Lara Haume checks in from the French Alps.
One of the first pieces of advice you gave me was that training was all about consistency. Seems the only consistency in my training has been the consistent list of excuses. Now that the last of our non-training guests have completed their visits, now I just want to smash myself, oh and then lay by the beach on the lake. Between chilling out down there and knocking off a new col each day, this is the life. I certainly now have a greater appreciation for the life of a professional athlete and admire their dedication and commitment. I wish I could have tried harder to be like one over the past few months.
We (Steve and myself) did the Annecy triathlon. It was an absolutely appalling day, pouring with rain all of the day before and all morning before the start at midday. I was not very enthusiastic about it all having done so little training generally for the previous month, and nervous as hell in the rain, but, once I accepted it was happening, and got my wetsuit on in the rain, I started to actually get excited.
The bike included 500m elevation over 20km from the start. I was feeling pretty good to going up the 20km hill but was super super slow on the downhill though. I was nervous in the light rain and on the wet roads on the downhill and nervous my brakes weren’t going to work, or I was going to slip, and mum's constant nagging "remember to brake before the corners not in them" etc, I must have been braking from the end of each one before the next, getting passed a lot by people flying.
Anyway, no records broken in Annecy. I was somewhere like 30th out of 50 women, and 500th out of 700 (although there were quite a few DNF). I did come 5th in my category, but there were only 7 in it that finished. At the end of the day, I didn’t really care about the result, I just really enjoyed the day, despite the worst conditions imaginable. And my little mum was on the sideline smiling away to see me do it! It just doesn’t get any better does it.
As one of the key reasons for being here has been to climb the cols, when I have been training, it has mostly been focussing on the cycling. We only have 2 weeks left in the Alps and we still want to knock a few more cols off the list. They potentially involve too much hard training compared to what I should be doing, but I think I am getting a lot out of them.
When we did the Col de Joux Plane yesterday and I was on fire! We followed a route recommended in ProCycling’s Ultimate Great 50 Rides. It was a 60km loop starting at Morzine, 10km easy climb into Les Gets, then 10km downhill to Taninges, 10km flat into Samoens, before the start of the climb. It was a really good warm up. Then 1,000m elevation over 12km on the Col de Joux Plane. 7km of which each km either 9.5% or 10%. Then a descent into Morzine.
 We thought it would be a good idea to do a climb amongst a group, perhaps this would push us harder and also help measure our abilities. We did the cycle sportif up the Col de Croix Fry and arrived quite late and so were the last people to register and so rolled into the back of the start line. There were 2 women who liked like they must have been guns up front, and 1 more just in front of me. So, there were 4 of us. Given this was a fairly small event, with so few women participants, they seemed to only have 2 female categories: 18-34 and 34+. Perhaps here was my chance to be 1st and last in a cycle sportif event. Fantastic. So the event started and that was the last I saw of anyone. I was in oxygen deficit trying to hang on to the back of the bunch before we even hit the start of the col and guaranteed last place. Now I only needed a few more things to go my way: a) To finish. I was fairly confident I could do that having ridden this climb previously. b) The other 2 women to be old. You can see where this is going can’t you. The other 2 women were young hotshots in my category. Steve never even saw the back of them either. I came 3rd and last.
Watching the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour, and the Alpe d’Huez triathlon to follow a week later. I'm pretty sure I’ll be saying something fairly different after that.
Lara Haume and the final climb!
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