The Story… Marmotte Alpes 2018 #NekstITCyclingTeam

The Marmotte Alpes 2018, an edition that the Nekst IT Cycling Team will not soon forget. Nothing to compare with last year’s experience…a battle with yourself and the elements, in this case the heat. It took a while…but now the waiting has been rewarded 🙂 and you can both witness and enjoy our Marmotte adventures.

In order to acclimatize, ride and enjoy all the beauty of the area and the Marmotte village (fat bikes, drooling cyclists) the week before the Marmotte, the team had already settled into a nice apartment on top of Alpe d’Huez. It’s always amazing to see and experience how the mountain phenomenon affects #cyclingaddicts. As soon as the first serious mountains come into sight, a special substance seems to be released in the brains of cyclists. Eyes open wider, blood starts flowing faster, adrenaline surges through the body, legs get restless, and we sit in the car bouncing. When we finally turn onto the road at the foot of Alpe d’Huez and see and feel the first impressive steep kilometers from the car, one cheers with joy and impatience and the other becomes quieter, wondering how much this impressive mountain will hurt this year.

After five days of various training rides, multiple equipment checks and fine-tuning, eating gallons of cottage cheese, pounds of pasta, rice, vegetables and a pile of pancakes for breakfast, we are ready to go on Sunday morning, July 8th. Again this year we will leave from different starting compartments between seven and eight o’clock, so from 6:00 a.m. everyone will draw their own plan and wish each other fun and a safe journey, and we will be reunited only at the finish. While last year we set off with windstoppers, wind jackets, long gloves, etc., this year that was out of the question. A windbreaker and sleeves for the descent, just to be safe, should be enough. It promised to be a hot day, so we knew; keep eating and drinking.

That it would be hot turned out to be an understatement, it turned out to be a damn hot day. The first flat part and the ascent of the Col du Glandon were beautiful, fresh morning air, rising mist, the sun giving just the right amount of warmth, or; perfect climbing conditions. After that, the fun was over and even the Col du Telegraphe (surely the easiest of the day) started to hurt. Staying hydrated suddenly became quite a task. When it is so hot, the sun is burning your skin, you have constant pressure on your legs and your heartbeat is pounding in your ears…your appetite is gone and you have to force yourself to eat. Drinking takes less effort, but it’s also too easy if you don’t stay alert.

After the descent of the Col du Glandon and the ascent of the Col du Telegraph, we start the third mountain of the day, the Col du Galibier. The advantage today is that this is the highest col and therefore the “coolest” the higher you get. As every advantage has its disadvantage, the other side of the coin is that it is a long climb with steep final kilometers. Where last year we were shivering and blown away on the summit of the Galibier, it is now a pleasant twenty degrees and the soldiers of the catering service are waiting for us in short sleeves and sunglasses. Eat, drink, replenish and then enjoy the most beautiful and longest descent of the day, what a gift again! It is too tempting to take it easy on this descent, the mind says “eat other people’s plates first, don’t get ahead” and the feeling says…whaaaa…how fantastic is this descent, push the gas!

Then the last refreshment station of Le Bourg-d’Oisans comes in sight, literally at the foot of Alpe d’Huez. We are almost there, only 13.8 km, 1061 meters of altitude and 21 curves to go. But then …. someone is waiting at turn 20. It’s not the man with the hammer, but the man with twenty hammers. For some of us it is the hardest climb we have ever experienced. We are not making any more progress; it literally seems as if the lights have suddenly gone out. Some of us had to find a Dixie, others had to stop four times to avoid vomiting and falling down. It is 37 degrees, we already have 160 km and three cols in our legs, and despite all the knowledge we had before, we still did not eat and drink enough… simply because at these temperatures it is almost impossible to take in as much as you consume. After a seemingly endless climb, almost all of us arrive at the top of the Alpe empty and exhausted. The way we dismount from our bikes and sit down on the ground after the finish is like “falling to the ground exhausted”. Most of us are nauseous, barely able to speak and need at least half an hour and two cans of coke to recover. Unfortunately, we don’t all make it to the finish line this time, because at 5:30 a.m. we get a message from Cees that he is at the top of the Galibier and asks if we want to pick him up later. The Alpe turns out to be one mountain too far today and his impressive preseason takes its toll.

When we get to the finish line and after a refreshing shower get into the car to pick up our Cees at the bottom of the Alpe… we don’t know what we see. It seems a surreal sight, many cyclists walking or almost crawling uphill, on shoes or socks. People emptying their stomachs on the side of the road, lying or sitting on the side of the road, completely exhausted and with hollow eyes…staring into nothingness. It literally hurts to see this exhaustion in our fellow Marmotte walkers…it looks like a bizarre battlefield…at the same time we realize how well we came through despite all our own challenges.