La 77 part 1

At last the first event of the season. A cyclosportif in French department 77, Seine et Marne, hence the name La 77. It is about as “easy” as they come, a very flat 145km in and around the French town of Melun. The race has been criticised in the past for having quite poor roads and not really suited to the onslaught of 1300 cyclists belting down them at up to 50kmh, so for this year they had completely revamped the course, of which an amazing 60% was different to last year. I had never ridden it before so it made little difference to me, I just hoped the weather would be kind.

I wasn’t disappointed! It was damn chilly early in the morning, but with temperatures set to rise into the teens during the day I made the decision to go with shorts and long sleeve jersey, whereas Jochem, my German expat friend from the Bandidos went for a more conservative longs and multi layers! We got to the start nice and early, having left Paris at 6.30am, arriving in Melun around 7.45. If we hadn’t messed around for a long time we might have got ourselves a decent spot on the ligne depart, but what with one thing and another, Jochem fiddling with his speedo and me waiting in the long queue for the loos we didn’t line up until 8.35 and ended up at least 2/3rds back by the time everyone was in place for a 9am start.

So we hung around and froze for 25 minutes before it was announced, “C’est partie!!!!”, and then we hung around another couple of minutes waiting for the queue to clear, and then we were off, round the corner and hitting 40km/h. The start wasn’t quite as crazy as others I have been in, mainly due to the straight roads, but the roundabouts are always dangerous and at about the 2nd or 3rd there was mayhem. Fortunately no-one came off, but there was a car stranded just at the exit to the roundabout, somehow the lady had managed to sneak onto the course at the last moment, she sat there in terror as 1265 cyclists  raced past her, some jumping the pavement to get through! Back onto the straight roads and its pedals to the metal as I tried to give as much as could for the first 20 minutes or so to see how many places I could make-up. The front 200 or so are long gone, but you always have a chance of catching up in those first few minutes. I felt good, my heart rate was up to 180 at times, but I was keeping a lid on it and picking off as many places as I could. I saw a couple of crashes, one quite bad when a cyclist went over and another went piling straight into him. That unmistakable noise of bike parts smashing into each other. It’s so dangerous you just have to keep your line and hope no-one clips you.

The first hour continued much the same, rattling along in a huge group led my motorcycle outrides, over 40km/h quite frequently, trying to stay in a good slipstream. I looked at my speedo after an hour and we had ridden 38 kilometres. The scenery was whizzing by, but it was for the most part pleasant woodland, not that I could appreciate it. Our group split at a roundabout and stupidly I was too far back, and so there and then I lost about 100 places, I could have kicked myself but I was supposed to be using this event for training and not getting carried away so tant pis as they say round here.

I felt really good, my heart rate was down to the 150s and 160s for the most part now and I was cruising. I even managed to eat an energy bar after an hour and an hour and a half, I was going to make the mistake I made in the last event when I really hit the bottom through not eating.

The few hills that arrive are only in the second half of the race, and I was quite happy for them to come along. A chance for me to see the big guys struggle a bit. Of course as soon as they did come the peloton completely splintered and got strung out, and somehow I ended up in quite a slow group. I let it go for 10 or 15 minutes, watching 1,2,3 and then a 4th guy fire himself off the front to try and make something of it. When the 4th guy went I went too. And in so doing managed to get another guy to come with us, and before long we had a nice little group of about 8 going at a decent pace again. The second hour passed and we had covered another 36km. Half way already, could I beat 4hours?

to be continued……