Getting ready for tomorrow

Well, one more day left until the Etape. Today was mainly a day of just settling in and relaxing a little bit before the big day tomorrow. I must've been kind of excited because I woke up at 4:30am. Fortunately, I managed to get myself to fall asleep again and stay in bed until around 7. (Considering I went to bed at 10pm last night, that's a lot of sleep for me.) After breakfast, we had a briefing by one of the tour operators who, being Belgian, obviously knows everything there is to know about cycling. Actually, his name is Peter and he's a really nice guy.


After the briefing, I went upstairs and got changed and decided to go for a ride. (I wasn't able to do a ride yesterday ... having been foiled by our late arrival at Valfrejus and the minor issue of a huge thunderstorm.) But the weather this morning was spectacular. Clear, crisp, and cool. So I got on my bike and decided to go for a little spin.

Being that I'm staying in a ski resort on the side of a mountain, I decided to ride down the mountain and come back up. I didn't want to blow myself up today but I did want to get a feel for an Alpine climb. And with a climb of about 1500 feet over ~3 miles, this fit the bill pretty well.

The climb was a good warmup and not terribly difficult. But the views were spectacular. Really amazing. (And yes, I'm from NYC but I think anybody would agree.)








And perhaps the icing on the cake was seeing a tiny little cathedral(?) built into the side of the valley on the climb up. Really really cool.


After the ride, I visited the Expo, which is essentially where all sorts of cycling-related gear is shown off and sold. This includes beautiful bike frames from Canyon and Look to clothing and nutritional supplements. I'm not a huge fan of these things but being set against a backdrop like the Alps, it was pretty neat.


Well, this will be my last entry before I do my ride tomorrow. I'm hoping that I'll be able to give you an update tomorrow evening after the ride (this will depend on the availability of an internet connection). But I'm excited and looking forward to this ride!!

Location:Place des Bergers,Modane,France