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| My room for the next 4 days |
Today I checked out of my hotel and headed to our tour group's hotel to officially start the Tour de France trip. I arrived at the hotel at 11:00 am and was able to check into my room early. We are staying at the Hotel Moderne.
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| Hotel Moderne |
I am quite impressed with the hotel accommodations. I left a hotel with a room that barely fit my suitcase on the floor to a hotel where I actually have a normal size hotel room. This is my 4th trip to France and this is the first hotel that I have been at where I had a normal size room with normal size elevators.
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| My bright orange Trek Madone |
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| Listenig to ride talk at start of ride |
After everyone got fitted for their bike, we headed out on a bike ride at 3 pm in the afternoon. The original planned ride was going to be about 50 miles of biking and 4500 feet of climbing. Our guides decided to make it an easier shakedown, get used to the bike ride. Instead, we did 33 miles with 2200 feet of climbing in the foothills of the Pyrenees. That worked great for me as I needed to get the jet lag legs used to the bike again.
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| Taking pictures while on the bike |
The route they took us on was a beautiful, quite route with low traffic. Weather was great today as it was in the 80's. When you see the picture of my bike, you will see that I have put a big rear bag on the back of the bike.
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| The big bag on the back |
With that said, I would be the primary person in our group who would be hauling the most extra weight on the bike. I needed the bag to carry my good camera. I also wore a camel back that carried up to 70 ounces of water. I have to remind myself that while I was the slowest rider in a very strong group of riders, I did have a slight disadvantage with all the extra weight on the bike. (I chose to do that as I definitely wanted my camera on the days we follow the Tour route.)
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| Stefan playing "sweep" for today's ride |
Today, Stefan, one of our guides stayed with me most of the ride as I got dropped pretty quickly. I also came to France to enjoy watching the Tour as well as enjoy the riding. I'm not someone who will try to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. I will stop and take pictures and enjoy the views along the way.
Today was no exception. I think I was the last in our group to finish, but we also had another group at hotel who still had riders behind me as well.
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| Views in foothills of Pyrenees |
When we got back to the hotel, we heard the results of today's Tour stage. Many of us watched the recap of Andy Schleck jamming his chain on the climb and losing 39 seconds to Contador. When that occurred, I don't think there was anyone in our group who wanted Contador to win.
Most of us originally wanted Lance to win, then Levi as an option, and then Andy Schleck. Tonight we had dinner at the hotel. The restaurant at the hotel was an Italian restaurant. The owners are originally from Italy. I was so happy to know we would have pasta as I need pasta for the climbs.
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| Narrow roads for cars, but quiet road for cycling |
On other trips I did to France with a different tour company, we never had dinners with pasta. For me, this gives my trip a perfect start with eating properly for the climbs. Prior to dinner, we reviewed what our week would be like with Trek Travel and following the Tour. We also had to pack a day bag that would be taken to the viewings. I did not realize that we would not have access to the bags in the evening. I thought we could switch clothes for the day bag. That was not the case! I packed my fleece jacket and all my rain gear, tights, plus casual shorts and teeshirt. You will see why this makes a difference in later posts. Below is the link of the GPS data of the route we did today. It is linked to Google Maps. For all of my GPS data, you can drag the person over to the route and there are parts of the route where you can drill down and see the picture of the road and scenery. Overall, today was a great day to start the cycling portion of my vacation.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=117249159623738726106.00048c766160e9b597634&t=h&z=11
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