Merkel 1, Col du Tourmalet 0

I’ve been ‘waiting for the photos to prove it, but Merkel and the Mountain ( described here) is over, and Merkel came out with a points decision, despite some setbacks along the way.

The really short version is that I completed 536 kilometres of the 570 promised, with the missing kilometres the result of a mechanical failure that I couldn’t repair on the road towards the end of my second day’s riding (in short, a wheel that was unsafe to ride on, and Qantas’s cruel excess baggage policy meant that the spare wheelset was at home rather than in the car where it should have been).

But in any case, I did climb the Col du Tourmalet on my third day, and did it in one hour, 34 minutes and 30 seconds. While it’s way off the pros, it’s 12 minutes better than this guy from the New York Times, who did it fresh.

The tale of the three days riding in the Pyrenees will take multiple posts, which I will do at my own revived blog over the next few days – hopefully with photos, which remain on the support crew’s computer at the moment. It was, by far, the hardest physical challenge that I’ve ever undertaken. The pain of a bout of Crohn’s disease is worse, mind you, but this was self-inflicted. The views were spectacular (you’ll have to trust me until I can get the photos, but they really, really were!), the people were mostly wonderful, even the gendarmerie when they dragged us off the freeway when we were (unknown to us) riding on it illegally, the countryside was beyond fascinating. From a cycling perspective, one of the more interesting things was just how narrow so many of the famous roads up the cols are – they’re narrower than most of the farm access tracks near my boyhood home in Victoria’s north-east. The D918, the road on the Col du Tourmalet, is a glorified cart track despite the ski resort and considerable traffic on the road. Andorran drivers were the only ones with an Australian driver’s attitude to cyclists; in Spain and France they were all exceedingly helpful.

So what did I learn? While the absolute speeds were so different as to be a ridiculous comparison, I think I’ve got some idea what it’s like to push one’s body to the absolute limit for hour upon hour, through stinking heat and sun. While talented writers can instil a great deal of romance in the process, the fact is that on the bike it just feels like hour after hour of pain and discomfort. It just bloody well hurts, ok? But I’m very glad I did it, and I love cycling even more now than I ever did. As to the Tourmalet and the other famous climbs of the Tour, they too are perhaps romanticized overly. The laws of physics and physiology apply there, just as much as they do up a hill in Australia; I was pretty much dead-on with my expectations for the time I’d take. What makes those mountains special is that they provide the battleground for some of the greatest endurance athletes on Earth; no more, no less. How Cadel, our project patron Simon Gerrans, and the other pro cyclists do what they do remains a mystery. Do they hurt in the same way I did? More? I’ll never know, but I’ve gotten enough of a glimpse that my appreciation for what they do is even deeper than it was before. And while I don’t condone it, I can understand why the temptation for artificial assistance is so strong in pro ranks.

My fellow Crusaders, Damian, Dale, and Marieke, continue their even more difficult quest to ride the whole Tour route to raise awareness and money for Crohn’s disease. The support crew, John, Nancy, Tara and Jason were incredibly helpful, not to mention tolerant of tired, cranky cyclists. I couldn’t have done it without all of them.

Anyway, here’s the nag. To remind you all, Damian and I suffer from Crohn’s disease, and we all did this (aside from the personal gratification, of course) to raise the profile and some money for research into the condition. If any of you would be prepared to donate through the website, it would be very, very much appreciated. All monies raised go to Crohn’s and Colitis Australia to support research into what I still maintain is a neglected disease.