Setting off on Le Tour - Brest, Brittany

Setting off on Le Tour - Brest, Brittany
Ian (Left) and Matt (Right)

Hello and a very warm welcome to our blog.

We are two amateur cyclists who have decided to follow in the footsteps of our cycling heroes and ride the complete 2008 Tour de France route. This year the most famous cycle race in the world covers 3500km (2200 miles) over 3 weeks in July and takes in some of the highest mountain passes in the Pyrenees and Alps.

We will start two days after the professionals on 7th July in Brest, Brittany and ride the whole thing stage-for-stage, road-for-road, day-for-day as the pros will be. This will result in us arriving in Paris on 29th July, having averaged 100 miles per day. Please click this link to see what lies ahead of us:
http://www.letour.fr/2008/TDF/COURSE/us/le_tour_2008.html
Our aim is to complete the whole route and this means that we will not be racing round but riding at a sensible, sustainable pace. As a result, we expect to be in the saddle for 12 hours on some days.

Friends and family will be driving a support vehicle but we will not have the benefit of masseurs, soigneurs, chefs and team doctors that the pros have. And there will be no Testosterone, EPO or illegal blood doping going on in our Tour!

We hope to raise as much money as possible for two very worthwhile charities: Ian is raising money for CLIC Sargent and Matt for MacMillan Cancer Support. Please dig deep and support these charities via our justgiving pages on the right. Alternatively, please email us with your name, contact details and the amount you would like to donate and we will contact you after we complete our tour.

At this time, a friend of Ian's, Robbie Stuart, is fighting Leukaemia and is a supporter of CLIC Sargent's work. A link to his blog can be found here. Best wishes go to Robbie who is currently recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

Please tell you friends about our blog and what we are doing, and please send us words of encouragement and support.
We will update you with our training and we will be keeping a diary on here as we ride the event in July.

Best wishes

Ian and Matt

Monday 28 July 2008

Stage 20: Cerilly - St Amond Montrand 53km Time Trial 28/7/08





Photos


After a night spent at a rather impressive Chambre d’Hote with swimming pool in the finish town of Saint Armond Montrond, we drove to the start at Cerilly which meant back tracking. Schumacher, who had won stage 4’s time trial in Cholet, had also won this one in just over 1hour 3 minutes at over 30mph average. We wanted to beat the 2 hours and yet keep our heart rates down to promote recovery.
There’s not a lot to say about this route other than remark on the lovely rolling scenery and the fact that we passed the forest of Troncais where they source the high quality oak used for barrelling Cognacs and Clarets. A fast course in places though there were some long drags which made the old legs complain. A nice long descent took us towards the finish, but we were unable to find the finish as it required a left turn at some traffic lights and this wasn’t made clear on the root description. We went straight on instead and ended up in the town square which provided a useful carpark to rendez vous with Liz and Peter and ended up being the correct distance. 1 hour 54 minutes for the stage with an average heart rate of 123bpm.
Bikes on top of the car and us changed, we were ready to begin the long transfer up north for the last stage, Etampes to Paris.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ian,

2140 miles that's 3444 kilometres that's 3766400 yards 11299200 feet blimey 135590400 inches and a cool 3443996160 mm plus the last stage tomorrow

Stunning ride, Paris in the summer is a beautiful city, i bet you can't wait, congratulations to everybody but especially to Matt and yourself a truly epic journey, Ian, I'll have a drink waiting for you when you get home to Bristol.

Unknown said...

most fascinating post was this review was best and detailed but also have a look at




http://www.cycleshopguru.com