Today I started my Tour de France 2024 with a Prologue.
Starting in Chambéry, I rode what is known as “Traversée Chartreuse” or “Trilogie de Chartreuse”.
It starts with the Col du Granier – some 15 kilometers with a D+ of almost 900 meters.
A fairly even col, with some steeper stretches to even out the easier, flatter, bits.
I started early, but it was already warming up nicely and the stretches in the blistering sun were a good heat adaptation training…
The restaurant at the summit was still closed, so we took pictures and moved on to the descent of the Granier.
It was too early to have a rest stop anyway…
Down in Saint-Pierre-d’Entremont I started the climb up the Col du Cucheron.
This one is shorter, just over half the length of the Granier, but it has a stinging final from Saint-Philibert.
Other than the col marker there was nothing to see, so we descended to Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse for the Col de Porte.
Actually only the final ~8 kilometers or so, but that part is the more interesting bit anyway.
From the VeloViewer “100 Greatest” I had now ticked off #72, #73 and #74.
We had a coffee and an ice cream – well, only I had the ice cream – and continued the Prologue after that.
As the Col de Porte only counts in the StatsHunters list from the other end, we descended to the Col de Palaquit and returned back up to the summit again.
At the Palaquit, I was considering going further down towards Grenoble and then return, deciding on what to do after that.
But I decided to stick to my plotted stage and maybe I shouldn’t have…
The Col du Coq turned out to be the toughest climb of the day.
Irregular, but the stinging >15% stretches – and there are plenty of those – posed a bigger problem.
While it is less than 10 kilometers long, it took me longer than the Col du Granier to reach the summit.
The highest summit of the day too, with 1,434 meters.
We descended to Les Meunières, I cycled the “Plateau des Petites Roches” / “Route des 3 Villages”, descended some more and rode along the busy D1090 toward Pontcharra to get little over 100 kilometers in and tossed the bike in the car.
We then settled in out apartment in Albertville, or more precise: the Medieval City of Conlans, a fantastic spot that reminds us of our stay in the Citadel of Briançon in the Tour de France of 2017.
Total for the Prologue: 102.1 kilometers and 2,870 meters of D+.
