Alpe D’Huez Time Trial

I’ve lived in Bourg D’Oisans for over a year and a half, and ridden up Alpe D’Huez many times, but I’d never done one of the weekly summer time trials up Alpe D’Huez.  I finally got around to it last week, and after getting my race number and timing chip from the Tourist Information office the day before (entry was a very reasonable 5 euros), I lined up at the start point in Bourg D’Oisans under the big inflatable start banner with around 50 other cyclists on Wednesday morning.  There’s a quick briefing beforehand (in French and then English) where I learnt that we would all be going up in one group – I’ve never done a massed start time trial before – and that there would even be a car at the front with the elapsed time showing.

We set off from town at a steady pace – the section up to the first turn onto the Alpe was neutralised.  As each of us had a timing chip, it didn’t matter where you were for the start, as everyone would start their own ‘clock’ as it were when they passed the sensor at the bottom of the climb.  But as we got past the roundabout and closer to the climb the pace picked up, and I wanted to at least see the front guys to get a feel for how quickly they would go.  The speed kept building however (I was pushing hard and we hadn’t even started!) and by the base of the climb we were probably doing 40 – 45km/h!  I’ve no idea if this was a race for position, or just to get a good run up, but I only kept that effort level up for about another 30 seconds once we hit the climb before I backed off and let the front runners go.

I slowed down to what I thought was a more reasonable pace, and began to settle in to just under an hours racing.  I happen to do six minute intervals up Alpe D’Huez as part of my training, and know how long it normally takes me to get to the first corner when doing these intervals.  I looked down at my Garmin and saw that I was on course for a fast time for a six minute interval – the good news was that I felt fine, but it was still too fast!  The worst thing you can do in what should be a steady effort is to over-cook it right at the start.  The first few minutes is really easy to go too hard as the body is still lagging behind the effort level you are putting in (power meters are good to counteract this). So I eased up a little more and got into my ‘Alpe D’Huez climbing zone’.  This involves looking for the next tourist to chase, in order to keep the motivation up for a hard ride.  I wasn’t short of people to catch, as there were plenty of riders out on the Alpe that morning.  There were also the other competitors, who were much harder to catch, but were a good reference to gauge my speed against.  One of my friends, Bryan, was as usual riding the event (he is actually one of the sponsors and the person who does the english briefing translation) – he always goes off hard, and was up the road, perhaps 50 metres infront of me after the first couple of bends.  I slowly pulled the gap back, meter by meter, and after we’d got to La Garde (perhaps just over 1/5 of the way up) I managed to catch him.  After a brief chat (we didn’t have enough spare breath for anything more!) I went back into tourist chase mode and got on with it.

I can never seem to remember any of the split times part way up the climb, so I wasn’t too sure if I was on for a good time or not until I was pretty much at the last few bends.  Then I noticed that I was on about 48 minutes with less than 1km to go, which spurred me on to put in one last effort.  I definitely managed to dig deeper than usual – having a race number on the bike always seems to make it easier to push myself hard.  The organisers had put barriers down the centre of the road to make a finishing straight for the riders, and as I came across the line I managed a time of 51 minutes – a personal best!