The Macmillan Jersey Cycle Challenge is not for the faint hearted. We follow the progress of the team of brave cyclists through the sun-kissed fields of central France.
We follow the team courtesy of Adrian Rowland, one of the cycling team, who is documenting the experience for Macmillan.
Day four and a catch-up on the ‘brutal’ Mont Ventoux. The whole team was ready to tackle Mont Ventoux, resplendent in the new bespoke team kit.
The first section of the mountain, before you reach the forest is about 3km and is at between 3% and 5%. You have to take it easy as you need to preserve your legs and energy store for what’s to come. The groups started to split even at this early stage and some people were already riding alone at their own pace whilst others remained in their own little support bubbles. Companionship would be their only help as conversation was already getting hard.
The climb was relentless. There was never a let up in the gradient. Normally you get the odd section of a climb flattening out and giving you a small period of respite, but not on this one. That said by the time you have ridden 16km (10 mikes) you pop out of the forest section at Cafe Reynard. This is the first chance to stop and have any sort of recovery time as stopping on the lower section is really difficult because it’s nearly impossible to get the impetus to get going again.
Our amazing support team were there for us and we topped up on water and snacks.
There was a small real hardcore element of our riders who decided to miss the rest stop and continued on the final 6km stretch which takes you above the tree line and into the lunar landscape towards the summit.
Our whole team made the summit. All arriving at different times. The quickest was James Vernon with a time of 1h43m43s, a full 2 seconds quicker than Tim Barnes. Amazing they were so close time wise but were not riding together! The longest ride was around the four hour mark. Just amazing perseverance.
Celebrations at the top were immense with so many hugs and tears and so much admiration and respect for the achievements that had just happened. It is without doubt the hardest thing I have ever done and the same can be said for many. You had huge amounts of time alone to think about so many things and in particular why you were on the trip – to support Macmillan and the people they help every day. A lot of people faced some quite dark moments on their journey up that mountain. It can be summed up in one word that so many of us used: BRUTAL!
Once conquered, we quickly donned our warmer clothes (it was really cold) had photos taken we then started a very tricky descent with the strong gusts of wind causing the bikes to become quite unstable and so caution was the watch word. A brief visit to Cafe Reynard for a much deserved beer and we were descending again but now through the forest to Sault where a welcome lunch was waiting for us.
Then came the sudden realisation that we still had a further 50km to ride back to the hotel starting with another long climb of over 500m vertical. Not what anyone wanted after what we’d just been through in the morning, but we had to do it, and so we did. The reward was another long descent of 7km – fabulous.
Click here to view the Macmillan Jersey Cycle Challenge page
