The Etape du Tour

Caffeine helps me widens my eyes as I stumble from the front door to the waiting taxi. The first stage of this year's etape is the most hideous sleep-deprived amble, lacking strength, feeling and any joy. Gatwick, boarding card, smile blindly at the security camera, then shoes off, belt off, all my pockets emptied and through without a beep. Then its to the gate. Twenty six minutes, pretty swift from home to gate, all the while being comatose.

Back to Biarritz, former home to black-tied high rollers and now the entry point for etape cyclists. The plane is full of us, hawk nosed and all a little too thin. Tanlines in the shape of Oakleys mark us as not tourists.

It's funny that in two days time we will be joined in suffering as we slog our way up the mountains of the Pyrenees, fearfully looking over our shoulders for the broom wagon to eliminate us. Yet at the gate no one utters even the slightest word.

During the transfer silent hellos are nodded between strangers, gradually the odd word breaks through, and slowly, united by the language of cycling, nervous chatter fills the coach. All the questions are the same: "How bad, how high, how hard, how hot?". We are all stuck on repeat, but repetition brings reassurance: we are all in it together.

I'm itching to ride, to feel the twitch of my bike beneath me. Feel the acceleration as it takes flight and the sheer joy as it blends with my body, locked in our metronome world, the beat in rythmn with the pain in my muscles. Then there is that release on the other side where your body and mind seperate to battle each other, mortal enemies in the war of self-imposed attrition that is the Etape du Tour.