Gezza's Journal

New member Gerry Rosen joined the club in late 2007. As he'll remind you, he's a "big boned" London cabbie but he's also got the cycling bug. He's been chronicling his conversion to cycling, beginning from his first club run all the way to the Etape du Tour in 2008 and now beyond.

Etape du Tour - Sunday 6 July 2008

PAU TO HAUTACAM 169km

DAY 1
Bike- check, food- check, clothes, money, passport etc check, I was ready, let the big adventure begin and at 9pm I was tucked up in bed, alarm set for 1.30am and await the phone call from Uncle Albert (my dad & taxi service to Surbiton). Unfortunately I forgot to leave my phone on and slept through the alarm, luckily my dad has brains and drove to my house, he was greeted with the sight that no person wants to see...A set of front door keys in the front door, yes yours truly had gone to bed, everything ready to be nicked, luckily though, nothing was touched and after a severe reprimand(b@ll@..g) at 2.15 I was on my way and a hour later we were heading south towards Folkestone and the channel tunnel.

Many sincere thanks to my fellow Etapist Nick Goss for driving, I know I drive for a living, bit to do 800+ miles in one day takes some doing, The journey itself apart from the ring road in Paris, which took the best part of two hours went well and it certainly puts our road system 100% to shame, you don’t even mind the toll charges as you simply hurtle south through France at ease, and as for the service stations, not a single fast food outlet in sight!

It’s not until you clear Toulouse some 550+ kilometres south of Paris that you clap your eyes on what you are there for...the Pyrenees, It simply quite takes your breath away, even though its my 2nd visit, the sheer scale of the Pyrenees is truly superb, even at this time of year the tops of the mountains are still covered in snow. I honestly recommend the Pyrenees for a cycling holiday. It was just after 6.15 pm we finally reached our base for the weekend, in the heart of rural France some 20km from Lourdes and Pau.

DAY 2 - RECCE DAY
As Thursday drew to a close in cool & cloudy conditions, Friday morning was the complete opposite, clear blue skies & baking hot sunshine and 32c 90f, just right for a recce up the Tourmalet!! it also gave me the chance to finish off what I failed to do in May, Well I can tell you now, is that La Mongie, is the biggest s******e that man created, (why the hell was it built??) anyway back to the cycling, those 6k's from just before La Mongie, through the tunnels and upwards are pure hell/torture/steep/relentless call it what you like, I also got a p******e 2k from the top which didn’t lighten my mood at all. All I know is that to see the last turn and the statue of the Geant du Tourmalet was pure magic and as for the blackcurrant tart and coke even better, although the ham egg n’chips did look tempting. The descent back down was good but the first 4k's back to La Mongie was a bit hairy!

After a wash and nap it was into Pau for a dinner of high protein proportions, you get my drift! (French Onion Soup, Chateaubriand steak with Béarnaise sauce, peach melba, wine, beer) back to base afterwards. Discussed the day just gone and within 5 mins zzzzzzzzzzz

DAY 3 - REST DAY
And on to Saturday and rest day (everyone has one of those now and then) shopping day, quick bike ride day, registration day, The registration/host village organisation has to be given 10/10, within a minute I had signed on, received and checked my timing chip, goody bag and t-shirt, I'm sure the organisers of British Cyclosportives could learn a thing or two.

Back to base and to get ready for the big day and still not nerves, everything laid out, race number securely tied to front of bike, made sure chip was there and food ready which included, 8 energy bars 2 bananas, 5 gels, liquorice, chewing gum, painkillers, 6 electrolyte tablets you name it, I had it !! With everything ready, it was lights out at 9.00 pm, alarm set for 3.45 am

DAY 4-THE BIG ONE
So here we are the big day, alarm set for 3.45 am, except no need, raging thunderstorm outside and this was only 2.30 am, no more sleep!, but on a plus side, the country house owner with whom we were staying, got up at 4am to make us breakfast, home-made bread, cakes, jam & yogurts, where in the world would you get that service?

4.50am pitch black outside pouring with rain, flashes of lightning we're on our way can’t see a thing (forgot to bring lights). But then all of a sudden a miracle happened, a bloke in a hire van with English number plates had stopped just up the road, not only that, but he was from England’s premier county Hertfordshire and only up the road from where I live, Nick used his charm and bagged us a lift. I forgot what his name was but he saved our lives, thank you kind sir of Hertfordshire! The rain continued as we waited at the top of the pens, we were being held in, it was still raining at 6.30am and the site of 8000 fellow etapists was quite a site, nerves now getting serious HR of 109 and rising! and then all of a sudden CINQ, QUATRE, TROIS, DEUX, UN, the first riders were off, a great big round of applause, shouts of allez allez allez and finally after biding my time at 7.24am I was off !! Unfortunately for one poor sod he had a p******e only 100 yards from the start poor bas***d., and through the centre of Pau we went, still raining but loads of people on the streets cheering and clapping.

Everything was going well, cruising in large groups in excess of 40kph, through wooded pine forests south of Pau and then all of a sudden everyone stopped or slowed to a crawl, WTF!!! we had to take a very sharp and narrow 90 degree left turn and up the hill at Rebenacq, no-one could cycle up there (I suppose its the length of that hill behind Sandown Park racecourse), you had to walk, it wasn’t until at the summit that it was back on the bike and away again, anyway it gave me a chance for a quick breather. The rest of the journey to Lourdes was uneventful except it was still raining. So far the Journey (67k) took me 2hrs 19 mins to Lourdes some 17 minutes ahead of the cut off time.

On to the scrum/fight at the feed station, It felt like being Homer Simpson, stuffing as much food, cakes, jelly babies, bananas, water into the gob as quickly as possible and all in the space of one minute. Suitably refreshed and onto the short section of Loucrup, I knew what was coming up, swigged on a bit of pink grapefruit gel, and up we went for the 2.6k cat 3 climb, it goes without saying that I was overtaken, but not by too many this time, I knew the climb from the recce with James back in May and before I knew it I had crested the summit and down the other side. The rain was now getting heavier as we made the right turn and headed for Bagneres-de-Bigorre and the Tourmalet, it’s all uphill now for the next 30k!! The 6k's to B-D-B went quickly, I must of been leading out people as no one overtook me and was going at a nice pace and still the rain came teeming down, even the owner of the hotel I stayed at in May for the recce came out to watch and he recognised me and gave me an encouraging ALLEZ ! ALLEZ! ALLEZ!

Last bit of food and drink went into the mouth and then that was it, on to the road for the Tourmalet and the culmination of a year’s work, a quick check of the watch showed that I had picked up some time and was now ahead by 25 minutes. All of a sudden the rain stopped, but I knew the weather conditions would be bad on the way up as the clouds were extremely low. The time now was 11.10 am and had 2hrs 5 minutes to reach La Mongie before elimination, let the climb begin!!!

As with the recce back in May and 48hrs previously, the first 4k were straightforward and went well. Then all of a sudden, things took a turn for the worse, the fog descended, my legs started to hurt, my lower back started to hurt and the average gradient ramped up to 9.5% and the timekeepers car was hovering, it wasn’t looking good. Now I know the French people mean well but after 7k into the climb and by where the waterfalls are, there was this group of about 10 people playing the most g-d damned awful music and I just wanted to shout to them to shut the f*** up. But seeing as I would leave them behind I thought against it. Now I just had the tunnel sections to go and still 10 minutes ahead of the broom wagon. This section to La Mongie is total and brutal hell, eventually after much grinding of the pedals I reached the second feed station with 3 minutes to elimination time, a quick impression of Homer Simpson and I’m not joking, but I went through elimination point as they were putting the barriers across the road and just made it with 5 seconds to spare!!!!

The final 4k's upwards are pure hell and it took forever, the weather was of pea-souper conditions 3k, 2k, 1k to go, no let up as that final 1000m has an average gradient of almost 10%!! Eventually I saw that final left turn come into view and I could now afford a little smile, I got a shout from some English people who said "Go Wheelers" for which I responded "I Could Murder A Curry". 30 seconds later I crested the 2115m high Hors Catégorie Col du Tourmalet, the second time in 48hrs. Now unfortunately I was 10 minutes behind and so literally stopped for 10 seconds to put my jacket on, I had forgotten that my jacket was in the same pocket as my opened gel and so got a load of gunk over my hands which isn’t good considering I have a 37k descent and there is thick fog and drizzle, this made for an interesting few minutes.

48 hours earlier the whole descent was visible, it was truly a glorious sight, but today no such luck and with no barriers at the side this was going to be fun.....I had virtually no feeling in my hands, it was freezing and what feeling I did have, trying to brake at a sharp hairpins was next to useless. Eventually the road opens out after 10k into the descent and then I went hell for leather in the big ring and was reaching speeds of almost 70k, all those people that overtook me on the ascent I was now going past them, I was a man possessed, through the town of Bareges at break neck speed and onto the gorges with sheer rock faces either side. It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, but no time to admire the scenery. All good things come to an end and I hit the valley floor 150k covered 19k to go, now had a punishing headwind to contend with, I wasn’t sure of the elimination time for the bottom of the Hautacam as my race card was now resembling paper mache, but I’m sure I was back on track so a quick loo visit, take my jacket off, gather my thoughts and make the final push, WRONG!!!

That visit to the loo 1km from the start of the Hautacam cost me, as I approached the start, I was stopped by some pompous official who said "fini fini fini" WTF!!!! He then took my timing chip away. I was flabbergasted!!!

I'm sure I heard someone say that the weather was so bad they weren’t letting anymore onto the climb and that there were too many descenders, but it turns out that I was over the elimination time by one bl@@dy minute!!!!! Even though there was another 2hrs 15mins before the official finishing time of 5.20pm. I was now seeing red, red mist descended and I’m not joking every single swear word was coming out of my mouth (I shan't repeat them here). I called my mother to tell her what had happened and a minute into the conversation I was told to hang up and calm down NO CHANCE!!!! I honestly wanted to kill someone. 11 months of hard work, gone, just like that!!

To make matters worse I had to wait for Nick to come back which was a further two hours, eventually he arrived and then it was another two hours before we got out of this muddy field they used as a car park, it only had one exit!

I suppose the one positive thing that came out of the Etape was that I didn’t have to endure the coach journey/broom wagon back and the Mr Norbert Destranglle (bike removals) van, because I saw at least 10 coach loads full of people with some very glum faces.

And so after almost 15 hours we got back to our lodgings, a quick shower and then out for dinner for the final time. Now normally I’m not much of a pizza fan (it’s true! You'd wouldn’t think it) because I can’t stand cheese but as you know being a cyclist it has a strange affect on the brain and I absolutely wolfed down this pizza with a beer, this was swiftly followed by apple tarte tatin and cream, with another beer, fully contented, back to base, a quick chat about the day and five minutes later zzzzzzz !!!

Gezza Rosen didn't cross the finish line but his efforts have done others plenty of good, he has raised £1675 online for The Institute of Cancer Research, plus more in cash. To find out more about sponsorship and the Etape de Gezza, click here.

DAY 5 - HOMEWARD BOUND
Monday morning dawned bright, typical! After the final breakfast, we started to make the long journey north, just make sure that you have a varied selection of CD's for the journey (Nick, your tastes in music, hmmmm!!) anyway, must give thanks to Nick and Mr BMW driver for their sterling efforts in getting North ASAP !!!!, we made it to Paris just before the evening rush hour, where we lost him and reached the Channel Tunnel at 7.30 pm, onto the train and then back to Surbiton, at 9.00 pm, just in time for a burger and sausage and three pints of Heineken, before my lift back to Hertfordshire and reached home at midnight, looked at post, saw tax bill had arrived plus a demand for £400 for the license on my taxi, thought boll@***, then 5 minutes later zzzzzzzzzzzz

I tell you something, it is not pleasant having to unpack and wash 3/4 day old kit when it smells and wet shoes that reek to high heaven, over a week on the smell is only disappearing. My Roubaix has taken an absolute pounding, bar tape needs replacing. Back tyre needs replacing, front tyre possibly as well and it needs a seriously good clean & brush up, also my cleats are wearing a bit thin!!!

I also forgot since the Etape, I haven’t touched the bike, I have eaten very unhealthy and took a week off, I had an almighty fry up last week, had chips for dinner nearly every day, with no pasta or brown rice, salad or vegetables in sight. Loads of beers at my sister’s 40th birthday last Saturday night. I think I deserved it! But all good things come to an end and its back to the regime of trying to lose weight except for my birthday on the 31st of this month where I shall have the monster of all curries, I also have a family reunion in Toronto Canada from the 20th August for a week and a weeks chilling out in Cyprus to come in October, so excuse me for those few days!!!!

Just a few stats from the ride that I covered:
Distance 155k
Time 7hrs 42 mins
Avg Spd 19.4kph
Max Spd 69.6kph
Calories 7519
Max HR 180 98%
Avg HR 152 83%
Exercise in time zone(128-146) 1hr 53min

Congratulations to all in the KW who completed the Etape, Dominic, Martin, Christian and others, but especially Nick, my training(ish) partner, remember Easter Monday ???

And so the great 2008 journey and adventure is over, unfortunately the reality is I failed, but I know that in 2009 I will make sure that, that piece of metal is around my neck and that is a promise....!!!!!!

Many thanks to everyone that has helped me in the past year, you know who you are, and hopefully can be an inspiration to other people to take up the sport as its given me a new lease of life... talking of other lives QPR...!

Click here to read previous entries in Gezza's Journal.