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Mont Ventoux

Bring on Etape du Tour...
Dominating the landscape for miles ...

I ascended the Giant of Provence from Bedoin (the tour route and supposedly the hardest ascent) in 01:47:02. I was hoping to beat 2 hours so this was a major result. I had a headwind all the way to the top from Chalet Reynard - The "Simpson memorial" was blown bare.

The descent was terrifying with my front wheel being pushed offline quite severely by the vicious winds - no fun at 40+ kmh. I guess its not called windy mountain for nothing. The descent through the forest on the other hand was exhilarating, I came close to 75kmh!

All the articles about the Ventoux ascent talk about the Forest section and how hard it is. I thought the whole thing was fairly straight forward. Scary.

Ventoux. Done.

Either I've been lulled into a false sense of security or I'm about to blow the lid off on July 16th.

Hope its the latter.

BTW, Good luck to all you La Marmotte hopefuls racing tomorrow - it looks like the weather is taking a turn for the better (it couldn't get much worse).



I paused to take jacket off at Colombie, then to put it on at Chalet Reynard, hence the two "dips" in heart rate.

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