Alpe d'Huez - Jon's experience

Since we all had somewhat different perspectives on the day, we'll do this in three installments. Here's the story of my day:

After a leisurely morning, we headed down the road to Bourg d'Oisan (about 30K) and began the climb up Alpe d'Huez. It's a very different scene on a random Tuesday compared to watching it on TV during the tour. The road is quite wide and in good condition. The switchbacks are clearly marked starting at 21 and counting down. My goal was to do the climb in under an hour. The record is somewhere around 37 min and I heard that Sheryl Crow did it in 90 min so it seemed a reasonable goal.

The climb starts out pretty steep and it was tough to get a good seated rhythm (my low gear is a 39x27) but I started feeling pretty good after a while. In theory, the climb is supposed to ease up after the first 4 km but it really didn't seem to get any easier. The nice thing about the climb is that you are blind to what's above you for the most part. Being able to see the road the whole way up would really be discouraging. I picked up the pace near the top and finished in about 63 min. Dad and Erin came through about half an hour later.

After getting a Coke and a candy bar, we headed out to look for an alternate route to take us back down. Unfortunately, this involved climbing for another mile or so. At this point, about 100 biting flies were trying to kill me so I rode up the hill as fast as I could until I came to a dead end. I turned around to tell Dad and Erin that we'd taken a wrong turn but I couldn't find them anywhere. I continued back down towards the ski resort but I couldn't find them anywhere. I looked for about a half hour before finding the right road and heading down. I figured that I since I didn't know where Dad and Erin were, I could at least go to where I knew Mom and Jessica were.

I thought that it would be a quick descent down to the car but I soon realized that would not be the case. The road I took was about another 30 km or so and included 3 more climbs including the Col de Saranne. This was a problem considering that I only had brought enough food and water to do one climb. To make matters worse, I took another wrong turn and did a climb that I didn't have to do. Finally, very tired and thirsty, I found my way down to the meeting spot where my lovely wife was waiting. I had told her on the phone 2.5 hours ago that I would see her in half an hour so she was a bit worried. Erin and Dad arrived with the van a few minutes later.

-jon