How Time Flies

Tour de France 2017 Report

Bless me followers, for I have sinned.

Or more accurately: I have neglected you and I am sorry.

Well, I’m not sorry at all obviously, but I do feel a wee bit guilty that I have not even tried to find the time to write a post in months…

After all, this blog only exists for me to bore you to death with my ‘cycling adventures’, so I should have tried harder.

Then again, so should you: I haven’t received a request for a Tour de France 2017 report…

Anyway, let’s play catch up, shall we?

Tour de France 2017

You have probably forgotten, but my favorite Directeur Sportif and I were in Briançon last September for another trip to the Alps, aptly dubbed Tour de France 2017.

Back in 2014 I had planned that event so badly, that even she went nuts and swore she would push me off a cliff if I would ever construct something like that again.

So, this time we would stay in the same place for the duration of the tour.

And because Briançon is probably even more a Valhalla of cycling than Barcelonnette, albeit obviously no match for Corvara or even Bormio, I had no problem constructing a challenging road book.

There’s no point in going over the stages I had in mind again, as it didn’t play out as planned anyway.

As usual…

Although, I did manage to climb just about every mountain I had set my mind on, with the exception of trips I had categorized as ‘Other ideas’, but I failed to complete either of the Marmottes.

The GF Sestriere was a ‘DNF’ as I had a flat halfway between the the grueling Finestre and Sestriere, at which point I discovered I had no spares with me.

If you’re wondering how stupid one can be, so was I…

I partially made up for that debacle by tackling Sestriere from all three sides during stage 8, so that’s something, I guess.

The Marmotte from Bourg-d’Oisans was a ‘DNS’ – once in Briançon, I quickly realized that the days in September were too short and too cold.

The latter could be dealt with, but to have a fair chance of completing the Marmotte, I needed a full day, also because of some three hours worth of car transfers back and forth to Bourg-d’Oisans.

I did not have a lot to complain about the actual weather though, although generally speaking the temperatures were low.

Briançon itself being situated at 1,300+ meters, it was more pleasant in its twin city Susa, at 500+ meters for example.

But at least I did not have to ride in a freezing rain very often.

It didn’t look that good when I started the Tour on Saturday though, as the trip up the Lautaret was a ride from hell.

I started in Bourg-d’Oisans in the rain, which slowly turned into near-frozen rain higher up.

When we arrived at the all but deserted summit, I was unable to change my cloths as I was numb everywhere.

And in the still open tavern they were very surprised to see a cyclist, but I have never had a better omelette, coffee and pie.

Because of the continuing rain, I did not descend towards Briançon that day.

Together with the Izoard on the final day, those were the only descends I missed this Tour, although I regretted doing the one from the Galibier…

Anyway, here’s an overview of what I did manage to do during my Tour de France 2017:

Stage	Main Col	Dist. (km)	D+/D- (m)	Climb (km)	Flat (km)	DH (km)	Avg. (%)
Prologue	Lautaret (W)	39.7	1,492/152	25.7	10.7	3.2	5.8
Stage 1a	Izoard (N)	44.9	1,462/1,462	21	2.6	21.2	7.0
Stage 1b	Montgenèvre (W/E)	42.4	1,114/1,114	17.5	6.9	18	6.4
Stage 2	Lautaret / Galibier (E)	72.7	1,508/1,508	28.6	14	30	5.3
Stage 3	Echelle	43.6	638/622	12.7	16.4	14.5	5.0
Stage 4	Finestre (Susa)	73.1	2,027/1,765	26	16.1	30.9	7.8
Stage 5	Granon	35.8	1,158/1,243	14.1	5.3	16.3	8.2
Stage 6	Vars / Risoul	76.4	2,297/2,240	34.3	9	33	6.7
Stage 7	Mont Cenis (Susa)	67.1	2,072/1,483	30.7	11.9	24.4	6.7
Stage 8	Sestriere (W/E/S-W)	81.9	1,938/2,203	32.3	8.7	40.7	6.0
Stage 9a	None	56.7	885/1,004	15.9	23.1	17.5	5.6
Stage 9b	Croix de Toulouse	17.4	660/660	7.3	2.4	7.6	9.0
Stage 10	Izoard (S)	44.1	1,687/208	26.8	12.8	4.5	6.3
Totals		695.8	18,938/15,664	292.9	139.9	261.8	6.5

The nifty VeloViewer wheel looks like this:

The (elevation) numbers in the table come from RideWithGPS, which is generally more credible than Strava, which is where VeloViewer takes its numbers from.

In this case, there isn’t a lot of difference in the total, even though the individual rides may differ…

Also, the stats per ride are calculated by Stravistix, but I’m not sure on what exactly is defined as ‘flat’.

Probably when the difference over any stretch is negligible, although there may still be some minor ups and downs in it.

By far the hardest climb of this Tour de France 2017, was actually in Italy: the Colle delle Finestre.

While the first half of that is already more than enough to bring you to your knees, the second, unpaved half is nearly impossible.

Keep in mind that I was on my ‘cross bike’, having tyres with a tractor profile, but the condition of the ‘road’ was such, that they didn’t help me much either.

I was bouncing left to right over rocks in various sizes, and the path looked like it was held together by noting but smaller rocks, sand and (dry) dirt.

Which is probably not that bad in itself, but add to that the grades running up to over 10% and you will enjoy it less by the meter, unless you’re even madder than me.

If you think cobblestones are a bad ride, you should definitely not try this…

On the bright side: this climb had the best temperatures I encountered during the tour and the summit was probably the least cold of all the summits I reached that were close to or over 2,000 meters.

During several climbs, like the Vars, Izoard and Galibier, the upper bits were so windy and cold, that the joy of the views did not really make up for that, as breathtaking as they are, especially on the latter two.

But I did admire the stamina of the photographers on those, that were still there to take pictures of the very few halfwits like myself that dared to try it in the first place.

Although I noticed that even they were gone when we descended back from the Izoard the final day of my Tour de France 2017.

During that stage (full length from Guillestre this time), I tried to stay as close to the back of the car as possible while going through the valley between Arvieux and Brunissard, as I would have been blown backwards otherwise…

Probably my ‘best’ day was during stage 6, when I went up the Vars and Risoul.

Maybe because I had only ‘half’ a stage the day before, with the Granon.

However, that climb, despite its moderate official average from Briançon (7.2%) gets really tough after le Villard-Laté: 9.2% over the final 11 kilometers.

The Finestre averages 9.3% but is some 6 kilometers longer at that average and more than that is unpaved.

As we had ‘only’ 11 days for this Tour, I did not take a day off, but I did break two stages into a morning and an afternoon session and stages 3 and 9a were fairly easy 🙂

More on the Tour de France 2017 here.

Next up: Rouvy Legend