Ex Duris Gloria

For me, the Tour de Force starts today with a bang.  The Tour de Force is a bicycle ride that mimics the Tour de France route but starts one week ahead of the famous pro race.  Participants in the Tour de Force come from all parts of the globe and all walks of life. The Tour de Force (TdF from now on) is a charity event that raises money for  British trust that helps disadvantaged youth.

My first leg of the TdF is the Tour de France Stage 12: Pau to Peyragudes.  The stage is 214 km long and crosses 5 categorized peaks (the hardest climbs).

Looking fresh before the start

The first 100km of the ride today was reasonably flat with some rolling hills but nothing too hard.  The scenery was fantastic.

And we finished the first half with a nice rest stop.  Then the fun began...

The climb to Col de Mente was tough.  It turns out that I did this same climb in 2015 and Strava kindly reminded me that I was a lot faster then!  After a rest stop we continued up to Port de Bales, an 11km climb with an average grade of 6.5%

As the day warmed up I really began to feel it and I decided that given that I had 11 more days of this sort of riding ahead of me it was best to call it a day.

Here is my Strava profile:

And here is a video of my track