I will freely admit I suffer from delusions of past fitness, and supreme confidence in previous endurance levels. So when, 3 gin and tonics deep into the cocktail party, my new acquaintance invited me to cycle around lake Geneva, how could I say no. So, how far is that? The loop is about 180k, but by the time you get to the start, add a lunch stop in, you’re looking at 190-200. Same distance as an ironman bike course, no problem. At the time of our conversation, I hadn’t been on my bike in nearly six years. But I had my road bike in Geneva and that’s most of the battle! Never mind it had two flat tires and a broken computer.
I was able to add ‘bike tune up’ to my ever expanding French vocabulary before heading to my local bike shop—which incidentally is closed, Sunday, Monday and between noon and 2 pm on all other days. I picked up a cycling map of the canton and set off. In the three weeks between getting the bike tuned up and leaving to take care of some work in Seattle, I logged exactly 278k on the odometer. It was fantastic. Winding through the rolling hills of Swiss wine country, darting in and out of France, meandering along the Rhone River—the late summer riding was fantastic.
While I was tapering (not motivated enough to track down a bike) in Seattle the week prior to the ride, a cyclist buddy had quipped “with enough gel you can get through just about anything.” That and eating right the night before— If I have remembered how to do one thing well from endurance events, it’s the nutritional preparation. I figured if I could eat enough pasta the night before, I might just be able to trick my body into believing that this carbo-gorging would elicit the requisite energy the following day.
And so, there I was. Less than a day after returning from Seattle, with pockets bulging full of gels, energy bars and shot blocks, not to mention enough Swiss Francs and Euros to hire taxi anywhere along the route in either country to bring me home, I was ready.
Time and distance are painfully relative on a bike. The first destination town I noticed was the medieval French town of Yvoire, where Ashleigh and I had spent half a day going to and from on a paddle wheel cruise boat, and we weren’t even to our first rest break. We stopped for coffee and pan au chocolate in Evian, France. We ordered café, café aux lait, café crème, tea’ and a renverse. The waiter brought five cappuccinos and a tea—welcome to France!
Our mini peloton set out from Evian at a quick pace embolden with rest and the more rural roads. In an caffeine-induced exuberance the pace quickened to over 40 km/hr—fine for a conditioned athlete, but not so good for a weekend warrior just getting back on his bike. Alarm bells going off in my head, heart rate at an unsustainable level and major leg muscles getting heavy, I watched the riders peel off the front one by one, waiting my next turn to pull the group.
I not sure if I thought that since my body was already at the red line inside the relative ease of the peloton, it would be better on the front, but I enjoyed the views. My breathing increased to match my heart rate and everything slowly collapsed from there.
When the inevitable happened, I found myself sitting in a patch of grass, water bottle in one hand, gel in the other, unable to eat the water or drink the gel…all of this at the Eastern tip of lake Geneva, the furthest point from home.
With no real damage other than a bruised ego and inability to match the tempo, we set out again at a leisurely pace. All of this was fine until we started the 400 meter climb up to our lunch spot, La Terrasse, a swanky restaurant set in the, you guessed it, terraced vineyards, between Montreux and Lausanne. I arrived several minutes later to the white table cloth restaurant better known to the Polo-clad wine-tasting set than spandex wrapped cyclists. The truffles looked amazing, but my calories unfortunately needed to be in a more cycling-friendly puréed or liquid form.
After lunch, the long downhill from the vineyards pushed me to within sight of Geneva, never so happy to be back to town. Before setting out I had wanted to take a quick lap around town to make sure the odometer hit 200 for the day. No chance. Straight home to where the bike has been parked in the cave ever since. I’ll reevaluate in the Spring; it’s ski season now!
