My stats are in after 20 days in France: 761 miles 57 hours cycling 101,536 feet of elevation climbed 62 miles 29,869 yards One race 7 pizzas consumed A bazillion 4 rubs and scratches Too many to count Lots of hellos And most of all, a tremendous amount of gratitude for my body and mind for what it allowed me to do over the past three weeks. thank you body (and thank you Karel for your constant support and being open to my crazy plans and ideas). When I think back on our time in France, the main highlight was the cycling. The mountains. The long climbs. The little villages. The incredible views. The roads that seemed to go up forever. Some days we would leave our Airbnb on our bikes at 9am and not return until after 7pm. I loved those rides. Most of all, I loved the opportunity to live differently for a few weeks. One of the reasons I love international travel is that it teaches me about the world in ways that simply seeing pictures on the internet about another coun...
Prior to our France trip, I googled possible routes and posted them in Karel's Training Peaks account. I had a lot of different route ideas that included specific climbs that we wanted to conquer. One climb that really interested me was the Lacets of Montevernier. The climb is located in France's Maurienne Valley (Savoie). It features 17 tight hairpins over 2 miles and has an average gradient of 8%. The TdF has climbed this route three times (2015, 2018, 2022). Since we were staying in Le Bourg-d'Osians, we would need to drive ~90 minutes to start this climb. I did some research and came across this website and discovered that we could bike to the lacets using this route. The only downside was that we would need to climb the Croix de Fer (again) - from both sides! This climb is a grueling climb but we were up for the challenge. With this being our last ride of our epic 3-week France trip, we knew we would be bringing a lot of fatigue to this ride but we co...