The first proper Alpine mountain tests at the Tour de France are always a poignant reminder of the frailties of the human condition, riders appear at the front of the race that were relatively hidden until then and others are lost without any mercy at all.
The gruppetto, if it has done it’s sums right has made the time cut and survived until the next assault on their senses arrives in the Pyrenees.
Inbetween you would think there’d have to be a truce or a collective sigh of relief on one of the transition days, but that doesn’t happen. In fact, the so called transition stages are the worst for suffering.
That might not make much sense given there are hills rather than mountain passes to negotiate however it’s never the route which decides how hard the race is, it’s the riders.
The pace set is always frantic as the last few chances for the breakaway to be successful come along and those teams with nothing to show for their efforts throw themselves at the horizon.
Being down south, it’s not only the boiling hot temperatures to contend with as it’s windy too and the road surfaces, if they haven’t melted are made of France’s roughest bitumen.
It’s understandable as in winter it’s -10 degrees and then summer comes and it’s 40 degrees. Everything gets a beating from nature and that’s what you get if you go in the escape, a proper fight with the other riders , the road, the wind and the Sun.
You might go in the attack one day but the next , even if you’re still feeling strong you have to make a conscious decision not to do it again.
Seriously though, the Tour is all about using your resources wisely and you can’t give too much too soon, not with Hors category ascents waiting. The problem is by now you’re carrying a certain level of fatigue, both physical and mental, from the stress of the opening week when you had to constantly fight to keep a safe position in the peloton and then, if you’re riding for the GC, from the mountains ten days in.
Those two or three stages remove all doubt of where your climbing form currently lies. If you’re part of the top ten, it’s little battles each day to distance or be dropped by your direct competitors.
Often it’s one day you take time, one day you lose and yet the more consistent riders who are battling for the top spots reinforce they are a level above the outsiders who had been considered a threat way back in Copenhagen.
The opening days are but a distant memory and seem so long ago, but as you wake up on the last Sunday before the Paris final you tend to think the Tour has flown past.
That’s one of the peculiarities of a Grand Tour, it seems endless at the beginning and when you’re suffering but then you recover, forget how difficult it was and do it all again the following day.
I used to like to rip out the pages of the roadbook after each stage, lightening the load in the same way that being dragged along by the race was removing any excess body weight.
Though the opening day was wet, since then exceptional heat has turned this edition into an exercise of survival, accentuated by the trudge through the Massif Central under a merciless sun.
The TDF always seem to be in limbo as it travels through this region, nothing seems to happen and yet every kilometre costs something.
The Tour de France continues with Stage 15, a stage for the sprinters as the race travels 202km from Rodez to the historic city of Carcassonne. Watch on the SBS SKODA Tour Tracker from 8.55 pm AEST with the SBS and SBS On Demand broadcast starting from 9.30pm AEST.
