I Rode the Final Two Climbs of the Tour de France—and It Proved Pro Cyclists Aren’t Human

For the first few weeks of every July, I wake up early and quietly flip on the Tour de France as I pull an espresso and catch up on emails. Media coverage of the le Tour here in the U.S. generally sucks, with little in the way of actual details that cyclists might actually care about, but the sounds of the peloton whizzing by, hubs freewheeling past medieval facades, crowds chanting and cheering at mountain top finishes—and the occasional dramatic day of actual bike racing—all inspires me to get out and ride in July far more than any other month of the year.

Sunny weather in Los Angeles probably helps, too, but the mindset matters more than anything. Why not go chase my PRs up in Topanga and Malibu? Last year I even got a jumpstart on the cycling summer by riding up Pikes Peak ahead of the official race in early June. But this year, the true Tour dream finally came to fruition, as I packed up my gear and headed to France to get up close and personal with the peloton on two of the hardest mountain stages in the penultimate days leading up to the final ride into Paris.

Hectic Plans Dashed Immediately

An hour or so east of Lyon, the Alps burst violently and vertically out of France’s breadbasket. I rented a hilarious little Citroen Jumpy van—diesel manual for the win!— to haul around two rental bikes for myself and a poor PR professional along for the literal ride, as well as all our cycling accoutrements schlepped over from the U.S. of A. Diesel engine chugging away, we rushed from Lyon to catch Stage 18 up the famous Col de la Loze in the ski resort of Courchevel.

As we approached the base of the mountain, crowds in polka dotted King of the Mountain T-shirts started to line the streets, which themselves began to swarm with amateur cyclists. Surely, not everyone planned to ride up the 26.4-kilometer final climb of the day! Guess again, we quickly learned, as we inched along toward a parking spot at the mountain top altiport—seemingly straight out of Goldeneye—running steeply downhill toward a sharp cliff-face drop off.

The plan for Stage 18 originally involved driving to the top, then coasting downhill to the town of Mouliers, then riding back up ahead of the race. But the creeping and crawling pace, dodging literally thousands of pedestrians and cyclists along the way, meant that we arrived too late. Too late, that is, despite arriving a full three hours before the little-known-in-the-U.S. caravane arrived, itself an hour or so before the actual bike rice might hit the hill.

In fact, we clipped onto our rented Cannondale Synapses before the race even hit the bottom of the previous hors categorie climb of the day. Yet immediately, French gendarmerie started to stifle the fun, forcing us to stop and walk for a few seconds every few hundred yards. Stormy weather brewed over the peaks above, too, and so after maybe 20 minutes of inching back down the mountain, we decided to make a break for the summit.

At around 6,500 feet of elevation, the oxygen deprivation starts to set in both physically and mentally. But after Pikes Peak last year, I knew how to focus deep breaths into my torso and to keep an eye on my heart rate—so by monitoring the Garmin Edge 540 computer on my handlebars feeding me updates from my Polar Verity Sense heart rate monitor, I chugged out a steady pace as we slowly climbed past alpine cafes and hotels. 

Altitude and oxygen deprivation mattered less to me that first day than the lingering effects of a motocross crash about three weeks prior, which the transatlantic flights and hours of driving only stiffened and swelled up before I climbed on the bike. My thicc right hip jiggled noticeably with each downstroke on the pedal, a strange sensation despite a lack of too much sharp pain. Mostly, I just ached down the whole right side of my leg and hip flexor area.

Getting the blood pumping actually helped to loosen up some of the tightness, and by the time we reached the end of the larger road, where the race turns right onto a glorified bike path with just enough pavement to let small European station wagons drive past fields of cattle—alive with the sound of music, or cowbells anyhow—I felt a little better. But here, on barren ski slopes above the timberline, the gradient cut sharply upward. A steady seven or eight percent felt great earlier, but all of a sudden 12, 13, 15 percent kickers started to take the wind out of me.

Luckily, crowds of manic cycling fans lined the little path and urged me onward. A few pushed me along, but most just shook those polkadot KoM flags in my face and cheered, offering sips of beer or wine or fistfuls of chips to fuel me up the hill. Heartened once again, I stood up out of the saddle and stomped out a harder cadence, showing some effort for the enthusiastic masses.

Until the French cops ruined everything again by shutting down the cart path to anybody on a bike. Frustrating, to say the least, but we clomped downward toward the main road and a VIP section as little raindrops started to dust my cycling sunglasses. On a big screen, the VIP section showed the race still hadn’t reached the base of Col de la Loze. Why so much preemptive clearing of the road then? If I hadn’t been forced to stop and walk so very many times, I’d have easily made the summit and coasted back down by now—and they let pedestrians though, which move slower, anyhow. Merde!

A quick change of clothes, a raincoat against the promise of those storm clouds, a few bites of tiny sandwiches, and an espresso doppio later, the head of the race came flying by. They’re so small, I remember thinking. Tiny little whisps hammering out unbelievable wattage week in and week out. Even Ben O’Connor at the front, taller than expected, but a twig. Lenny Martinez might fit in a teacup. Tadej and Jonas, petit as the French might say.

The race stayed predictable, no big attacks near the top that amounted to anything other than O’Connor winning—the Aussie occasionally pulls together an incredible stage, while typically hovering in top-10 GC contention. Tomorrow, we knew, an earlier start for the Queen mountain stage would set us up for success. Get a good night’s sleep tonight, after just six miles (10 km or so) on the bike as a warmup. Then hit La Plagne with a cold fury by noon the following day.

But after the race ended, the police abandoned any and all pretense of organization, giving way to absolute chaos on the single winding mountain road downhill, so much so that inching back to Mouliers at the base of the hill took a full three hours—even longer than I had budgeted to do the entire climb on a bicycle! So maybe not quite as good of a night’s sleep, but at least we knew what to expect the following day.

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A Plan for La Plagne

Rather than risk another three-hour debacle descending from La Plagne, I figured why not brave the parking situation at the bottom of the mountain and then ride both up the hill and back down. Or better yet, park the van a town over and just cruise in as a warmup to the climb. 

Warm weather greeted us in the village of Landry. I always prefer to stay warmer rather than cold while riding, so I also slipped some additional dry socks and a raincoat into my small USWE Raw 8 backpack. Google Maps profiled the spin from Landry to La Plagne-Tarentaise as mostly flat with about 86 meters of climbing, but it somehow turned into a little chug uphill, then a fast descent. I squirmed about in my own skin for a few minutes, lactic acid from the previous day clearing out in a brief wave of nausea until lasagna from dinner the night before took over as my main source of fuel. By the time we reached the base of the mountain, I felt warmed up, and the weather seemed to be holding, too.

Surely, at 12:15 in the afternoon and another optimistic budget of 2.5 hours for the 19.1-km, 7.2 percent HC climb, we’d be allowed all the way up to the top this time. Right? Only one way to find out, so I shifted the Shimano 105 Di2 drivetrain to my lowest gear and headed up the hill.

Even this early in the day, just after high noon as we started our ascent, fans already lined the road. And even more cyclists than the day before swarmed around us, everyone trying to find a steady pace they might hope to hold for an hour, two, three, or more till the top. Without a power meter, I focused on keeping my heartrate at 165 bpm or lower, grinding away at what I figured must be about a 75-rpm cadence. Soon enough, 165 bpm became 170, as the forested hillside gave way to brighter patches of sunshine.

I took solace in the fact that we passed more people than passed us, but the sheer immediacy of crowds and cyclists and team buses made for slow going plenty of the time, too. Then I spent about 15 minutes pinned to the side of a diesel exhaust pipe, a headache started to brew, until I spotted a gap and sprinted away past the cars. All of a sudden, the seas parted and I found my second wind, typical for about a half-hour into a hard ride. My heartrate dropped by about 10 bpm, I took the time to fuel up on a Clif Bloks Margarita chew washed down by a few swigs of water, and kept chugging.

The road held a steady 8 percent grade, sometimes cracking 10 percent but mostly just meandering up the hill. Unlike in America, where the actually hairpin of a switchback kicks up steeper, here in France the road flattened out at each tight turn. All the better for building up a bit of momentum to carry into the straights, some of which stretched on interminably, dotted only by more cyclists, the odd e-MTB taking up way too much room and going way too fast, and a few motorcycle cops ripping past with sirens blazing.

By the time I passed the 10 km to go archway, the legs felt solid and the lungs started flowing more easy. “What the fuck is a kilometer” passed through my mind more than a few times, but in reality, tracking kms versus miles somehow made the distance fly by faster. Or at least, my perception of distance.

Every passing klick also brought on thicker and thicker crowds, partying harder and harder hours and hours before they expected to see the race come through. The true believers, devotees to the Tour, many of whom rent camper vans and chase the circus around France for weeks every summer. A thickening tide of polka dotted E. Leclerc King of the Mountain T-shirts, all screaming in (mostly) French. Allez allez allez! Graffiti increasingly covered the tarmac, urging on fan favorites Julian (Alaphilipe), Kevin (Vauquelin), and Lenny (Martinez, but still French). And of course, the GC frontrunners Tadej, Jonas, Lipo….

These fans came out to support the race, but in reality, the big names pass by in a lightning flash. Especially compared to my plodding pace, which hovered just above six miles an hour, the peloton absolutely gallops uphill.

A brace of cold air passed over me as I crossed a small stream. Shortly after, though, the seatpost on my rented Cannondale started to creak something awful, then slide down into the frame. Time for a break, so I pedaled another hundred meters out of the saddle and unclipped, swearing at the bike all the while. Out comes the multitool, tucked nicely in a nifty cubby built into the downtube of the Synapse—the best thing about the bike, actually—and a few newton-meters of torque judged by hand to crank the post into place again.

The little break, despite building frustration and plummeting blood sugar levels, gave me a third wind. The 5 km to go arch flew by, then 3 km. Temps dropping further, I purposefully reined in my tempo a bit, now just holding the heart rate below 180, saving a few more kilojoules of energy for the final sprint. Until once more above the treeline, the French cops once more ruined the fun—forcing everyone off the road at the 500 meters to go banner. Except some riders, inexplicably. Timing? We’d done the climb in one hour and 42 minutes, well under expected pace. Timing? The actual race literally had not started yet, but still these cops insisted we needed to get off the course. I almost tried yelling at them in German to plead my case.

I pulled some flip-flops out of my little backpack and unspooled the Boa strings on my Giro Imperial shoes. Time to hike, 10 minutes or so up to the finish line where our media credentials gained us access to another VIP booth, and a Dr. Pepper down the hatch, a few tiny tea sandwiches, a bite of brie, and maybe four more espressos as the weather conditions plummeted and the race approached the climb from down the valley.

I checked Strava for my stats, estimated at 168 watts and 170 bpm average for the climb over 1:42:14. In my defense, Strava thinks I’m about 10 pounds lighter, and I was on an unfamiliar bike. So maybe I did a little better in statistical terms—even if the clock doesn’t lie.

How fast would the pros do this, at the end of a shortened stage but at the tail end of a brutal Tour? Soon enough, the tete de la course started climbing and I started a stopwatch as hail and mist ruined visibility. After some initial vain efforts, Thymen Arensman broke away from the group enough to establish some semblance of hope as Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard chased almost halfheartedly. Jonas attacked Tadej a few times, but never built enough of a gap. Would they catch the runaway Dutchman? Arensman flew by me, a few seconds ahead with a few hundred meters to the finish line. Jonas stood up into a full sprint, Tadej in hot pursuit, and the gap stuck at two seconds.

Not to me, though. Pogi shares his stats on Strava, without power figures of course, and yet the heartless among us still compare ourselves to this cycling phenom. Just eight seconds over 42 minutes, almost exactly a full hour faster than my admittedly paltry effort. I checked later in the evening, and discovered that I still clocked in within the top 1,000 riders on Strava that day. So, good?

In post-stage interviews, both Jonas and Tadej looked shellshocked at a level I’d never witnessed before, exhausted from weeks of racing and the past few days of mountain ascents in awful conditions. The thrill gone, for them, but not for me and the crowds at the mountaintop finish lines. But how about the fans on Sunday in Paris, home of the blasé and indifferent French at their most quintessential? First, a sketchy descent from La Plagne in the pouring rain, skittering around on the Cannondales, avoiding pedestrians and team buses once again. I watched one low-speed bicycle crash, but made it down safely. Punching back up to the van took every last ounce of what energy remained in my body, and I started daydreaming about a huge steak for dinner back at the hotel.

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Catching the Train into Paris

The following morning I woke up reasonably fresh after refueling copiously on a delicious cheeseburger, a fondue plate, bruschetta, and a healthy few glasses of local natural wine. Maybe the gap between the climb and descent, with little protein available, contributed most to the muscle aches. Regardless, the train ride back to Paris flew by, as I napped and wondered whether the peloton might produce any drama on the final stage before the final stage.

In Paris, I joined a larger group of media riders hosted by Kawasaki for a more exclusive experience of riding motorcycles between the caravane and the peloton for the entire final stage. Kawasaki provides a fleet of 45 bikes (motorbikes, not quadricep-powered) that the ASO uses to support the entire Tour de France, from blocking off streets to chasing down errant traffic. Another batch of four or five goes to Shimano’s neutral support crew, which mounts spare bicycle wheels and tires on the back, hands out water bidons, and helps riders when their team cars drift too far away for quick mechanical fixes.

The ASO bikes sport nifty Starlink antennas on the back, but keeping track of the route happens more old-school, with paper printouts slipped into plastic sleeves. The caravane crews prepped near us, celebrating the whole time, high-fiving and hugging after another successful year with plenty of dancing and team-building exercises (read: the macarena and congo lines). 

Meanwhile, I slipped into warm weather gear, figuring that as fast as the caravane looked at the top of the Col de la Loze, 30 kph might feel surprisingly slow on a motorcycle. And I scored the pick of the litter, a bruiser H2 with the supercharged inline-four to ride into Paris. This provided infinite entertainment to lines of fans, as we departed Mantes-la-Ville and started the 132.3 km procession. The caravane ahead threw out T-shirts and hats and other little swag to the crowds, who cheered and begged us to rev our bikes. Thanks to Euro emissions regulations, most of the engines sounded fairly weak, so my H2’s supercharger whine and blowoff retort took center stage. Soon enough, though, I started running low on gas and needed to withhold the fun for only the most enthusiastic groups of fans.

Out of the whole ride into Paris, probably just 500 meters or so of corn fields lacked a cheering human presence. A Kawasaki rep told us the stats that informed the decision to partner with the ASO and Shimano: Over the course of three weeks, the Tour earns more views than F1’s entire season. After the ride into Paris, I believe it, even if further research belies that claim substantially.

The closer we got, passing Versailles and the outskirts at a medium pace, the bigger the grandstands. Then we turned into the Louvre, and up the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe. Pinch me, I’m dreaming. And right then, the skies opened up—an incoming nightmare for the racers on this final day of suffering.

Luckily, this year’s route designers thought up the single most entertaining final stage of all time. And Tadej Pogacar, ever the entertainer, tried valiantly to drop the entire peloton over the course of three sharp laps up the hill of Montmartre toward Sacre-Couer. After the first attack, he whittled the group down to eight or so stragglers. The next time, just four clung on. But on the third, WorldTeam Visma–Lease a Bike super-domestique Wout van Aert made one final effort, stomping out presumably thousands of watts and gapping Pogacar by 20 seconds or so, just enough to hold out for a final solo to the finish line, pain etching and raindrops streaming across his face as he rolled past me with a few hundred meters to go.

Turns out not needing to fight off all comers for three weeks, as Pogacar had, probably left a bit more gas in the tank. Unlike my H2, which needed a top-up before we rode out of town, the rain petering away eastward. One more gigantic dinner with the crew, then dark and early the next morning, I hailed a ride to the airport absolutely certain that one year, maybe next year, I need to return to the Tour and make a more concerted effort. 

Do a few full stages, starting at 6 a.m. or so to beat the peloton for the full route, pick the mountain days, get in better shape. Anyone can ride ahead of the race, and I suspect riding earlier will even help to quell the annoying and irrational cop behavior, leaving nothing but the rider and the bike, the fans, on the epic alpen roads of the Tour de France as they wind higher and higher into the clouds.