Well, it wasn't pretty, but I made it. Chamrousse, 1750m. I climbed more than a vertical mile today (Grenoble is ~200m, but there were several smaller climbs and descents on the way up). It was very hard, harder than I expected. Crashing now, I'll update this with a full description tomorrow (including details of a tire puncture on the final descent and hitching with retirees!)
Update: Grenoble is nestled in the valley that the Isère and Drac rivers carve out of the Massifs de la Chartreuse et du Vercors, and the Chaîne de Belledonne. I'd done climbs in Chartreuse and Vercors the last two weekends, so I figured this was the weekend to try a mountain in the Belledone. The closest climbable mountain is the Chamrousse. The 'hors categorie' route up the western face was used as the individual time trial in stage 11 of the TdF. I did the southern/eastern route which is slightly longer and therefore slightly more gradual--which is to say that the grade is a constant 6-10% vs. 7-10%--it's still quite steep! I started from Meylan, rode along the river to Domène, and did a short climb up the D11 into Revel. A short descent and another climb along the D280B took me into St. Martin d'Uriage. There I turned onto the D111, following the signs for the ski town of Chamrousse. I felt that my legs were stronger than last week, and much stronger than two weeks ago when I climbed in the Chartreuse. But even so, after about 40 minutes of climbing on the D111, I had to stop for a break. My breathing was
not the problem (though, to be sure, climbing is hard work), but the muscles in my legs were like jelly! I've found that toe clips are indispensible when climbing--if you're only push down on the pedals, you wear out those muscles very quickly; if you can pull up too, it gives you a way to keep going and give parts of your legs a rest. So at 40 minutes, I ate some fruit and energy bars and stretched out my quads and glutes as best I could, and kept going up, up, up. The last hour of was really rough: I made myself go in stints of ~20 minutes, then I'd stop, get some water, and let the lactic acid clear out of my legs. Though the climbing was really hard(/slightly miserable?), the scenery was
amazing. I was high enough that the trees were all pines and there were (rapidly melting) snow drifts on both sides of the road at times. Looking down into the valley I could see the villages of Revel and Uriage nestled on and between hills below, and far away in the hazy distance, the city of Grenoble, with the (now relatively puny looking) Chartreuse and Vercors looming above.
After my last break, the road circled around the top of one of the peaks, hugging the side of the slope and led me, at last, to the first ski station at 1650m. Sunday was the last day that the pistes were open so the die hards were all out getting their last runs in. From there it was just a short little climb of about 5km to 1750m! Then, finally and mercifully, the slope of the road pointed down, back into Uriage and Grenoble. I stopped and put on some warmer clothes and started in on the descent. I'd only zoomed along a few km when I heard a little pop, then flap-flap-flap-flap. I knew it was the tire, but thought maybe I'd rolled over something sticky and it was being whipped around the wheel. Alas, when I stopped I heard the tell-tale hissing sound. At this point, having forgotten to bring my pump, my options were either to pop a wheelie and try to hold it for the 40km ride back to Meylan, or stick out my thumb. I decided to hitchhike. The very first car to roll by stopped, and a very nice elderly couple took one look at me (I think I looked a little tired!) and said to hop in. The man thought I was pretty dumb, riding alone and without a pump--I kept hearing the words 'seul', 'les jeunes', 'idiot', etc. But they were very nice and went out of their way to drive me down the mountain and back to Meylan!
As always, the pictures above don't really do it justice. I need to fix my camera so I can take some of my own!! Here's a profile of the climb and a map of my route:
I'm still toying with the idea of climbing Alpe d'Huez one of these weekends. I know it will be humbling, but it seems a shame to be so close and not do it! For now, some more training to get respectable climbing legs is probably needed. The Bastille, which hangs right over St Laurent downtown, is a good place to start. It's only a 2km climb, but the grade is ridiculous: 20% average, 34% max!
At the age of 37, bestselling author and journalist Bill McKibben stepped out of the ordinary routine of his life to spend a year in "real training" as a cross-country skier. With the help of a trainer-slash-guru, McKibben took on a regimen equivalent to that of an Olympic endurance athlete's, running and skiing for hours every day in preparation for a series of grueling long-distance ski races. What prompted this successful writer with an admitted aversion to competitive sports to push himself so hard, for so long? Partly it was pure selfishness; after a decade as an environmental writer and activist, I needed a break from failing to save the world. But mostly it was curiosity that drove me. By year's end I hoped I'd have more sense of what life lived through the body felt like.
Tomorrow I launch Operation Vèlo. The local cycling club is having a huge bike sale down at the high school so I'm going to take my 50 euro and see if I can find a scrappy road bike to toot around on for a few months. I'd like to have something light enough to do some of the local climbs. The Tour goes just south of here in July and it'd be fun to go ride on some of the same roads. (Alpe d'Huez is only 65km from here, but I don't think I dare...) Is it silly that my helmet cost ~3X more than either of my bikes will be worth?
