)	46.5	1,805	26.5	6.8	MTF
Stage 1: Col du Petit Saint-Bernard (W & E)	108.8	2,539	54.4	4.7
Stage 2: Cormet de Roselend and Col des Saisies	83	2,262	41.5	5.5
Stage 3b: Col de la Madeleine	21.1	1,502	21.1	7.1	MTF
Stage 3a: Col de l'Iseran and Mont Cenis	132.9	2,984	66.5	4.5
Stage 4: Col de la Madeleine and Col du Glandon	95.3	3,479	44.7	7.8
Stage 5b: Télégraphe and Galibier	35	2,021	30	6.7	MTF
Stage 5a: Col de la Croix de Fer	32.7	1,525	29.2	5.2	MTF
Stage 6: Cinglé du Mont Ventoux	137.3	4,443	68.7	6.5
Stage 7: Cime de la Bonette (N & S)	96.3	3,017	48.1	6.3
Stage 8a: Col Saint-Jean and Col de Pontis	39.2	927	16.6	5.6
Stage 8b: Col de Vars and Montée Saint-Anne	57.8	2,169	23.9	9.1
Stage 9a: Col de la Cayolle	68.1	1,173	29.1	4.0
Stage 9b: Col d'Allos	40.2	1,083	20.1	5.4
Stage 10: Colle Fauneira (a.k.a. dei Morti)	25.2	1,928	25.2	7.7	MTF
Stage 11: Col Agnel and Col d'Izoard	77.1	2,455	38.6	6.4
Epilogue (Recovery)	62.8	1,111	26.4	4.2
Totals	1,159.3	36,263	610.4	5,9

* MTF = Mountain Top Finish

Total hours (in the saddle) is 63:42 covering 1,159.3 kilometers with 36,263 meters of elevation. Taking the “MTF” into consideration – otherwise the “50/50 rule” is applied – the elevation gain was booked during 610.4 kilometers of climbing.

The average per day is 4:54 in the saddle, covering 89.2 kilometers with 2,802 meters of elevation (47.0 kilometers of climbing). The average per ride is 3:45, covering 68.2 kilometers, with 2,143 meters of elevation (35.9 kilometers of climbing).

The overall average grade comes to 5.9% which may seem relatively easy – and it’s lower than during my Giro in 2011 – but I can assure you that I did not experience it that way most of the time…

As you can see at the beginning of this article, Veloviewer makes a pretty neat graph of this – there’s a minor difference in time and distance, because I fiddled with my Garmin on a few occasions.

Longest day in the saddle was June 16th, with 154 kilometers, 4,486 meters of elevation gain and 8+ hours just cycling – total elapsed time was over 10 hours, without the car transfer.

I underestimated the descent towards Modane – I figured that going mostly downhill from the top of the Iseran would be easy. However, the head wind in the valley and particularly during and after climbing the Mont Cenis (so, between Lanslebourg and Modane) was killing me.

Close second was of course the Cinglé – the three trips up and down the Ventoux totaled 137.3 kilometers with 4,443 meters of elevation – total time elapsed was almost ten and a half hours, which made that “the longest day”.

Not considering the short, extremely steep ones around Barcelonnette, the Fauniera, the Madeleine from La Chambre, the Glandon and the Izoard were the toughest climbs. However, the last third of the Vars was pretty hard too…

For more details, see the intermediate reports of all stages with links to Strava:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Best of picture gallery here – hard to choose from the over 1,000 available…

And the traditional “Summit Selfies” – don’t zoom in too closely, as I have captured myself with a snotty nose here and there 🤪

Tour de France 2014 – main page.