Any Given Wednesday

      Hi, I recently got back from taking a trip to Europe to celebrate my dad's 50th birthday, and one of the highlights was doing the weekly mass start time trial up Le Alpe D'Huez. For 5 Euros you get a number, a timing chip, and a chance to feel all the pain and glory that comes with climbing one of the most majestic climbs in the world with a bunch of random strangers.
      You show up for the start of the "race" at 10 and instantly see the differences of the types of people that show up. The riders abilities range from the local pros who show up on race wheels and skinsuits, to the tourists who show up just to get the chance to ride up the mountain only known to them as a legend of the Tour De France. As the race starts you get a neutral roll out behind the timing car from the tourism office in Bourg D'Osains for 3 kilometers to the base of the climb. When you hit the base of the climb and the clock on the timing truck emits a loud beep the strong riders instantly ramp the pace up. For the first and hardest kilometer of the climb I was putting out 330 watts which is about what I can hold for 5 minutes. Instantly I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the pace up for the whole climb and neither would the other riders in the group with me so I "sat up" and started to ride my own pace knowing that I should be able to bring back at least a few of the riders who didn't know any better to sit up and ride their own race. Once I recovered a little from the huge energy use from the first kilometer I found my rhythm and started to claw time back from the leaders. Every few kilometers I would catch and drop another rider who had cracked themselves trying to follow the leaders. When I hit the second to last switchback (great thing about Alpe D'Huez is that the switchbacks are numbered in reverse order so you can gauge how far you have left) I started to ramp up the pace with the little extra that I had left. As I crossed the line it wasn't more than 50 meters after that I cramped and came very very close to throwing up, the sign that I gave it my all. When I looked at my Garmin I saw that I had done a 48:50 which loses only 11 minutes to the course record holder Marco Pantani and 6 minutes to the local pro who was the winner on the day. At the end of the day I ended up 7th out of 63 and the best placed junior, which I am very proud about because there were at least 7 or 8 juniors that participated and if you rule out the local pros I was 4th overall.
      So if you are ever near Bourg D'Osains on any given Wednesday you could do worse than to spend 5 Euros to race up one of the most legendary climbs in the world.

Jason Saltzman

p.s. I am also proud to report that I only lost 2 minutes to masters teammate Kevin Metcalfe and am 43rd overall on Strava.