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It was the fact that there was no place to hide for even 5-minutes that done me in so much on those climbs on Sunday. Drone was obviously just following the fast kids upfront as it was gone by the time I crawled through.
Larrau was the other one that got me as it was marked at 2.5km on the card but was way longer and with a few horrible little steep sections.
FourGreenFields-
Larrau
Yeah, I stopped for ages at a cafe at the bottom with Will. I got the last sandwich in the place and had a second round of ice cream and coffee before I bothered to go. It was a steep bastard and real hot on the lower sections. I'd just ride 100m of elevation and then stop, drink, cool off, then go again and then do 200m, etc until I made the top. The average gradients are tricky because if there's any descent in the middle it means the 9% average is actually more like 11% + a drop so the climbing bits are way steeper. Like that second last climb that was hitting 11-15% for most of it and Labays with it's -2% section that meant the rest was steeper than indicated by the average.
hippy
That was tough. Not much cover and I was seeing 36C on the Garmin. They were flying a drone around at the time. Was glad to have found a market open down the road afterwards.