After doing the Col du Mort and the Col d'Ornon yesterday, we were hungry. We had actually gotten out pretty early, and didn't stop much, so the whole ride only took about 5 hours. Well, we were way too early for the pasta feed, so we decided to hop into the van and cruise up to Les Deux Alpes. Les Deux Alpes is this super huge resort just over the mountain behind us - about 15 miles by driving around (and up). The village is huge and the mountain is even bigger. There is so much stuff to do there that a kid would have an awesome summer hanging out there the whole time. People were still skiing up on the glaciers, there was tons of downhill mountain biking, those cement luge things, ATVs, tennis, soccer, basketball, dirt jumping, skateboarding, and a whole lot more. The line was too long for us to do the luges, but we are going to try to come back up on Wednesday - hope the line is shorter. 

Today we decided it was a good day to hop in the car and hit the Col d'Izoard. We drove over to Briancon right after breakfast. We dropped Toby and Larry off in Briancon, and they rode the Col from the North end, which consisted of a pretty nice steady climb for 20km, with most of it in the 6-8% range. Gary, Kevin, and I drove 30km down the highway and parked the car at the other end of the Col d'Izoard and climbed from there. From the South, we had 31km climb. The start was  a relatively easy 3-6% for the first 20km or so, then it kicked up, with a couple of the kilometers averaging 11%. We climbed all the way up to 2360m - which I think is about 7740ft.  I think this was probably one of the steepest climbs we've done (with the exception of going up to La Garde). Unfortunately my body wasn't really into it. I couldn't get my heart to go at all - I felt like I was working, but just couldn't go fast at all. My heart never rose above 170bpm, and it was rarely that high. I think my body is starting to get tired. 

Once at the top, we flew down and the rollercoaster top section had nice pavement and a ton of hairpins. It was a lot of fun. We had a huge headwind on the way down, which was probably good because it kept me from going too fast, I was still riding at 60kph. 

Today's ride - 5566ft/1666m

35miles/56km

I'm having trouble adding photos again today - but I have some from today. Hopefully this thing will work better tomorrow.

# posted by WebCyclery Blog : 12:05 PM