Peter Booroff tackles La Marmotte...
Not sure why I thought about doing this ride, probably beer talk though. Officially it is 108 miles and 16,400 feet of climbing, but by the time you have got to the start and descended the last mountain to get back to the campsite it is quite a bit more. For me it was 119.43 miles and 18,369 feet of ascents in tadge over 14 hours. There are four iconic mountains to get over, five if you include the Col du Lautaret, but that's on the way down from the Col du Galibier. Technically it's not a climb, but a long descent to Bourg d’Oisans. The others being the Col du Glandon, Col du Telegraphe and finishing with Alpe d’Huez.
The Marmotte Granfondo Alpes is a Sportive towards the end of June (there's also one in the Pyrenees) and attracts about 5000 entrants from all over the world. There were a few reasons why I didn't do the official Sportive. The first is its entry fee of €130. We paid less than that to camp for the five days in the motorhome. Secondly, you must have a medical proforma signed by a GP to say you are fit and healthy (more money). And lastly, the end of June was not feasible for the holiday, something to do with my wife retiring. We chose early September and off we went in our Motorhome touring through France to end up at Bourg d'Oisans. I had a five-day window to prepare and choose a good weather day for the Marmotte. I was not concerned by any rain, just not keen on climbing and descending mountains in clouds. There are some big drops off the side if you get it wrong.
We got to Bourg d’Oisans mid-afternoon which gave me enough time to ride up Alpe d'Huez for a bit of a taster. I have done it a couple of times before, so I knew what to expect with the 21 hairpin bends. I chose Friday for the Marmotte as the forecast was cloudy and rain for Wednesday and Thursday. I think the French are as bad on their weather predictions as the UK. Wednesday turned out to be fine and the rain was only on Thursday morning.
I knew it was going to take me more than 10 hours, so I had to get going at first light, which was 7am. Sunset was 8pm so I had a 13-hour window. Surely that was going to be enough time.
First mountain, the Col du Glandon at 1,924m (6,311ft) above sea level and 1471m (4,825ft) of climbing. It is an average of 7% with the steepest section measured over 100m at 12.2% but generally just a long grind of 13 miles. Anyone who has cycled the mountains in France will know there are countdown markers every kilometre that give you distance to the top and the average gradient over the next kilometre. Those kilometre markers just seem to take an age to appear, especially as the day wore on.
Just before the top I saw my first Marmotte led out by the side of the road sunbathing. After all, it was supposed to be 26 degrees today. I took a few obligatory photos at the top and started my descent. About a mile down I remembered that I left my cycling glasses on the wall. Back we go, pick them up and off again. The descent was fun until I met a couple of tractors near the bottom coming up the other way. A bit of hard braking and I pulled over to one side to let them pass. Motorcycles are the things to watch out for, they treat the mountains as their own personal racetrack. There are thousands of them, and they don't care where they overtake you, going up or coming down.
I missed the next turning and had to double back to get on route. Now was a long slog along the Saint Jean du-Maurienne valley. It's a long, busy road, albeit with a reasonable cycle lane. From either direction it was the only way of getting to the Col du Telegraphe and the point of no return. There was a road closure, and I ended up following the diversion signs. Just to add a bit more distance and climbing.
I'll treat the Col du Telegraphe and the Col du Galibier as one climb. Essentially, you go up the first with a short descent to the Valloire ski resort before then going up the Galibier. As a whole, it is 21.62 miles long, peaking at 2,642m (8,666ft) with an average gradient of 5.9% and 11.9% at its steepest. From the bottom to the top, it was 2,069m (6,786ft) of climbing.
I have done the Galibier before but from the other side, but it is not as pretty as this way up. The length of climb caught me out and although I cycled it all (no walking) I did stop three times to partake in refreshments in the only cafes going up, except for Valloire that is.
It was later than I expected and having some jelly babies a drink and putting on my jacket it was time for the descent to the Col du Lautaret and on to Bourg d’Oisans. The road surface wasn't as good as I remember but coming down at 30 to 40 mph for nearly all of the 28ish mile descent was arm aching. I finally got to the base of Alpe d'Huez at 7:10pm, a full 12 hours after starting and I still had nearly 1,100 metres of climbing left to do. I actually stopped and had a cup of tea and got going again at 7:25pm. It had entered my head to call it a day, but I had a bit more perseverance than that. The light was fading, and I knew I wasn't going to get to the top in daylight. I had a decent set of lights as you need them for the tunnels heading into Bourg d’Oisans. There was very little traffic and no motorcycles, phew.
Alpe d'Huez is 8.63 miles long and 1,860m (6,100ft) with a climb of 1,118m (3,667ft). The average gradient is 8% peaking at 15%. It took me one hour and 35 minutes to get to the top. Marco Pantani holds the record at 37 minutes and 35 seconds, but he was a lot younger than me. There were a couple of times when I stopped and thought that's it, I can't go any further, but there was no way I was going to say, I nearly did the Marmotte GranFondo.
Off I trundled and I could see the lights of another cyclist coming up behind and that spurred me on to keep going. He caught me just before the finish and with the customary photos, that was it.
Well not quite, it was just a few degrees above freezing and although I had a jacket and hiviz it was going to be close to zero with the wind chill. Eight miles of descending in the dark at roughly 30mph and 21 hairpins to negotiate it was the coldest my body had ever got. I couldn't stop shivering for at least an hour afterwards as my core body temperature had dropped so low. So, there it is the Marmotte GranFondo route done and off the bucket list. I will list this as the second hardest ride I have done. The hardest being the off road route up Mont Ventoux on a mountain bike in a temperature of 37 degrees centigrade. For a bit of comparison there are 50,674 ranked climbs in Europe. The Telegraphe and Galibier combined is the 74th hardest whilst Streetly Hill is the 17,867th. Streetly Hill is 0.745 miles long and 354 feet of climbing at an average of 9.4%.
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