Bourg d’Oisans to Bristol Day 4, a set on Flickr. Day 4 Saulieu to Troyes – 155km
Todays ride looked fairly easy – the profile suggested it was all down hill to Troyes – so definitely a stage for the sprinters.
How wrong could I have been.
The first 40km to Avallon proved to be fairly pleasant and after a coffee stop in McDonalds and (finally) a grocery shop in a supermarket I set off for the next 110km.
What came next was 80km of non descript rolling hill farmland and a cold headwind. It hurt, I ran out of water while in the middle of nowhere and started cramping in my left calf. After what seemed like an eternity I emerged back into civilisation refilled my bidons and dropped down into Troyes – just in time for rush hour traffic.
My flat downhill stage ended up including 1356m of climbing which got me to thinking; how much climbing am I doing a day compared to my local climb Alpe d’Huez (1071m gain)
- Day 1 – 0.36
- Day 2 – 1.08
- Day 3 – 1.16
- Day 4 – 1.26
There is a pattern developing there.
So far I have ridden 532 km .
