Tour de France Stage 19 - A Killer Stage in the Pyrenees

It's time for the final day in the Pyrenees mountains for the TdF riders and support personnel, and it should be a wonderful and challenging day. It actually turned into a good idea to have that lighter, transitional stage yesterday. So many of the riders were in really poor shape after the high peaks of Wednesday's stage or the various crashes, bumps and bruises they had experienced over the past 2-1/2 weeks. Having a "lighter" stage allowed a bit of physical recovery before hitting the three massive peaks of today's ride. We're getting towards the end of the 2018 Le Tour de France, and bodies have been tortured and pushed to their limits. 

Today we're gong up and down over steep mountains once
again. That large peak in the center is the storied and
legendary Col du Tourmalet - a beast of a climb. 

Today we are back in the high mountains, and just look at that profile! That huge HC peak in the center is the storied Col du Tourmalet, first added to Le Tour de France in 1910. The road across the  mountain was only a packed dirt goat track until Le Tour payed 3000 francs to have it paved. Le Tour de France quite literally made Col du Tourmalet passable and it's been used by the Tour 78 times before today. In the history of Le Tour de France, it's the most frequently used peak, either west to east or east to west. It's the only way to get through that part of the Pyrenees. The gradients for the last few km before the summit are killer - 9% from one direction, 9% with spots of 10% from the opposing side. At the top of the peak is a memorial to Octave Lapize, the first Tour de France rider to conquer Col du Tourmalet. 

Riders get a warning sign on the Col du Tourmalet, but I suspect
they'd rather not know. 

The memorial to Octave Lapiz features a bicycle racer statue
and a small building. 

Here you see Octave Lapiz himself, going over the Col du
Tourmalet in 1910. He hated the peak so much that he called
the race organizers "assassins". 

For today, the Col is only in the middle of the run. The race will end up in Laruns, after another Cat 2 peak and a second HC classified mountain, the Col d' Aubisque. Of course, there is also that small detail of a Cat 1 climb up Col d' Aspin just before Tourmalet. Four major peaks today, not counting the two Cat 4 "hills" at the beginning of the stage will be punishing. Today's ride is killer, and the riders have to get through this final day in the mountains before tomorrow's individual time trial and Sunday's ride into Paris with the final sprint around the Champ. 

Meanwhile, life goes on here in the Frozen Northlands. We're having an unexpected cool snap which is making DH's backyard project schedule a bit easier. I have another large pile of dirt in my front yard, this time it's black dirt which he's spreading across the open areas of the backyard. Last night we picked up 10 rolls of sod and lots of grass seed and today he'll be placing the sod on the packed dirt banks to shore those up before we lose them to erosion. He'll then spread grass seed over the black dirt on the flats. Have a wonderful Friday and enjoy this final mountain stage of Le Tour de France 2018. I'll be back tomorrow!