Go Team Weasel!
Even as I type, my friend wascally_weasel is racing in the Etape du Tour. This fiendish road race happpens every year on a Tour de France rest day. Basically, several thousand serious amateur cyclists race a stage of the Tour. A mountain stage. 200 km / 125 miles through the Pyrenees.
WW has been training seriously for it all year, putting in hundreds of hours and thousands of kilometres on his training bike and on the roads. He went out to the Pyrenees a month or so ago to acclimatise himself to the roads he's racing on now. And now he's riding his socks off in the mountains and the heat. I watched yesterday's mountain stage of the the Tour and it's gruelling stuff.
Leila at work's cousin is also doing the Etape, I discovered. Good luck to them both.
Update: 1402 ECT. I think he's somewhere past Mauleon-Barousse at the moment. Steep around there, isn't it?
update: 1518 ECT. He's now negotiating the fearsome Port de Bales. Depending on how he's doing, he may already be past this stage and taking on more fuel at a feeding station.
Update: 1805 ECT. This is the estimated maximum finish time for WW, though all being well he'll have completed the ride some considerable time ago and be celebrating by now.
Chapeau!
WW has been training seriously for it all year, putting in hundreds of hours and thousands of kilometres on his training bike and on the roads. He went out to the Pyrenees a month or so ago to acclimatise himself to the roads he's racing on now. And now he's riding his socks off in the mountains and the heat. I watched yesterday's mountain stage of the the Tour and it's gruelling stuff.
Leila at work's cousin is also doing the Etape, I discovered. Good luck to them both.
Update: 1402 ECT. I think he's somewhere past Mauleon-Barousse at the moment. Steep around there, isn't it?
update: 1518 ECT. He's now negotiating the fearsome Port de Bales. Depending on how he's doing, he may already be past this stage and taking on more fuel at a feeding station.
Update: 1805 ECT. This is the estimated maximum finish time for WW, though all being well he'll have completed the ride some considerable time ago and be celebrating by now.
Chapeau!