Not-so-easy rider

From exhilarating highs to exhausted lows – amateur cyclist Richard Lofthouse discovers what it’s like to ride in the Tour de France on a 200km taster race

words by Richard Lofthouse

I was mere centimetres behind the wheel in front of me, completely bewitched by the magnificence of my first big group ride. Cyclists to my right, to my left, in front and behind. For a while at least, we are welded into a solid block of men and wheels.

We’d reached a high plane somewhere in Normandy, a clinging mist had enveloped us and all the early chatter had died away. Nothing was left except the whirring and clicking of a hundred gear mechanisms, turning cranks and humming tyres.

It was an étape, or ‘stage’ of the Tour de France. Not the race proper, you understand, but a decent imitation of it for ordinary cyclists like me.

Fifty kilometres into this single 200km stage, and the first hint of real fatigue was making its presence felt, the first blush of saddle soreness. Yet I could still forget the pending misery as long as I remained mesmerized by the perfection of the peloton – the leading group of cyclists that is so tightly bound it moves almost as one.

I suppose this moment, which all road racers have felt, is the equivalent of a perfect golf shot, a fish hooked, a goal scored. All the worries of training and mechanics have evaporated, the technical niggles dissolved. What’s left is concentration, breathing and speed.

Riding in a group, you don’t notice anything around you. Not the well wishers at the side of the road, nor the countryside view nor scent of the wild flowers as you hammer through some bluebell wood somewhere in Europe. You might as well be on the moon. All you’re aware of is the wheel in front, which embraces you in its slipstream and rushes you along at 30 or even 40km per hour. It’s visceral and life expresses itself joyously. The French call it élan vital.

This may not be the real Tour but there’s a mean streak to this race too. When the guy in front punctures, I hear and see the deflation of his bright yellow rear tyre before he knows it. Ten seconds later he’s a distant memory. Nobody stops. The peloton is like a migrating flock of geese that senses it can only reach its destination by sacrificing the weak ones

Every cyclist eventually succumbs to this logic, except perhaps Lance Armstrong. And even he was known to have bad days.

Getting ‘dropped’ is every cyclist’s nightmare, and it can happen with frightening speed. Gradually, inexorably, you feel your strength failing. Miss a single pedal revolution and you can lose two metres from the bike in front. If the group is winding up the pace just as your strength is palling, two metres becomes five and then you’ve squandered the benefit of a slipstream. From there to being dumped is about 30 seconds away, and catching up takes a supreme effort. Before you know it, you’re completely alone.

It’s just happened, but I’ve regained some composure and in a curious way I feel relieved. Now I can find my own pace, and there’s less likelihood of a crash. No hard feelings, I just wasn’t fast enough. I slow down and wolf a squashed banana from my back pocket, discarding the skin some nettles.

Next, I see a vole rustling along the edge of a hawthorn bush, and on the edge of a village called Beaumesnil two cats are having a terrific fight. I think of that epic account by the Dutch writer Tim Krabbé in The Rider, when, in the thick of a desperately fought road race, he begins to descend a hill and speaks of having 15 seconds “to breathe, just for the fun of it.”

Now, however, I’m really tired and a bit desperate. There’s still 50km left. Five minutes ago I’d said to myself: “Only 50 – you’re almost there.” But now I say: “I want this to be over. 50km is FIFTY kilometres like Mount Everest is Mount Everest. Good luck and don’t look down.”

I suck on the water bottle and it discharges berry-flavoured carbohydrate mix into my gut. But my body doesn’t feel receptive to that stuff anymore. Yuck.

When can this be over? My back aches from the last climb, a climb so soft that it didn’t merit categorisation by the Tour de France authorities. And my legs, when I flex them, feel leaden and heavy, the glycogen beaten out of them. There are no more voles, or cats or hawthorn bushes, just bleached white chalk soil and sun and wind. And I feel as if I’ve stumbled into a Biblical narrative about pilgrimage and the Valley of Death

I focus on nothing but my computer, and it tells me that I’ve averaged 24km/h for 175km. It thinks I’ve burned 3,204 calories and taken 7.5 hours since the 7am start. Not my fastest time, not by far. At the same moment another cyclist catches up with me from behind, easing alongside. Who’s this? It doesn’t matter. We exchange pleasantries, we ride two abreast and the pace subtly increases again. Yes, it’s all in the head, this game.

My gloom lifted, all I can think about now is the cup of tea I’ll drink afterwards, the cupcake I’ll demolish, and the jubilant, sweatencrusted sense of accomplishment. Caen beckons, and the ride begins to end. I feel elated. Those people eating ice creams over there by the verge, they don’t understand. They never will

get on your bike!

The Étape du Tour is on 16 July this year, high in the Pyrenées between Foix and Loudenvielle. Most contestants will fly to Biarritz or Montpellier. The route, which is 197km, climbs five Pyrénean cols, a combined altitude of over 4,000m.
www.letapedutour.com

Not to be outdone, Britain is running its own Étape on 1 July, when riders can try their luck on Stage 1 of the Tour de France from London to Canterbury, a week before the actual event. It’s 193km.
www.etape.org.uk

Scotland sees the first closed-road sportif on 24 June, the Étape Caledonia, which starts and ends in Pitlochry, Highland Perthshire (fly to Edinburgh), a round trip of 130km.
www.etapecaledonia.co.uk

For an overview of European events, join the forum at www.cyclosport.co.uk