Geneva - 2 days before the start.

Here we come and what have Leah (my wonderful, long suffering partner), Peter Hope (a friend of ours from Amsterdam who i convinced this was a good idea, so he joined us) and myself got ourselves in for. Last year I did this event with the Guadalupanos team from Mexico, and it was great fun. Last year this was also my first 7 day stage race, so it was all about survival, and taking it easy, and i rode the back half of the event a lot harder than the front half. This year, I will be riding a little harder, although day 3 has everyone concerned, and enjoying it with Leah.

What does Leah think? Coming out of the 7 day Viking Tour of Norway, all i have managed to get is "and we did this on holiday" or "we are paid someone for this...". There were other comments as well, and they usually included liberal usage of 4 letter words and they are usually directed at me, so we will not worry so much about them. Fortunately, she has not studied the road book very closely (it was emailed to her and sometimes she does not check these things as i do), as i am not sure she would have got on the plane with me. Little does she know....

What is the Haute Route-Alps? It is a 7 stage + a prologue road cycling stage, from Geneva to Nice over the Alps. Beautiful, brutal, challenging and a holiday. It is one of three Haute Route sportives. Haute Route-Dolomites, Haute Route-Alps and Haute Route-Pyrenees. Each one hunts out the hardest, steepest and nastiest climbs in Italy, France and Spain, then strings them together into a 7 stage road cycling race/sportive. Each stage is timed, and the back markers may get cut if they do not finish in time. More on the logistics later in the week.

A few stats:

910km, and 21,000m climbing
The "easy" day is uphill time trail up Alpe D'Heuz. For the non cyclists out there, Alpe D'Heuz is a legendary climb that strikes fear into cyclists, and has featured numerous times in the Tour d' France. The only thing in thr area that is worse than the Alpe D'Heuz is Mt Ventoux, and we do that 2 days later.
About 500 cyclists
The longest day is 187km
The biggest climbing day, stage 3, has 4,900m climbing, and goes over Col de la Madeleine, then Col Du Glandon before finishing with a climb of Alpe D'Heuz all in 135km. Looking at the profile there is NO flat. You are either going up, or down...

You may ask why we are doing it. A challenge, a seasonal goal, and I get to ride my bike each day is what I say. I will ask Leah this question before during and after the race, and I am sure it will add some color to my writings.

Each day I will try and get a post out of how we all got on plus any stories from the road, as I am sure there will be.

Tomorrow we build our bikes up, and go for a short ride to wake up the legs after traveling and taking it easy this week. Saturday we have the prologue, and more to come after that.

Until then, I will leave you with the map of where we are going, the saw profile of the 7 days, and a couple of pictures of Leah and Peter.