LA PYRENEENE-4 vallées

A 7am start is, for me anyway, quite brutal....I drove to St Lary in the heart of the Pyrenees on friday night under buckets of rain and hail convicning myself as I drove that the weather would clear up in the morning. 180kms with the col d'orquette 11kms after the start, col de tourmalet into the col d'aspin....I was basically frozen until the descent of the tourmalet where suddenly my neurons reconnected! The col d'orquette was a bit brutal without coffee in the morning but it was too early to swallow anything. i was in long gloves, leg warmers, and was still cold. In the valley after the Tourmalet I managed to take off my leg warmers while riding as well as my gloves and jacket....I had settled into a nice group of ten by then and we were still a tad off from the front group. I heard the guys discussing chainring sizes as we climbed the tourmalet-they all had 36 chain rings and i had a 39. We climbed at a steady pace keeping together for the most part with a few yoyoing here and there....once we started up the col d'aspin I followed one of our men in a yellow skinsuit. The col d'aspet has a lot of false flats but gets pretty tough up top. He was in his 53 and i in my 39 hopoing I wouldnt blow myself into oblivion on his wheel. As we started towards the last 2kms of the climb where it really gets steep i finally realized that it was just me and him and the others hadnt followed. He pulled off and I pulled through.....22 more kms to the finish. A very long day in deed but quite satisfied with the effort as we didnt get rained on and it wasnt too cold afterall. I ended up 35 overall out of 320 so there is room for improvement but no worries, there's more to come!