The Final Countdown

Posted Sunday, July 15, 2007, 9:08 AM by Lonely Planet

One day to go. The Etape du Tour is tomorrow. Today we cycled down to Foix, the start, to register. According to our guidebooks (Frommers and Rough Guide, naturally) Foix is an interesting historic town, with a fine chateaux to admire. We cycled right past.



Continuing yesterday's celebratory atmosphere, an Etape 'festival village' has been set up on the outskirts of Foix. A chance to meet old cycling buddies, to buy some last-minute kit, or queue to have the bikes checked over by skilled mechanics.



Throughout the day we kept up to date with news from the Tour de France, now on stage 8. The professionals will be coming to Foix in about a week, and crossing the same five mountain passes we're attempting. We'll be well out of the way by then.

Although the Tour de France is exclusively for male cyclists, there's also a Tour Feminine - won in 2006 by a Brit, Nicole Cooke, also winner of numerous other cycling world championships and one of the highest-performing athletes in the world - although you wouldn't know it for all the press attention she gets (ie, very little).

The Etape is open to both genders, so it's not completely testosterone fuelled (although there's a lot of that about). Every year a few hundred women ride among the 7000+ total field. My sister Jacqui did it last year and was buoyed along by constant shouts of "allez les femmes" from the spectators. She's doing it again this year, and we hope to ride side-by-side some of the way.

She's younger than me, and fitter, so I'm worried. If she leaves me behind on one of the 20km ascents, I'll never live it down.

And, if you'll excuse more personal references, there's another family connection: My father used to coach cycling teams, and helped me with a training schedule to prepare for this Etape. Just one day to go until we know if it worked, Dad.

Lonely Planet author David Else is in France to take part in L'Etape du Tour - cycling through the Pyrenees on part of the route of the Tour de France. This is the sixth of a series of blog posts.

Labels: cycling, Etape du Tour, Europe, France, Pyrenees

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