"Up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet"

This weekend I did the "3 Nacions" (3 guesses on what that means) bike race in the Pyrenees. The race gets its name because you start in Spain (Puigcerda), go through Andorra, and finally come through France before crossing back into Spain for the finish. But there's one catch, the frigging Pyrenees! Actually, the race is pretty easy except one climb in the middle: to the summit of Port d'Envalira, the highest mountain in the Pyrenees, about 1,700m (5,577 ft) of altitude gain over 30k (18.6 mi).


Most of the course is downhill, meaning that the first 70ks went by like a breeze, and the final 40k's you were able to hang on... just barely. They did a good job on the web site of warning you of what you're getting yourself into, but really, little blue spikes on my screen don't mean that much to me...


Left: full course profile

Bottom: profile of the main climb (green = <4%, blue =" 4-8%," yellow =" 9+%)" style="text-align: center;">

Let's just remember that I've been really quite inconsistent with my training this spring, so even though this was marked as a B+ priority race in my book I was really unprepared. This is not to make excuses, merely to explain background information. This past week was exam week for all my kids, so I've been working double on top of that. Let's just say I was "well rested". So I came into this looking only to survive, which is fine because I still have a lot of that adolescent "I can do anything, who says I can't?" arrogance about me. But then 2 weeks ago I heard one from the club talking about it. A goofy guy named Josep Maria (a different Josep Maria from the one you'll hear about later) who's a strong cyclist and always has a smile on his face said, "Dude, you're climbing that thing forever, and I thought it was never going to end. So when I got to the top there and the people are yelling Allez, allez cuz you're almost in France at that point, you know? I have to admit, man, I started to cry. It was just so emotional to have gone through that and it was finally over..." And I'm thinking, oh shit! I decided to approach the thing remembering that it was an important race and that I'd finish at all costs, exhausted, ripping it if I could, so I'd have nothing left at the finish. Oh, if I only knew...

The first 70 km, in fact, the first half (distance-wise) was a breeze, we were averaging something like 40kmph and rolling down through the mountains
like it ain't no thang and my biggest concern was that somehow we'd wound up in a group of about 30 people. Bikes were flying all over the place, into my personal space and within inches in front of me. That makes me really nervous, especially when I don't know the guys. I really enjoy taking off on the downhills, I don't know why others don't do the same. Zoom! Zoom! I went down the downhills. At one point David (my Jimminy Cricket) cought me and said, "Why is it that when you're with the club you hang back, but when there are others around you take off?" It was kind of accusatory and I wanted to be defensive, but I watched myself for awhile. I think I'm just really scared of groups, and if I can get away, I will!

Coming in about half an hour from the border with Andorra it started to rain, then it started to pour. When we passed through customs at the border David said jokingly, "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yeah," I said, "I'd like to declare that my chemie is soaked!" Squelch, squelch went my crotch, squelch, squelch responded my shoes.

We stopped at an aid station where they had nothing but melon, chicken, and ham sandwiches. I was already getting cold, and decided to go on without the boys. At least it had stopped raining. And the road went Up, Up, Up. And up. Fuck. I thought this was just going to be slow and steady, but I was on my double small chainring and I had to stop at a gas station to catch my breath. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "Listen," I said, "it'll be better to leave me alone cuz I'm gunna be pretty bitchy from here on up." Why wouldn't anyone listen to some sound advice like that? "I like to see you bitchy, women are more attractive when they're bitchy," he said. I think Miguel Angel gets a kick out of seeing me react to some things. But if there's one thing I hate almost as much as being in a big group, it's climbing with someone in front of me talking to me and cheering me on. I don't want to know how well I'm doing, I don't want you telling me what gear to be in, I don't want you telling me to slow down, and I DEFINITELY don't want you there getting in my way either to the side or in front. It's irritating and it distracts me from my inner monologue. I feel much stronger sitting there repeating "You'll-get-there-even-tu-a-lly" with every petal stroke than someone going, "only 3k to go!", especially when there's only 1 or more than 5k to go. Leave me the fuck alone and I'll get there eventually! If you're so bent on waiting for me, just go to the top and take my picture when I get there! No, no, but David and Miguel Angel had to leap frog babysitting me. At one point David was there and said, "You see that white building? That's where we're going." "I don't want to fucking know! I don't want to know anything. Go away!" I said. Later, I stopped at the side of the road to rest. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "I can give you a little push now and then," he said. "I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear you and I don't want you touching me or my bike! Leave me alone! I want to do this alone." I think David got a little butt-hurt because he did eventually go on, but Miguel Angel stayed pretty close (but not within striking distance) and I didn't even so much as look at him in the last 5k. Here you can see a picture of me climbing alone, what you can't see is that in my head my mantra has changed to "go-to-hell-go-to-hell!" I mean, look at the incline in some of these pictures, then imagine 2 and a half hours of that!



I was cold. It was 8 degrees C (46 degrees F) at the top, and at some points I couldn't feel anything below the knees. I hadn't felt my feet since Spain. Being at the highest point for millions of billions of miles around, the wind was BRUTAL, it must have been 100 miles per hour because a couple of gusts came along and I felt like I was almost swept off my feet! Also, the wind carried tiny little particles of sand that stung my face, arms and legs. Moments before this picture was taken I was standing with my back to everyone to keep my face from being pummelled by a sand blaster. Look in the lower right-hand corner and you can see the camera's wrist strap flapping away in the wind. Can you see how miserable I am? I'm crouched over like that because I'm shivering. I stuck some newspapers under my shirt to cut the wind on the descent, but I was scared because of the wind and those crazy descents like you see in the Tour filled with dramatic hairpin turns. I couldn't feel my hands and I was shivering, and didn't feel so confident about my bike handling skills at that moment. Miguel Angel and I stepped into a gas station to warm up and David stayed outside to wait for the others. "Hey, we're still in Andorra!" said Miguel Angel. What does everyone buy in Andorra? Cigarettes! Andorra's one of those tiny little places whose economy is based on people from other areas coming in to buy items like cars, cigarettes, and booze that are cheaper in Andorra where they're not heavily taxed (same as Oregon or New Hampshire). The guy in the gas station looked at him like he was crazy as he stuffed the carton into the front of his jersey and tucked it into his pants.

Then we started down the hill. It was windier than all get-out. Wind is stronger in France than it is in Spain, I guess. I was hanging on to my brakes like my life depended on it, and the wind was blowing at me like it was time to go back to Spain and God was giving me a push. There was one point when I let go of my brakes and coasted past a sign that said 8% grade, I looked down at my speedometer and I was going 25 kilometers per hour (15.5 mph). But that’s not to say the wind was saving my life the whole way down. For every turn that the wind was to my face, I would go around a bend and it was pushing me along, sometimes straight into a curve. The most frightening part of all of it was that they didn’t have guard rails, just these stubby little stone nuggets about 8 inches tall next to giant thousand-foot drops to the green, lush valley below. The wind was grabbing me and carrying me off to certain death. Now I don’t like to be dramatic, but you know how it is when you’re totally terrified and you know that, although remote, the possibility that you might actually die is real? Panic is not good for descents.

My bakes were making funny noises, like maybe there wasn’t too much rubber left and just when I thought they weren’t slowing me down any more and that I’d never stop if need be, suddenly I came around a bend and there was a whole line of cars, all stopped. ‘What a strange place for a traffic jam,’ I thought as I squeezed my brakes like there was no tomorrow. We wove through all the cars until I saw the toll booth of a border crossing. For a minute we had to stop because there was a car pulling aside for inspection blocking our path. The cyclist that came across the traffic jam at the same time as us went through the border as soon as an space to pass through opened up. Miguel Angel (with his cigarettes hidden away in his jersey) and I (as an illegal immigrant) stopped with our guilty consciences. The French customs official smiled at us and waved us a friendly “come on through”. “Adios,” he yelled. Safely out of hearing distance Miguel Angel yelled, “Adios suckah! I had a pack of cigarettes in my shorts, chump!”

Suddenly, once we were in France it was finally warm again. The terrain flattened out and I could concentrate on what was important, like how tired I was. Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough, maybe I was out of shape, maybe a 30k climb is a really long frigging way, maybe I just wanted to go home, maybe it’s that my feet were still sopping wet. But for whatever the reason, the heat or the shoes, I sat there in France with the woe-is-me blues. Okay, that was lame, but I’m a big Dr. Seuss fan and one of my climbing mantras is “up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet, the Grinch went to the tip-top to dump it” (or something like that). Anyway, I guess I’d left it all at the top of the mountain, and although nearly everything was downhill from here on out I was getting worried. I didn’t want to leave anything out there, but the last little bit of “leaving nothing out there” was a bit too much to bear at the moment. I clicked over to 120km on my odometer and I still hadn’t seen any sign that said Espagne and I was beginning to wonder if they’d done that thing that they do so many times that I’m suffering: mis-measure the 140k course. We got to 125 and I still hadn’t seen any sign of Spain, or even the name of the town where we were staying. Spain is really good about marking how far away France is, but the only thing that I could find were signs to Barcelone - really fucking far away. 130… 132… Why does it still say gare and not estacio? Why are they selling crepes and not bocatas? 138… And finally we crossed a little bridge, and after all the hoopla of crossing in and out of Andorra there was only a tiny little bridge over an even tinier little stream on a country road and the word España with a circle of stars around it. And here we come into Puigcerdà, but the fun wasn’t over yet. We still had this tiny, itty-bitty little minuscule climb to come up to the finish. It was a climb that I’d done in my small, but not mini chainring this morning when I wasn't warmed up. But still, it took my teeny-weeny chainring and my biggest gear to get to the top of the darned thing. Another guy was riding with Miguel Angel just ahead who asked, “What’s that in your jersey”. “Cigarettes” said Miguel Angel. “We boutght ‘em in Andorra, and that chick behind us got a liter of vodka and put it in her camelback.” “Really?” asked the guy and looked back. There I was weaving around trying to get up the hill. But I got there, and Miguel Angel and I had a fake sprint across the line. Really, he let me go, but we crossed in that order, Claire and Miguel Angel, boom boom! “What are your numbers?!” a race official yelled. “206 and 208”, how sweet that we remembered each other’s numbers and yelled it more or less at the same time!

Long ago Silvia had started calling, a sure sign that I was taking a long time (it wouldn’t be the first time she called the police to find out if I’d been hospitalized when I didn’t show up right at the time I said). I was fiddling with my phone a bit trying to call her, then I made my way to the food table. There was no food left (we’d taken that long) but Miguel Angel managed to score me a lemon Fanta and Lluis (who had finished an hour before) gave me a granola bar.

They were handing out finishing certificates fresh off the presses and Miguel Angel, who didn’t have a jealous girlfriend left alone in a hotel for 8 hours, had already gone to pick up his. “Hey, they’re giving you another trophy,” he said. “Yeah right.” But then there was this guy sticking a microphone in my face with a trophy in his hand, “And here’s Claire xxxxx, number 206, let’s all give her a round of applause!” Then he stuck the microphone in my face and handed me a trophy and gave me a kiss on each cheek. And what did I say in my moment of glory? “Estás en serio?! Are you serious?! What’s this for?” “You’re the youngest girl to finish. You’re almost the last one to get your trophy, except the guy, a 17-year-old kid”. Yeah, that makes me feel special, the last person to claim my booby prize that I won just for signing up.

Coming back down the hill towards the hotel I saw my arch Nemisis, Wonder Woman. I call her that because she's always wearing minimal clothing and she's got the same hair style as the comic book heroine. She's a triathlete and I see her at every event that I do (and usually beat her). What annoys me about her is that she's always surrounded by guys and strikes me as the kind of chick who does sports to get laid. She's got a big butt. I felt better knowing that I'd beat the tri slut by at least half an hour. Hmph!

So meanwhile, more phone calls were made. Josep Maria, David, and Xavi were still out there somewhere. We got back to the hotel where Silvia had been asleep the whole time (until I was well into France) and made some calls. Xavi, who had had a crash the week before, had had his two biggest cogs fail on him part way up the mountain. He’d gotten in the sweep car which followed the slowest guys around the course. We called up David, who was probably still waiting like a real sucker in the cold and the wind to tell him Xavi wasn't coming and to get a move on. No answer. I called Josep Maria, who no one had seen since the starting line (he's a weaker cyclist who doesn't usually come out with the club) it rang several times and then I got a recording Bonjour, blah blah blah blah (blah pronounced with a French accent). I hung up. "He's in France. He'll be here soon," I said.

Josep Maria, who had prepared himself to be out there for 8 hours and come across the finish line while they were tearing it down had an ambulance behind him for most of the climb and was sure he was in last place (they could have been trailing him because he has turrets and a guy twitching away on his bike is a bit disconcerting if you're not used to it). At one point he stopped to rest and the guys in the ambulance yelled, "You still got 45 minutes on the last guys, keep going!" That gave him the strength of ten men to finish. Meanwhile, Xavi had some tales from the sweep car. Apparently there was a fat old guy and not-so-fat, not-so-old guy back there throwing shit at each other like they were sparring for the podium. "Your ass is grass, my friend." "Eat my dust, fatso!" The guys in the sweep car were egging them on, "Attack! Attack!" And whaddaya know, the old fat guy attacked and managed to get away!

I was totally toasted. All I wanted to do was eat about 15 sandwiches and a 3 course meal after that and then take a nap. By the time everyone finally got their shit together, showered, walked to the center of town for some sandwiches (finding food at 5:00 was an ordeal in and of itself), worked out the money for everyone, paid for the room, and piled into cars it was 6:30. I'm not one to sleep in cars, but I slept almost the whole way home. Whether it was the cold, the effort, or the altitude I couldn't keep my eyes open and I've never had a more refreshing sleep in a car in my life.