11 years after finishing one of the hottest Marmottes on record, Karsten and I arrived in Alpe d’Huez Saturday afternoon to ride one of the hottest Marmottes on record. We were both fairly concerned about the heat and I was worried about my new, heavy titanium bike and my old, heavy body. So we needed a plan.

France’s heatwave was still going strong last weekend and we knew that the valley temperatures would be well over 30, not to mention the obligatory 40+ on the final climb of Alpe d’Huez….and for those who don’t know France’s oldest and most famous granfondo, it’s 175km long with around 5000m of climbing (depending on the device that records it). You climb the Glandon, Télégraphe, Galibier and Alpe d’Huez. It doesn’t get much more epic that that.

It was this last climb that was petrifying us because we both remembered it well back in 2015, when it took me 2 hours to climb, feeling like I was a pork cheek being perfectly slow cooked. So we made a plan.

Operation Avoid Roasting would mean this Marmotte was going to be about survival only. We agreed to go as easy as we could on all the climbs and see what we had left for the Alpe, if we made it to the cut-off. Incredibly, that’s exactly what we did – the climb of the Glandon was positively pedestrian, and we chatted nearly the whole way up. This is about as far as I could imagine doing an event like this in the past, where panting was the only noise you would hear from me on a climb.

The neutralized descent of the Glandon was great fun, even if it was neutralized. After this is a long, hot, ugly drag up the Maurienne Valley, which went quickly because we both caught groups who had willing pullers on the front. So now it’s 11am, around 35C, and we had the Télégraphe and Galibier to crawl up – a total of something like 34km. At the top of the first climb we were both having moments of self concern; me with a little dizzy spell and Karsten some issues with his feet. We found some soul-soothing cold water, though, and recovered quickly.

Speaking of water, I would guess we stopped 20 times to either fill up with it, dunk our heads under it, or have it sprayed on us. We almost never passed anything that looked like there might be cold water coming out of it. This, of course, takes a lot of time, but it also probably saved us from throwing up over the handlebars or doing the funky-chicken cramp dance, both of which we witnessed on the course.

Back to the ‘race’, I had more mental anguish on the upper slopes of the Galibier and decided to stop at every kilometer marker to give myself some mini goals. This worked a charm, but wasted a lot more time. At this point I was only thinking about getting back before our dinner reservation, but it turned out that I probably should have paid some attention to the cut-off times. It seems that we made that one (top of the Col du Galibier) by less than 20 minutes.

The wonderful, amazing, outstanding descent from the Galibier to the Lautaret filled my heart with hope again, and 50km later we reached Le Bourg d’Oisans and the bottom of the last climb with now something like an hour to go before they would tear our bibs off and not let us climb. Until this point I was thinking that there may be a chance that I would hop in the bus, such was the trauma that 2015 gave me, but we decided to trudge on, armed with a new plan, of course.

Operation Signed Switchback entailed stopping in the shade at every Alpe d’Huez bend that had a sign with a famous winner on it. There are 21 of these, but you knew that already. We actually stopped at nearly every single one, which burned a bunch of time, but also gave us hope that we’d make it to the next one, and eventually to the top. I’ve got no idea how long it took me this time, but I arrived at the finish line NOT wasted, which is a first.

And because I arrived being able to speak words and walk upstairs to my hotel room, it made me briefly wonder ‘what if’. Maybe I’ll save that for another post, but the ‘what’ is just as interesting to me – if you are reasonably well trained and are not carrying too much extra weight, you can do these monster events and FINISH. It’s already a noble goal for something like La Marmotte.

A quick glance at the results tells me that 5700 riders started the event (which means around 1800 DNSes if they sold out). Out of those 5700, 800 or so DNFed, and 700 finished behind Kasten and me.

Special thanks for Veronica and Mark (who had time to finish, eat two meals, shower, and probably have a nap before meeting us at the finish line) for the mini Cokes at the end, and all you wonderful voluteers who kept us wet when we needed it.

And was it hot? Mark (who lives in Nice and has done a ton of these events) said it was the hottest he’s ever been on the bike.

And we never did make that dinner reservation.