At the top of Le Markstein, the first Category 1 climb of Le Tour, coming towards the end of Stage 9, after 2x Cat 2 and 3x Cat 3 climbs. Felt AMAZING!
Phil Deeker (lead rider)'s Stage 10 briefing profile. I felt physically sick when this went up (not that this stopped me eating an insane amount of food). It was also accompanied by a weather forecast of rain all day (which thankfully ended up only being rain half the day). One pedal stroke at a time gets you there.
The female lifers (lifers = people doing the whole tour). L-R Katrine-Mari, Caroline, me. Both of these ladies have been both an inspiration to me so far, and a great help in pulling me through some tough parts of the tour.
My German guardian angels, Ivo and Ingo. These guys watched over me on the flay stages, and made sure I could catch our group back if I fell behind on the "small" hills. They are ever so generous, and awesome cyclists to boot.
My fellow Aussie parter in crime, he has a Gee-long accent that 14 years in the UK hasn't dulled, and which outs my Territory-bogan brogue to shame. Also my partner in crime though the first few days of the tour while we took a while to find our tour legs. He definitely picked up some legs for the mountains!
The first few French stages wound around the French-Belguim borders, where lie the Flanders Fields, centre of much of the WW1 horrors. Gallipoli gets a lot of attention from Aussies when it comes to WW1 (not undeservedly), but here at Flanders so many died too.
Katrine-Mari and I play tourist after getting in while the sun was still up and check out the cathedral at Reim where all the Kings of France are buried. Nice bakery en route too.
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