Day 5 – Col d’Aspin (almost)

On Day 5 we decided to tackle one of the Tour classics – the Col d’Aspin, and because the Tour would be finishing reasonably close-by at Bagneres de-Bigorre, we thought we could take in some of the Tour hype on our ride. To get to Bagneres de-Bigorre, we first rode down the bike path to Lourdes for 8 klms and then over the Col de la Croix Blanche for 13 klms. We stopped off at

Sainte-Marie de-Campan for lunch and then headed up the road towards Col d’Aspin. However we’d left our run too late, as the gendames had closed the road with 8 kms to go, because of the Tour. We headed back along the 20 klms of beautiful fast road to Bagneres de-Bigorre which the Tour riders would be doing in another 4 hours and managed to check out the team buses etc at the finishing line, before heading for home. I managed to take a wrong turn on the way, which gave me another 10 klms of secret training, but I still managed to get back to Argeles Gazost to see the Tour finish on TV at the pub. It was a big day. I rode 114 klms in 5 and a quarter hours, ascended 1,433 mtrs and burned 2,044 calories, some of which I replaced in the pub afterwards.