I had the opportunity to race the long distance Alpe d’Huez triathlon this past Wednesday, and I figured that I would break down a) how to get there, and b) the race. It is truly an incredible experience, and if you have the opportunity to go, you definitely should. If you want a super complete report with lots of pictures and details about my trip, you can click the link in my signature at the bottom of this post.
a) Details on getting there and such:
To get to Alpe d’Huez from the US: The easiest way to do it is to fly to Paris, and then rent a car and drive. Travelling with a bike makes both of those things tricky. I flew with British Airways, where you get one bag free, and I have a ruster hen house (two bags- one for the frame, one for the wheels). British Airways ended up losing my bike frame bag, and when I got it, it was broken, so I ended up borrowing a bike, but hopefully you will have better luck than I.
If you don’t want to rent a car, you can easily take a combination of the train and bus to Alpe d’Huez. There is a train station at the airport that will take you to Paris. You change stations in Paris (about a 15 euro cab ride), arrive at a town called Grenoble, and then take the Transisere bus from Grenoble to Alpe d’Huez with one transfer. Cost of round trip train ticket: about 80 euros (lots of variability here), 5.80 euro each way on the bus (up and down).
You can stay in a variety of places, but since I didn’t have a car, I stayed at the top of Alpe d’Huez, where packet pickup/bike finish/run start/run finish is. Rates at hotels in the summer are reasonable, I paid about ~50 euros a night for a room with breakfast included. I stayed here. I would highly recommend the place. You can do groceries in town (or in Bourg d’Oisans, which is at the base of Alpe d’Huez, where it will be cheaper and with higher quality food), and if you ask the staff at the hotel, they will let you use their kitchen to cook.
b) Race report and details.
Basic details: Swim 1.3 miles, Ride 70 miles with 14,000 feet of climbing, run 13 miles at 6,000 feet of elevation. The ride is point to point, which means you have two transitions-one by the lake, and the other at the top of Alpe d’Huez.
The swim takes place in a reservoir that is fed by snow melt, so the water is cold- it was 56 degrees on race day. Wetsuits are mandatory. At races in France, they don’t give you a countdown to the swim starting, and their races are mass starts. They give you an x minute warning, and then x minutes later, a gun goes off. No ready set go, just a gunshot. The swim is 2.2km. I swam smoothly, not wanting to blow up at any point.
After the swim, I dried off as much as I could, put on my jacket, and headed out. The published course ride profile can be found here. Here is my strava link. Disclaimer before you judge- the past six weeks I have been living in a pancake flat area, and I haven’t done any climbing. You can probably tell.
The first 15 miles are flat and uneventful. A fair number of riders moved by me. The first climb is at mile 15, and goes until mile 25. Then there is one more climb that is not bad in the middle, and then Alpe d’Huez.
As you move through the towns that are along the course, the residents come out and cheer. Not like the Tour, but still awesome. Kids yelling allez, ringing cowbells, blowing whistles.
Alpe d’Huez is incredible, and incredibly challenging. You can’t really have an appreciation for it until you are on it. There are 21 switchbacks, each of them numbered, and with a name(s) of famous cyclist(s) (some have two names). The first four are by far the worst. The rest don’t get substantially easier, but once you are on the climb, you don’t stop. The last four become more difficult as there is a substantial amount of wind.
After reaching the top of Alpe d’Huez, you run. The run is a mixture of trails and road, with some small hills. The course is three laps, with three aid stations on each lap. The first lap sucked, because I didn’t really know about the hills or where the aid stations were. On laps two and three, I started to feel better.
Coming in with no real goals other than to finish, I placed 115th out of ~1000. There are some incredible athletes out there who were crushing the bike.
I have to say that the race was one of the best that I have ever been a part of. The aid stations were well staffed and had plenty of food and drink. The post race food was good.
Repeating myself-if you have the chance to do it, take it. You can spend several days in the Alpes, or see stages of the tour before you make your way to the race.
http://www.savagesentiments.blogspot.com/
http://www.tricoachmartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teameverymanjack
a) Details on getting there and such:
To get to Alpe d’Huez from the US: The easiest way to do it is to fly to Paris, and then rent a car and drive. Travelling with a bike makes both of those things tricky. I flew with British Airways, where you get one bag free, and I have a ruster hen house (two bags- one for the frame, one for the wheels). British Airways ended up losing my bike frame bag, and when I got it, it was broken, so I ended up borrowing a bike, but hopefully you will have better luck than I.
If you don’t want to rent a car, you can easily take a combination of the train and bus to Alpe d’Huez. There is a train station at the airport that will take you to Paris. You change stations in Paris (about a 15 euro cab ride), arrive at a town called Grenoble, and then take the Transisere bus from Grenoble to Alpe d’Huez with one transfer. Cost of round trip train ticket: about 80 euros (lots of variability here), 5.80 euro each way on the bus (up and down).
You can stay in a variety of places, but since I didn’t have a car, I stayed at the top of Alpe d’Huez, where packet pickup/bike finish/run start/run finish is. Rates at hotels in the summer are reasonable, I paid about ~50 euros a night for a room with breakfast included. I stayed here. I would highly recommend the place. You can do groceries in town (or in Bourg d’Oisans, which is at the base of Alpe d’Huez, where it will be cheaper and with higher quality food), and if you ask the staff at the hotel, they will let you use their kitchen to cook.
b) Race report and details.
Basic details: Swim 1.3 miles, Ride 70 miles with 14,000 feet of climbing, run 13 miles at 6,000 feet of elevation. The ride is point to point, which means you have two transitions-one by the lake, and the other at the top of Alpe d’Huez.
The swim takes place in a reservoir that is fed by snow melt, so the water is cold- it was 56 degrees on race day. Wetsuits are mandatory. At races in France, they don’t give you a countdown to the swim starting, and their races are mass starts. They give you an x minute warning, and then x minutes later, a gun goes off. No ready set go, just a gunshot. The swim is 2.2km. I swam smoothly, not wanting to blow up at any point.
After the swim, I dried off as much as I could, put on my jacket, and headed out. The published course ride profile can be found here. Here is my strava link. Disclaimer before you judge- the past six weeks I have been living in a pancake flat area, and I haven’t done any climbing. You can probably tell.
The first 15 miles are flat and uneventful. A fair number of riders moved by me. The first climb is at mile 15, and goes until mile 25. Then there is one more climb that is not bad in the middle, and then Alpe d’Huez.
As you move through the towns that are along the course, the residents come out and cheer. Not like the Tour, but still awesome. Kids yelling allez, ringing cowbells, blowing whistles.
Alpe d’Huez is incredible, and incredibly challenging. You can’t really have an appreciation for it until you are on it. There are 21 switchbacks, each of them numbered, and with a name(s) of famous cyclist(s) (some have two names). The first four are by far the worst. The rest don’t get substantially easier, but once you are on the climb, you don’t stop. The last four become more difficult as there is a substantial amount of wind.
After reaching the top of Alpe d’Huez, you run. The run is a mixture of trails and road, with some small hills. The course is three laps, with three aid stations on each lap. The first lap sucked, because I didn’t really know about the hills or where the aid stations were. On laps two and three, I started to feel better.
Coming in with no real goals other than to finish, I placed 115th out of ~1000. There are some incredible athletes out there who were crushing the bike.
I have to say that the race was one of the best that I have ever been a part of. The aid stations were well staffed and had plenty of food and drink. The post race food was good.
Repeating myself-if you have the chance to do it, take it. You can spend several days in the Alpes, or see stages of the tour before you make your way to the race.
http://www.savagesentiments.blogspot.com/
http://www.tricoachmartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teameverymanjack
Last edited by:
beachedbeluga: Aug 1, 14 12:58