2007 Tour de France ? Stage 9: Val d'Isere to Brian?on

Over And Out..... Of The Alps

Today's stage saw the finish of the Alps for this year's TdF. I spent a lot of the rest day worrying about getting through today's stage because of the hard climb at the start. As it turned out it wasn't too bad for us non-climbers. In fact, for me, on the first climb I was even in the front group. Amazing... We were only 40 odd riders at the top and somehow I was still there. I reckon that it must've been the warm up I did 'coz I made sure it was a good one.

After the first 15k climb (Coll de I'Iseran) out of Val d'Isere, which took us to 2770m, the peloton regrouped then before we knew it we were on to the Col de Telegraphe and then we were tackling the big one up the Col de Galibier. It was more or less 30km of straight climbing.

For us fellas that just wanted to make the finish as survivers of the Alps, we formed a grupetto of 70 riders at the bottom and started our journey to Brian?on, letting the climbers do their thing.

Rolling into Brian?on after the 30km descent of Galibier, it was nice to realise the Alps were over and as hard as they were, or always are, they were done and dusted for another year.

I had to bust out some descending moves on the descent as I got a puncture on the top of Galibier and had to chase back on on the downhill. I wasn't too comfortable pushing too hard though, what had happened to Stuey the stage before was sitting in the forefront of my mind. I certainly didn't want to end up like that.

Unfortunately for me, my day got dragged out an extra hour as I had random drug control today. I know that we have to have it but nothing is more tiring at the end of the day than having to wait around an extra hour for control - especially when the day has been hard, you have a 100km transfer to the hotel on mountain roads and tomorrow is 230km. That's our life though.

Julz  

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