Monday, August 10, 2009

Training in the Alps

Ahh the joys of the Alps. Nice long climbs, lots of altitude and some good hard training
I'm currently sitting at over 1000m in altitude (that's 50 004356 feet for you Imperial people) half way through 10 days on solid rides.
The Col de la Madeleine was a nice 24km climb up to 2000m. A nice long slog of a climb... stunning scenery.... what can you say... you just HAVE TO BE HERE!
The road up to the Col du Galibier is scary to say the least... but this climb is a true classic! A beast of a climb, and huge part of cycling history!
The bad weather, and this case the mist, can come in really really quickly atop the Galibier... This is a mountain to be respected, you must always be ready for anything, you have to climb it with a spare wardrobe of warm clothes just in case!


Climbing has always been one of my fav ways of training. You HAVE to go hard just to go up these climbs, so in many ways you cancel out the phycological effort of training, you can't back down, can't really take it easy, it's training time from bottom to top. And to boot, the views are breathtaking!



2 comments:

Luke Shilling said...

mate, couldn't have summed up how i feel about climbing. nice work. if only there were climbs longer than 6km in queensland.

simjetlag said...

6k is pretty good, but it is a far cry from a 2+ hour grind at Altitude... :-)