The Hill Man’s Blogspot

The Longest Hour of My Life

It is beyond any doubt the most prestigious climb in cycling. Standing high at 3330 meters, Alpe d’Huez runs for 13.8 kilometers with 21 hairpin turns and an average incline gradient of 8.1%.

My dad had been talking about this vacation for months. He just couldn’t wait. My dad’s been an avid cycling fan his entire life, and as far back as I can remember, every weekend my dad would go out for a ride. Growing up, my dad would always try to coax me into cycling, and when he eventually did, I got into it in a really big way. I guess since now there were two cyclists in the house, it gave my dad a little more courage when the topic of our summer vacation came up at the dinner table. When it came to planning the summer vacation, my dad suggested making it a cycling vacation. My mother miraculously agreed, so my dad called up some of his friends who also cycled and planned a five-week long vacation in Italy and France. We spent the first four weeks in Tuscany, riding almost every day. At the time, we thought the climbs we were doing were ridiculously difficult. Of course, looking back at it now, those rides were barely even a warm-up for what was ahead of us.

After those four weeks in Tuscany, we drove up to Briançon, a small cycling town in the bottom right corner of France. This was where the real cycling began. We were there for five days total and the first three were spent riding some of the most absurd climbs known to man. The fourth day was a well-deserved rest day, or at least that was what we had planned. Instead of cycling, we were forced to walk around Briançon all day. By the end of the day, we were all just as tired as we would have been if we had gone cycling.

Finally the fifth and final day was upon us. As we approached the starting line of Alpe d’Huez, we were positive that this time we had definitely ridden the hardest climbs in the world and that there was no way that this could be any harder. As I got changed and prepared my bike, I was the most nervous I had ever been. However, I think that I brought that upon myself. That whole week, I had been bragging about how I was going to make it to the top first, and I knew for a fact that if I didn’t make it to the top first I would get crap from my dad and his friends for the rest of my life.

After several warm-up laps around the parking lot, we were ready and we all set off. Within the first five minutes of riding, all that fear and nervousness disappeared and was replaced by pure agony. The only respite I would get from that constant and excruciating lactic-acid burn was at each hairpin turn. At each of these turns, the road would level off to almost horizontal, and these were the only points in the ride where I could summon up enough energy to reach down and grab my water bottle.

About halfway in, I had lost track of where I was, what I was doing, and how long I had been doing it for. The only thing that kept me conscious and riding was the sign at each hairpin. At each of the 21 hairpins, there was a sign with the hairpin’s number and the name of a cyclist who had won a stage of the Tour on Alpe d’Huez. Counting the hairpins was all that kept me going. I was alone for virtually the entire ride. I blew past my dad and his friends ten minutes into the ride. As I rode past them, I gave them that Lance Armstrong glance-over-the-shoulder as I rode away. I couldn’t help myself. All I got in return was a bunch of swear words that I can only assume they were directed at me.

Finally, a little more than an hour later, I made it over the final hump and raced for the finish line. As I approached it, I raised my hands into the air, much like any cyclist does as they approach the finish line. My mother had driven up with my brother and she was there taking pictures. I rode over to her, gave her my bike, and then proceeded to lie on the ground for the next twenty minutes. The pain of the boiling hot tarmac touching my skin was nothing in comparison to what was going on in my legs. Eventually, everyone else made it to the finish line and we all sat down for lunch. The whole time I just rubbed it in their faces that a young teenager who had only been cycling for only two years beat them all by over thirty minutes. However, I think I got them a little angry, because after lunch, they challenged me to a race down the hill, in which they totally destroyed me.

Filed by Mr. Hillman at March 28th, 2008 under Confessions of Serial Teenager