Puy Mary
We leave the house by 8:00 to start the 1hr drive eastwards to the Cantal and the site for today’s ride. The scenery is what we expected, wooded farmland, rolling hills with the occasional deep valley and small nice towns reminiscent of the Southern Highlands.
The road turns uphill immediately the ride starts, the target for today the Puy Mary, with a circuitous return planned to add some interest and distance. Shortly after starting I overtake a few riders, and wonder if I will pay for it later. Puy Mary is an extinct volcano: draw a simple picture in your mind of a volcano and you will have the gradient progression for the climb, easy at first then forever steepening. The route chosen for today never gets too steep though: the steeper route as used by La Tour will be our descent. Logistics playing a part in the route chosen.
The early part of the ride passes through closely spaced small villages that are seriously pretty, filled with oh so quaint houses perched on steep hills: “it’s like riding through a movie set”.
The road continues up through forest and farmland. The gradient is never punishing and I strain no more on 8% as I do on 5%, but the higher we go, the thinner the forest, the stronger the wind.
Soon I am being passed by groups of riders on historic motorcycles, puttering up the hill. And I ask myself, why bother, I mean – old men on old bikes with old engines – what is the point. Imagine what a serious rider on a modern bike could do on this hill. A dim light bulb inside my head slowly illuminates, a simile forms, and I smile. Quite possibly they are too polite to think the same thing.
Climbing above the tree line I see a rider ahead of me in the distance: the animal inside the old man’s skin awakens, bending the back a bit more, pressing harder against the pedals.
Approaching the col, I lift my head and shout “Sweeney” into the stiffened breeze: there is nothing to hear it but the tussocks, empty paddocks and craggy peaks around. Somewhat pointless really, but a small homage to Coach Sweeney.
Over Christmas, riding in the Snowy Mountains, we had realised that we were not who we once were, nor who we thought we were. Our cycling had dropped in frequency, intensity and distance, to the extent we were in danger of becoming cyclists in name only. To rectify this we decided to invest in a new electronic indoor trainer. To make the most of it I realised we should follow a structured program and sought someone to develop it: Coach Sweeney.
We actually had no idea what it meant to get a program developed and thought we would get a single set of workouts and that would be it. But each month a new set of sessions was delivered that we dutifully followed.
“Mate, you’re going to be spending a bit of time in the hurt locker”.
For the first few months on the program, I would peer into the locker, but the darkness inside scared me. To make the most of the program though, one must eventually enter the locker, and so I did, and spent the last few months of the program in there.
Why am I telling you this …. Because you have lots of time to think on a long climb and lots of weird stuff goes through your head.
It is a very stiff breeze at the top and cold as well: nowhere to escape it, except inside the little caf which is where we head when Pam joins me.
The wind is such that we cannot enjoy the first few kms of the descent. Back in the forest, we ride across to the Col de Nerone and then commence a beautiful descent to Salers; it has a -1% to -4% gradient, the wind is at our back, an open gently winding road contours the hill so with fluid pedalling an easy 45-50km/hr is maintained: champagne cycling.
Salers – a simply stunning medieval town. Touristy, sure, but this does not distract from it’s quality. Visit it.
My vague memory of this route from when I mapped it weeks ago was that there was one more hill than downhill to car. Up Col Saint George, then downhill for short distance, then up again …
“I thought you said only one more uphill”
“Maybe there was a little jag in the profile”
What followed was a heart breaking ascent of Col du Legal: according to Strava a mere 9.3km at 5%. Sometimes the numbers don’t tell the story. By the time we started up this climb we had been going for 4hrs (including stops), it was hot, sunny and windy, and the last few kms were a constant 6%-7%. Those numbers won’t make any headlines, and we will do tougher on this trip but we may not suffer any more than we did today.
Now it is all downhill. The first section was taken very carefully due to the patches of gravel on the road, narrow winding roads and frequent cars but once on the road we had taken to Puy Mary we can relax and roll down through the pretty villages and forest.
The numbers.
Distance: 82km
Height gained: 2,000m
