7 more days!

7 more days and I’ll be heading out to the airport to being my Tour de France!

Getting excited and nervous as well! Will I have everything I need (I don’t think Sam Walton has penetrated Europe yet) I’m sure I’ll take too much even though I’m trying to cut back..yes, the Texas flag and the broomstick must go—they will fit in the bike bag!

Looks like I’ll probably do 5 rides, the biggest of them being the climb up Mt. Ventoux. The ride (ha—crawl is more the word) will be 24 kilometers or 14 miles at an AVERAGE of 7% grade! From your geometry class that means for every 100 ft of horizontal distance, the road rises 7 ft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(slope) or if we switch to the metric system for every meter of horizontal distance the road rises 7 cm, doesn’t sound like much, but if you stretch that out 24 kilometers it’s quite a lot—like over 1610m worth or 5282 ft or just a tad over a mile. (now I’m getting scared again!) From what I’ve read, there’s a 10 k section thru the trees that’s steeper (yikes) and then the last 6 k (from the restaurant up) is ‘easier’. Plan is to huff & puff my way up, sing “She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes” in my head in both English & French. Stop every 10, 15, 20 or so mins or whatever it takes to rest and bring the heart rate down. And hope I can take the bus down to the bottom so I don’t have to ride down…left hand doesn’t like braking lately. Since we are riding it the day before the tour gets there, maybe there will be some crazy Europeans who feel the need to give me a push!

For more info on Mt. Ventoux, go here: http://www.steephill.tv/2007/mont-ventoux/

My bike is a Le Monde Zürich women’s specific design. It weighs about 21 pounds w/out the water bottles and rider. It is part carbon fiber, part steel, the carbon fiber is in the parts where it will help soften the road. Shimano Ultegra components. It has a 52/42/32 crank (yes it’s a triple—I’m old and don’t need to win any testosterone race about riding in the big ring!) and I just switched the back gears to a 27/12 from a 25/12. The bigger (more teeths in the back) the easier it is to pedal. It is amazing how much 2 teeths make a difference—hopefully enough to get me up that Col without being put into ‘great difficulty’. Thanks Erwin and Chang Bikes for all your help on the gears! I remember one time when we were studying ratios in Algebra there was a lesson on bike gear ratios, it was so above my students heads when I tried to explain the problem that I blew it off, now to find that lesson again or I can just google it! The way I see it, I’ll be riding in the 32/27 combo all the way up Ventoux. Meaning for each turn of the pedal, the back wheel will go 1.18 revolutions. If I’m riding 700 mm wheels, each revolution I’ll travel 826 mm at this point I don’t even want to know how many times I’m cranking the pedals (t-shirt if you can figure out the answer..I’ll count my revolutions and if you match, you win). Enough about the bike cuz as Lance says “It’s not about the bike”