In 2006 I did a 1 day ride in memory of my late former firefighter Dad who I'd lost to a heart attack caused by a thrombosis at the end of 2005 which the Hinckley times covered back then. Fast forward to 2012, and it was time to do something a bit more off the scale. My dad would be 65 this year so I figured what better way to celebrate his memory but to punish myself on some of Europe's most daunting climbs!

 I regard myself as a casual “fair weather” cyclist, basically the bike comes out in the spring and gets packed away again come the middle of October! In truth, my main sport has been swimming which I still train a fair bit on, although I spend more time coaching it with Hinckley Swimming Club, some three times per week.

So just before Christmas last year I signed up to take on the Coast to Coast with a group of 20 or so others. A 6 day tour of the Pyrenees starting on the Atlantic Coast at Biarritz crossing the breath of Pyrenees and finishing at Mediterranean Coast at the beautiful Port Argeles (12 miles south East of Perpignan) 

 Day 1 - Biarritz to Gurmencon

Day 1 was a fairly steady 104 mile blast, much distance covered but no major climbs, so it was a good warm up.  I’d never ridden that far in a day before so I knew I’d done it, but the gradients were relatively friendly, weather was pleasant and the last few miles were on the flat.  

Day 2  - Gurmencon to Pierrefitte-Nestalas

Day 2 was arguably the most difficult day of the trip although at just over 60 miles it was the shortest distance covered, but it had 2 evil climbs. The Col De Marie Blanque (A Cat 1 climb), 9 km long with some fairly evil steep climbs . Next up the Col d’Aubisque (Off the scale category climb!) which we did in the fog, it has featured on the Tour De France 42 times! The climb was 16km (10 miles) long and was extremely tough with a lot of steep gradient. The descent was a bit tricky as we could barely see 25m in front of us. We were told that this particular descent had one of the best views of the week, but we couldn’t see any of it!

I did start to get slightly hysterical as the ascent of the misty Col D’Aubisque neared its end. I’d climbed more or less all of it on my own, I had my mp3 player on, as I got into the last 3km I started singing to myself to “keep motivated”, however I hadn’t banked on catching a couple of the other riders in the group that had set off a bit earlier. They said it seemed a bit surreal that coming out of the dense fog was this motivational singing!! Embarrassed, me?!  

Grind

You'd end up grinding it out in the lowest gear available for 90 mins – 2hours, psychologically its pretty challenging. The way I figured it was that I'd condition my mind to think I was going to be on this climb all day, so if it end at 90 minutes its been pretty short. There are markers all the way up giving you a distance countdown to the summit, sometimes you'd miss one or two and it would be a nice surprise when you have less distance to go than you realised! I’d try and reward myself for achieving targets, “when I get to 3km to go, I’ll have a sweet” and the funny thing was, it keeps your mind busy and gives you a reward for efforts.   

 Day 3 - Pierrefitte-Nestalas to Bertren

Day 3 was spent climbing the legendary Col Du Tourmalet, a 19km never ending climb, rising at an average of 7.2% it kicks up to 10% at the summit, it absolutely chucked it down that morning so we were at least cool, but sodden come the top. It's the highest mountain road, 2115m up! The Tour De France will be up there this year. I stuck a few extra layers on for the descent as being damp with rushing wind could be rather detrimental to my health!

Day 4 - Bertren to Tarascon

All the load had effected my right knee, come Wednesday (day 4) as the weather improved to 30 degree sunshine, I was struggling a bit. It was taking longer to get warmed up and the climbs were hurting more. There was an unforgiving little climb caleed the Col de Portet d'Aspet which had gradients of 12%. In the end I walked it up the last 2km when I felt my knee was about to give up, rather than risk ending up in French hospital for the rest of the week! Come the afternoon the gradients were more sane and I was ok to carry on, although the rest of the tour was spent with ice on it and dosed up on Ibuprofen.

 Day 5 -  Tarascon to Prades

The final climb was again in the 30 degree sunshine and we took on the seemingly never ending 19km Col de Jau, generally at around 5-6% it was ok, although it did kick up a bit at times but, it did give way to one of the best descents of the week.

 Nom Nom

I did have a daft policy of giving myself rewards as we went around, sweets and cereal/chocolate bars etc, I managed to avoid “bonking” where you basically run out of everything that makes your body work!  Keeping hydrated on the last 3 days was imperative, I had a large supply of salt tablets to stop myself diluting!

 What goes up, must come down…

The descents on the trip were eye opening,  some were quite technical, lots of different types of corners; sweepers, long hairpin bends etc some descents were just balls out, depending on bodyweight and how brave you got in terms of aerodynamic positioning you could hit upwards of 40-50mph, I was nearer the bottom of that though, 40mph on some of those twists and turns is not for the faint hearted, you do need to have a fair bit of a faith in the equipments integrity that point for sure!

Day 6 - Prades to Argele sur Mer

The last day was a steady 40 mile cruise to the finish. We did joke about picking the bike up and launch it into the sea and be done with it! It felt great to get to the end though having conquered some of the most famous mountains in cycling. As you can see the weather was stunning, 30 degrees, perfect skies and near zero wind. 

The bike

There aren't too many greater challenges in cycling, and it gave me a much better appreciation of the tour riders, those guys are just incredible, the speeds they climb at are just frightening! The great thing was that we were taking this challenge on a in a truly beautiful part of the world. You would have to have your eyes shut not to appreciate the awe inspiring beauty of that part of the world, I did make a conscious effort to stop looking at the handlebars and keep an eye out for a photo opp!

I make no bones about being a pretty average cyclist, its something I do for fun, but boy oh boy this was a challenge I just couldn’t turn away. Sometimes in life you just need to spend a bit of time doing something a bit out of the ordinary.

Raising money for the BHF, I had an initial target of £500 which I made while I was still out there and its been climbing ever since. I'm sure my Dad would have appreciated the effort and it goes someways to remembering him.

http://www.justgiving.com/mountainclimber 

Thanks particularly to Mark Jennings for making me do it, Tom Jennings for doing my pre-ride photos, Ian Hughes for prepping my bike and Andy Mackay for help in getting me cycle fit for it! Also thanks to my Step-mum Margaret Edwards for her support throughout, and to those who have sponsored and supported me, I genuinely appreciate it.