From September 19th through September 24th, Quality Unit’s LiveAgent bike Team made a bike trip to popular summits of the Tour in the French Alps. 5 out of 9 team members completed the challenge, some had to retire due to medical issues and some didn’t even have a bike to compete with. That, however, didn’t matter because we all greatly enjoyed the joy from beautiful French Alps and the team being together elsewhere besides the office. All six stages of the challenge went smoothly, and besides a few tire punctures, there were no technical problems. Weather was nice with temperatures averaging 17 degrees Celsius.
Preparations and beginnings
The whole team was excited about the challenge. Everybody had been discussing individual stages, distances, elevation, nutrition and hardware, weeks before the start. Departure was set to September 18th, 8:00 at the parking lot nearby our offices. We loaded our bikes and hit the road. It took us about 13 hours to drive to our destination – La Chatel, France. We arrived at around 9 and all were pretty hungry. After a long hunt, some of the team members managed to find an open restaurant and we grabbed a late night pizza with “Vino de la casa” – which had started to become a common item on the receipts at whatever restaurant we went to 🙂 We hauled back to the hotel, prepared for the morning and got some sleep.
The first days
were rough. Literally. For some of us even fatal. Switching from 8 hours of sitting in an office to 130km/day (which equals 6-7 hours) on a bike seat was rough, adding an average of 3,5km of elevation/day nearly impossible for an untrained biker. Fortunately, the majority of the team was trained. Me being in the un-trained minority, it was really hard to adapt. I somehow managed to live-through the trip and also complete a 126km stage, which I rate as one of my best experiences so far. The rest of the team seemed to enjoy the first days as well.
The route
As the time went by, we challenged almost all of the popular Tour de France summits. Col de la Colombiere, Col de la Madeleine, Col de Galibier, Alpe d’Huez, Col d’Izoard and Col Agnel were all defeated, no matter how bad the weather was (freezing cold or hailstorm).
Stats
- Total Distance ridden: 700km
- Total Elevation difference: 20km
- Attendants: 8 + 1 driver
- Total time on bikes: 40 hours
- Summits defeated: 15
- Strava KOM achieved: 0
- Energy bars consumed: 121
- Vino de la casa consumed: 20l
Big thanks to all participants!
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