Cyclopaat, an alter ego with a twist
As is customary after all my cycling trips into the high mountains, most of those shamelessly dubbed Tour de France – like this one – or Giro d’Italia, I give you a recap with some stats of my latest adventure.
This year’s Tour was my 3rd completely dedicated to the Savoie Mont Blanc region, after 2021 and 2022.
I finally also cycled in the Haute-Savoie area, although leaving more than enough for another Tour there.
Having arrived home safely, here’s the report of stage 13 and the prologue of this year’s Tour de France.
I have completed all 28 entries on the VeloViewer Alpes du Nord list, which was my main objective for this year’s Tour.
To date, only 5 on the list have completed all of them – as some people not having completed all of them got more points, as they were (way) better than me, I landed in 8th spot on the list…
Today was not the kind of day you’d pick to go out and cycle a bit.
For the first time, it was clouded, it was drizzling and rain was expected.
So, I got out anyway…
And I set out to cycle the Madeleine, the col that finished me off in 2021’s stage 12 clusterfuck.
Today’s stage brought me three cols from the VeloViewer “100 Greatest” list – I have now completed 27 of 28 on the Alpes du Nord part of it, with “only” Semnoz to go.
That climb is not any easy one either…
It was a long day, as the transfer to Samoëns took us 1:40 and the return from Seytroux well over two hours…
Looking at the numbers, today’s stage could easily be mistaken for een re-run of stage 9.
But yesterday’s stage included three climbs, today’s “only” two.
I started in Notre-Dame-de-Briançon and headed towards the start of a climb I had put on my shortlist.
