A bit of route analysis

Well, this time in five weeks, I'll have my bags packed, my bike packed, the car loaded and hopefully, will be all set to go. I still have a few more logistical tasks to take care of - I have hired one bike bag already but I still need a second. I'm thinking of buying the DHB one from wiggle - it seems quite reasonably priced. I also had a very kind offer of a loan of one so I feel that bike bag is covered one way or the other. I need to sort out hire car from Avignon - will just do that online. I need to check if there is any outstanding payment on the studio we are hiring - I think there may be a small balance to pay. I think everything else is sorted on the logistics front.
As for clothing, I think that everything is ready apart from my jersey - I've had my eye on a particular jersey for a while now. I feel that the etape is just such a huge event for me that I should just go for it and buy it. I still have a bit in my paypal account from my ebay sales so perhaps I will be buying from wiggle again this month.
My bike has a small problem in that the headset works itself loose. It goes in for another service on Monday where they are going to take out the fork and spend a bit of time looking into what is causing it to happen. It becomes loose within weeks of a service so there is definitely something wrong there.

Onto the route: last night I spent a bit of time looking at the route and came up with this little profile sheet, which I will be using on the day. I haven't checked it thoroughly for errors yet so will do this before I get it printed off and laminated.



It shows the profile, main towns, elimination points (the two solid lines on the profile towards the end of the event) and climbs and the times above are the cut off times for corresponding locations. There are four stops for either food or water. Craig Entwistle of veloventoux has a list of other water stops along the route - I will get these onto to back of my laminate as well http://www.veloventoux.com/pictures/waterstops.pdf.

I've also prepared a break down of speeds/distances/gradients along the course, which correspond to the profile sheet. Again, haven't had time to check thoroughly but it's my starting point. It's all metric - I will change over to metric sometime before the event I *think*. Not sure yet. Which ever way I do it, I'm going to be cycling along, working out the conversion to mph or kmph at some point on the event.

Here's the timings:


I'm hoping to use this data with my garmin on the day. I'm planning to create a workout which flashes up information about the distance I need to have reached by certain times - should give me confidence on the day that I am ahead of the broom wagon. I think I'll put in a few reminders of where I need to drink and eat etc.

Tonight I have a *big* night out. It doesn't happen very often so I'm looking forward to it although I think I shall try to restrict myself to the healthiest possibly curry I can get and will only have a couple of glasses of wine. Perhaps one cocktail. I'm having a really good week diet-wise and I really don't want to undo it all in one night.

For the last few days, I've been debating whether to squeeze in another sportive before my next planned event on the 5th of July. However, I felt an ulcer appearing last night so I've decided against it. I'm going to have a very easy week and then start to slowly build up again next week. Come July 20th, I want to be fit and healthy and raring to go.