Colin
The Alpe d’Huez was legendary with good reason. The site of the first ever mountaintop finish in the Tour’s history, the road was an epic 21 switchbacks and over a kilometre of climbing. We crawled up there like centipedes with the deep valley behind us and thousands of supporters encroaching on the riders.
A steep drop-off on one side of the road tumbled into a rocky gorge and, above us, the endless grey peaks took shape more clearly with each metre of gruelling altitude gain, patches of snow like polka-dots on the vast landscape.
Crunching up the 15th hairpin, I cut through the crowd of deafening fans spilling onto the road in their excitement, caught up in the adrenaline of our struggle. On the Alpe d’Huez, it truly was a fight.
If the Tourmalet was one long torture device, the Alpe d’Huez was 21 punches in the face – well, in the stomach or the balls would be more accurate – with a punishing gradient.
I was all alone. Derek had held on until the first two hairpins, but then it had been adios. A guy from another team had stuck with me for another three, but he was gone now too. Up ahead, I caught the occasional flashes of Gaetano Maggioli’s arse and if that wasn’t a powerful motivator to overtake him, I didn’t know what would be.
‘De Jong’s taken the stage, C,’ I heard Alan’s voice in my ear. Even though I’d known I had no chance to catch him, the cold dip of disappointment in my gut made me wobbly for a few metres before I swallowed it down. The news hurt, but it wouldn’t stop me. The win wasn’t the only thing I was racing for.
‘How much… time… have I made up?’ I managed to ask. It was tempting to ease off the effort, click down a few gears and cruise up more comfortably but, if I was gaining time, then I’d push it.
‘Listen to your body,’ Alan warned me, but then he answered my question. ‘Gretsch has lost time in the minutes. If you can keep it up, you’ll jump a few places.’
I could definitely hang on for that. Thinking of Leesa’s sweet little kiss last night, I set to it. I rolled over the line fifth, but the surge of lactate and adrenaline and endorphins, particularly the endorphins from seeing Leesa whistling with her fingers in her mouth, felt entirely life-giving. The jump from 13th place overall up to 10th didn’t hurt either.
Spite, I thought, glancing at Leesa again as I wobbled towards a warm-down bike. Today was for spite. Tomorrow could be for stubbornness. I already knew I was going to go again, maybe even earlier than I had today. There were only two mountain stages left and I was going to attack one of them, then hold on for Paris.
At the evening strategy briefing, I lounged in a chair with a kind of artificial calm that wouldn’t have fooled Leesa. But when Dad opened the briefing, his words seemed to electrify all of my nerve endings with anticipation – of chaos, of a well-fought battle, ofexcitement.
‘Well, boys, there’s a big change forecast in the weather overnight. We’ve got ourselves some fog rolling in.’
Bring on tomorrow.
I’d been saving this particular merchandise for a special occasion, but stubbornness had decided that today was special, so I made sure I was downstairs early again and kept watch for her.
My phone buzzed with a message and I pulled it out of my pocket to give the screen a cursory glance before returning to my vigil, except my gaze snagged on the device when I saw who the message was from: Fergie, the chief mechanic.
I’ve found it. You’re lucky it was still with us, as it’s retired from service. The wheels are a lost cause, but I’ve found the rest of it and we’re putting it together, like you asked me to. Let me know if we should proceed.
Of course we would proceed. This was my big chance, my ‘actions-speak-louder-than-words’, because it was clear from that doomed conversation in Gap that I was shit with words. I was typing an enthusiastic reply to Fergie and nearly missed her appearing on the stairs. Giving up on the message for now, I hot-footed it to the breakfast room and hovered by the buffet, waiting for her to approach.
Just as I’d hoped, she made a beeline for the coffee machine, so I enacted my plan and then sidled away, feeling her sharp look between my shoulder blades and turning back to watch the results when I thought it was safe.
Her hair was mussed this morning, which only made me think about all the ways I’d dishevelled her over the past few weeks. Her cheeks were ruddy and I guessed even the support team got a bit strung out during the Tour. She grabbed the nearest coffee cup and I closed my fist in glee to see this playing out exactly as I’d planned.
She shoved it beneath the coffee machine, but then stilled, drew back, then ducked to peer at the mug. She turned to eyeball me as though in slow motion.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your new favourite mug.’
‘Please tell me it’s not Rick Astley this time,’ she said, waiting for the heat-sensitive picture to appear and failing to disguise the amusement in her tone.
‘You liked the Rick Astley mug,’ I accused tentatively.
‘It’s a nasty song to have in your head,’ she insisted. ‘But I still have it.’ Her admission was enough to power me for several kilometres – uphill – today.
‘This one’s better. It’s got a pun on it. You like puns, right?’
‘Who doesn’t like puns?’
She pretended she wasn’t holding her breath, but she totally was. When the picture came up, she didn’t quite grant me the chuckle I’d been after.
‘Erm, that is a very weird picture of your face stuck onto a piece of bacon.’
