La Marmotte 2009 by Mike Brookfield

I wrote my last report almost one year ago after completing the Etape du Tour. That event was nasty due to bad weather and my report ended jokingly with ‘anyone fancy the Marmotte next year?’ It was not long until that joke had become a reality and the only nutter I could find to come along with me was Derek Brangan, a very strong rider (especially on the hills) who laughs in the face of pain, as only a Ardcath man can.

We booked onto the event with Sportactive who organised things very well. All we had to worry about was the riding. The hotel was just above the finish line in Alpe d’heuz which meant easy access to the start and no hassle at the end.

My training was similar to the previous year - training camp in the Yorkshire Dales followed by a programme from Aidan Hammond. Lots of miles and hill work, as you’d expect, but I was also concentrating on time trialling. I did the Dave Kane league up North together with local 10 & a 25 mile time trials. Time trials really hurt, so my pain tolerance was high and I figured this would come in handy for the big event.

The day before the Marmotte I rode the top four hairpins of Alpe d’heuz and noodled around the village on the bike. This is the day horror stories are bantered around. They range from competitors riding off cliffs, exploding tubes from hot rims on descents, bonking caused by dehydration and hot foot…. whatever that is! It’s hard not to let this get into your head, and you tend not to sleep well that night. I figured as I don’t usually ride off the road for no reason, I’ve done lots of training and it cost a lot to be here that I wasn’t going to worry and bloody well enjoy it!

Our start time was 7:50am from Bourg d’Oisans which is at the bottom of Alp d’heuz. We descended the alpe at 7am passing a surprising amount of accidents and punctures on the way down. I took it easy, I didn’t come all this way not to make it to the start line.

Compared to Etape 08 the start was great, we just rolled over the start line, our transponders beeped and we were on our way. After a little warm up of about 8k we started our first climb - the Glandon, 24k long and 1152m of climbing. I whacked it into 34/27 and that was me for the next hour or so. I’d say I spent about 6-7 hours in this gear, not very exciting compared to the quick fire changing when racing but ‘spin to win’ was my motto, it was going to be a long day and I wanted to save power for Alpe d’heuz at the end.

I stayed with the group but bit by bit our riders were falling off the back. We were only doing about 9-10kph, however we were steadily overtaking everyone on the climb without much effort, I started to get a bit worried that we were going too fast too soon but knocked that on the head with a ‘feck it! I’ve got a super light bike, super low gears and I’ve trained like a monster so lets boogie!

We stopped for food at the top of the Glandon, at this point I didn’t feel great to be honest. It was very hot and twiddling that low gear for so long felt weird on the legs, maybe I was a little worried about what lay ahead as well.

We descended surrounded by breathtaking scenery and then rode 20k to the village of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne. It was draggy and hot and was glad to get this out of the way. We filled our bottles from a water pump in the village and I went for wee in the bushes. There were old ladies leaning out of their balconies not impressed by the thousands of cyclists invading their town, throwing their arms in the air and shouting at us. One tried to hit me with a bucket of water but she missed. I felt guilty and shouted ‘I’m sorry’ then jumped back on the bike before things got nasty. I think they were actually enjoying themselves though, fair play to them.