Tuesday, July 1st, 2008, 6:51 am
Monday 30th June 2008
Durning our last day in Provence we cycled back to the pretty village of Malemort on Sunday 28th, to join the celebration of the harvest with the 16th Annual Malemort Cherry Festival. Cherries are pretty big business in this neck of the woods and any sq metre which isn’t covered in vines has a cherry tree on it. They are completely gorgeous too by the way.
The festival was a mixture of clowns, fancy dress competitions, local “vide grenier” (car-boot sale) and general bonhomie to all. We were mightily impressed with the 12 o’clock “le verre de l’amitié” where the townspeople has laid on free lunch and drinkies for all! Rather nice rosé wine and pizza, with plenty of crisps nuts and nibbles to soak up the alcohol. They even produced jugs full of the local aperitif which was rose wine with cherry liqueur in it. Jug after jug of wine and “kir” appeared, and it was free to all who turned up. Such generosity warmed out hearts (and our tummies!).
We also bought and consumed an entire family sized home-made “clafoutis” which was rather yummy. It’s a traditional French desert made with an egg custard batter and with cherries in it. I’ve always been rather sceptical about the shop-bought ones, but the home made one was lovely!
Back for a plish in the pool and happy hour at the pool side bar at 4p.m.Firt drink on the house (very nice thank you campsite owners!) so we had a “pression” (draught lager) each and played cards in the shade.
Monday 30th June
We had set our alarms again for 6 a.m. to get our running session done before the heat of the day was upon us. Mine was Week 5 session 1, and a supposedly easy 30 mins. I am really quite surprised that I am over half way through with the training programme already. I have to say thought that I was surprised by just how hard I found it.
I think all the exercise of the previous week is catching up with me. We haven’t had a day off at all where we haven’t cycled less than 10k and every other day has been quite a bit more than that INCLUDING the running sessions on alternate days and it’s no wonder it’s starting to catch up with me. My legs felt tired and heavy right from the start of this session and I was just grateful I didn’t have to do 45 mins today. What a difference in my performance from 2 days ago when I felt really fresh and energised. I must remember that when I’m having an off day like this it’s not usually a reflection on my ‘crap-ness’ as a runner but just sometime due to the fact that we feel a bit stiff and tired. We all have off says but then we all have good days too and they more than make up for it.
Looking at my route http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2037206 I actually ran quite far for my 30 mins (2.8 miles) – maybe that’s why I was feeling the burn!
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holiday, running, cherries
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Saturday, June 28th, 2008, 6:09 am
Friday 27th June
We had an early start in to Carpentras on Friday to try to avoid the worst of the mid-day and afternoon heat. The market was on and was absolutely huge, but then the town is the capital of the Ventoux Comtat Vennaissin area and the whole town was thronging. Having ambled through the streets in the cool and the shade, we stumbled across a convenient wi-fi hotspot in a shaded park outside the Maison du Pays and posted our blogs and stuff. We then wandered up to the bar & restaurant Les Palmiers for a lovely lunch. The waiter there had to be one of the most obnoxious and self-important people we have even come across.
His attitude of arrogance and superiority towards everyone (customers and other staff alike) was so blatantly indiscriminate that it reached the point of Fawlty-esqe farce! I now know the French for “how do you manage to work with this tosser”. And we spent a happy hour and a half over lunch and a demi carafe of rosé people watching and watching him in particular. It was almost a side-show.
We accidentally incurred his wrath from the word go, when seating ourselves at the only available table in the shade, which happened to be set for 3 people. Of course he moved us immediately to a smaller table for two (which has a reserved flag on it, which is why we didn’t sit there in the first place) and muttered under his breath about people not doing what they were told. The piece de resistance was when a Dutch couple sat in a prime 2-seat “eating-only” terrace table right in front of the place. He immediately confronted them as to whether they would be dining or just drinking as that particular table was only allowed for diners. They confirmed they wanted lunch, at which point he admonished them for daring to sit down without first asking his permission. “Only we are allowed to decide where you sit” he declared!!! Priceless!
Saturday 28th June - Week 4 Session 3
This morning I ran further and for longer than I have ever run before. 4.4 miles in 48 minutes – woohoo! My route was http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2028545
The session called for 45 mins, which I seemed to manage reasonably easily (very surprised) so I carried on for another 3 minutes, at which point my hip really started hurting quite badly. So I had to stop!
I’m really pleased though that I wasn’t hugely out of breath and my fitness really seems to have improved immeasurably. I’ll never be an amazing speed merchant but it seems I do have the stamina to carry on exercising after quite some time. The only trouble of course is my crappy knee and hip joints which it seems are not built for the same stamina as my cardio vascular system. Too many years abusing them by being overweight, and it seems they were “loose” to start with so that high impact exercise like running doesn’t do them any favours.
I can hope however that I can build on my muscle strength and improve my overall condition. I can see 10k actually being something I CAN achieve.
Running in the early morning like this (7 a.m.) is really very nice indeed. Except for when I was going eastwards towards the rising sun (and couldn’t see a thing!) the views across the countryside were beautiful. Vines and cherry orchards as far as the eye could see, surrounded by Ventoux on one side and the “Dentelles” on the other and the Luberon in the distance covered in early morning haze. It was stunning scenery and a real treat to see it in such temperate weather when I was virtually the only person around.
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Friday, June 27th, 2008, 4:40 am
Yesterday, having completed my 30 minutes running in the morning, (after the abortive attempt of 4 days previously) we were feeling energised and raring to go. We planned a 17-mile round-trip ride to the incredibly pretty hilltop village of Venasque. http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2028607
Self-styled as “one of the most beautiful villages in France”, with its narrow cobbled streets, pretty houses, ancient church and stunning views over the valley from its ramparted situation, it was like stepping back in time. And of course, being at the top of a VERY steep climb, again something of an achievement to reach by bike in the first place!
The ride to Venasque was pleasant enough and in the cool of the early morning, not at all strenuous. Not the same could be said for the final climb in to the town however. 1.5k of about 1 in 10 again, took all our remaining strength and stamina to manage. We celebrated with a slap-up 4 course lunch at the Restaurant des Remparts http://www.hotellesremparts.com/. It had the most beautiful balcony and “terrasse” overlooking the stunning surrounding countryside and watching the swallows swooping over the vineyards and cheery orchards was quite lovely.
The ride home wasn’t quite so easy. At 2 p.m. and after half a litre of rose, I was considerably worse for wear! Thank heavens for the pretty village of Malemort on the way home and its fountain and shaded, communal water troughs! In days gone by these would have been used for the local townswomen to wash clothes and for travellers to tie up and water their horses. Yesterday it was used for me to have a paddle in to try to cool down!
Finally got home after a long and hot ride, and got straight in to the pool and downed about a litre of chilled water! Just in time for a wine tasting session organised by the campsite owners and a lovely relaxing evening.
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cycling, heat, venasque, malemort
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Thursday, June 26th, 2008, 10:22 am
This was scheduled for Sunday 22nd June – our first day in Provence and 2 days since my previous run. I had mapped a handy route covering the last 3 miles of our 900-mile road journey from the outskirts of Carpentras to the campsite itself: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1970679 , thinking I would be itching to get some exercise after 2 days of driving and sitting.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t bargained for the hills and the HEAT!
We arrived at my starting point at approximately 4 p.m. French time and partner dropped me off and drove on to the campsite. The temp was pushing 40°C but I spotted a sprinkler watering a horticultural roundabout display & stopped and soaked myself to cool down! If there had been a bit of shade – and a flat road I might have made it, but unfortunately, while g-mpas is a fantastic tool to plan routes in flat terrain, unless you know the areas really well, hills don’t show up from an aerial photo!
I had driven down this road a few times before but of course you don’t really notice gradients when you are driving. You DO however feel them when you are running in blistering heat and sunshine!
The first 1k was pretty much all uphill with a fairly steep gradient (I’m guessing 5%-8%) and after 10 mins of running I was getting pretty hot. After 15 mins of it, I was thinking I’m not going to make 30 mins and after 16 mins I had almost lost the will to live!
I stopped running then and returned to a brisk walk – still in blazing sun (I couldn’t cross to the shady side of the road as there were no pavements and needed to make sure I could see the oncoming traffic in front of me. Walking on the right with traffic approaching from behind would have been far too dangerous – French drivers take no prisoners!
I hoped 4 mins walk would give me back the muscle power I needed to carry on, but sadly I could only manage a further 2 mins running before thinking I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. At that point my brain went to a VERY black place indeed and I got really quite scared. I felt like I wasn’t even going to be able to walk the rest of the way (only about 1.5k) let alone run it. I had visions of myself passing out in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country with no way of contacting partner to tell him what had happened! The heat was so intense that I couldn’t even think straight and had already cancelled my planned cycle ride up Mont Ventoux on the Tuesday and any thoughts of any more running while on holiday.
I managed 4 more minutes of running over the next 1.5k to the campsite and the site of my lovely camper van nestling next to the beautiful vineyard next door and the swimming pool behind it was never so welcome. I was shaken, scared and my self-belief in my own fitness had taken a severe psychological battering. The pool and cooling down was all I could think of.
A couple of days later I was thinking more rationally and restored some of my own self-belief by cycling up Mt Ventoux – a notoriously difficult pro-cycling climb, which even killed poor Tom Simpson in the 60’s.
Resolving only ever to do ANY running or cycling in the cool of the morning, I set my alarm for 6:30 this morning (26th June), chose a different and slightly flatter route and even though I was still a bit achy from having climbed the mountain 2 days ago, completed the 30 mins running without the horror story of 4 days ago! No sweat! Well, LOTS of sweat actually - but my faith in myself is slightly restored and now I face the next challenge of 40-45 mins in 2 days time. I’m not particularly looking forward to it though, as I still feel a bit stiff!
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Wednesday, June 25th, 2008, 5:20 am
Bonjour from France BTW - as Mellers naughtily hijacks a Wifi signal -
My challenge was to climb Mt Ventoux:
http://messageboards.ivillage.co.uk/iv-ukdfwwatcher/?msg=17606.13
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do this. We’ve ummed and ahhed at home as to whether we were biting off more than we could chew and although we’ve put in a bit of hill training at home (as well as improving our overall fitness with running), we don’t have any 2000m high mountains to practice on and having ridden up and down the same hill 3 or 3 times in succession really doesn’t prepare you for just how hard it is!
It also doesn’t prepare you for the heat. I don’t deal well with extreme temperatures at all and have been rather struggling ever since I got to Provence with doing anything except getting in to the swimming pool after about 1 pm. The heat is astonishing in its severity. The key it seems is getting everything which requires any effort out of the way before 10 a.m. This often means (in the case of the local farmers and markets etc) starting most tasks at 6:30 a.m.
So we set our alarms for 6:30, had a coffee and got our supplies together and drove our camper van out of the campsite as the doors opened at 7:30. 45 mins later, we had reached the halfway point (base camp) for our “support vehicle”!, the welcoming area of Chalet Reynard and having loaded up with more water than you could shake a big stick at and sun cream (factor infinity), we set off to freewheel DOWN the mountain over the other side to the town of Sault.
This was the easy bit. We had chosen to do it this way, so that we would have our camper van available towards the top of the mountain for a rest if it came to it and more water (and even food if we should “bonk”). After all 3 hours is something of a marathon endeavour and with neither of us having done anything like this before, we wanted to be prepared.
By 9 a.m. we reached the starting point and having taken photos of ourselves with signposts of the town to prove we were there, set off on the long and arduous climb. The outskirts of Sault are amazingly pretty with lavender fields surrounded by immense quantities of wild flowers, and the first 19 km up to Chalet Reynard was mostly forest with plenty of shade. At that time of the day the heat was manageable and I wasn’t feeling too bad at all.
My fitness which had been improved by running over the last year was also not a problem and over the steepest bits when I found myself getting out of breath, I soon managed to recover when the gradient lessened slightly. Of course this being Ventoux, there was no respite form the actual climb itself and no recovery freewheeling that you can get on other mountain climbs, but I was soon feeling the strain in my muscles. Not having done any muscle building work, I am fit, but not particularly strong and after only 7k of climbing was feeling pain in my quads which would only increase. Rather handily, there are kilometre markers all the way up the mountain so that you and the dozens of other cyclists that seem to climb the mountain each day can see exactly how far you’ve been and hw far it is to go. Seeing one of these little “bournes” every km was a really welcome sight and missing one every so often would lead to and even greater sense of satisfaction when we realised we had done 2 km since seeing the last one!.
After 16k the steepest bits of the portion from Sault to Chalet Reynard were behind us and the last 3k to our camper van were frankly a doddle! That’s when we stopped, refuelled, shed the used water bottles and braced ourselves for the final punishing 10% gradient of the last 6k across the stark lunar landscape of the peak.
Boy was it tough. I mean REALLY hard. Really steep unforgiving and of course, by that time of day – HOT. It had taken us 2 hrs 20 mins (with plenty of stopping to take photos and have drinks of water) to do the first 19k, so we were approaching noon and temperatures were soaring. Also, partner was really feeling the pain in his legs and we stopped many times on that final climb. Incredibly the last 6k, took us 1 hr and 20 mins and punching the air as we rode over the summit I’m pleased to report that we made it.
3 hours 50 mins overall (with, as I mentioned, lots of stopping! Lol!). An achievement in itself and perhaps next year, we’ll come back and attempt the more rigourous climb from Bedoin – and maybe try it non-stop!
(I'll work out how many points that earned me later)
A Bientot, mes amis.
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exercise, cycling, climbing
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