In the beginning....

After agreeing to ride the Etape du Tour over a couple of beers earlier in the year, the 2011 route was published in autumn and phones started ringing. Al was a bit disappointed .... this year they decided to run two stages.” I don’t fancy the Massif Central option, we need to do a classic climb but 67 miles and up Alpe d’Huez is just too easy” he claimed. It was not as if we’d ever really done anything like this before, just a handful of sportives. “However, I have a cunning plan” he continued, “ La Marmotte is the one for us, it’ll give us exactly what we we’re looking for”.

So, a few negotiations with other halves occurred (or didn’t I was later to discover!) and our group of three swelled to seven brave souls signed up to Europe’s toughest amateur road race without a second thought. 112 miles over 3 mountains with more than 5,000 metres of climbing in the heat of July.... what’s not to like?

Having been on a late autumn trip to Majorca I was determined not to put away the bike or the leg muscles gained through the summer as winter approached to get myself a bit of a head start. My only target for the mega sportif is to keep hold of my chip and pedal all the way. Sounds simple enough but the scale of the challenge for someone like me is sufficient enough to get me back in the saddle even when a session on the turbo trainer is the last thing I want to do.

So, from November 2010 my training began.... 3 weeks later the snow came and hung around forever as far as I can tell. The second  winter of heavy snow fall in the UK on the trot. While exceedingly pretty, it makes riding somewhat tricky so I popped the Alpine Classics DVD for my turbo trainer onto my letter to Father Christmas. I must have been good this year as it duly arrived and so my training plan began. After reading up on various training plans that talked about building a base, VO2 max and interval training I was rather befuddled by science I decided that simplicity was the best route. Targeting myself to ride 100 miles a week (by hook or by crook) during January, February & March and trying to climb a couple of the big ascents a week on my trusty turbo seemed like a much more straight forward training method. Having just completed an extension on the house I was lucky enough to move the trainer from the garage into one of the bedrooms. This made it so much easier to jump on the bike when I got home from work on the cold winter evenings and combine it with some weekend rides with a few pals when weather and time permitted.

In January, an unspectacular crash on a ski trip to La Plagne led to a broken rib, hampering progress somewhat. However, that was a good excuse for only reaching my 100 mile target on three occasions  and average of just over 80 miles a week felt reasonable. Encouragingly, my sessions in the sweatbox of a bedroom saw times up Gallibier, Telegraph and Alpe d’Huez improve which was very encouraging.