Schleck, Voeckler, Contador! O'Riordan

CYCLING: ON TOUR:To cyclists all over the world, Alpe d'Huez is a pilgrimage, and even for the amateurs it's often a race, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

BOURG d’OISANS, July 26th, 2011: Late afternoon and the Alps are hot. We take one last gulp from our water bottles, run a quick check on our brakes, then clip into the peddles. Some tourists watch us from a small pavement café: about the only non-riders in town.

“Good luck,” says one of them, knowing exactly what faces us.

There are several severe and immediate side-effects to riding a bike up Alpe d’Huez, and a savage thirst is chief among them. That’s what happens when you force body and mind up 21 switchbacks, on a road that rises from 800m to 1,860m in a mere 13.8km. The pro cyclists call it the 21 steps to hell, although that hardly does its natural evilness any justice.

Truth is Alpe d’Huez is not the longest or steepest climb in the Alps, but its iconic status in cycling folklore – and particularly the Tour de France – is unrivalled. What usually sets it apart as the ultimate test of the cyclist’s steel is it comes after several other long, hard climbs – usually on the same day. It’s also dead-end up there, and it would be suicidal to ask anyone to race down it.

Our five-day Tour des Alps – also known as the Irish Hospice Cycling Challenge, and covering the 523km all-hilly route from Geneva to Nice – is no different: Alpe d’Huez comes two days in, shortly after we’ve scaled the Col du Glandon, which hits us uninitiated as one of the most severe climbs in the world. By the time we get to Bourg d’Oisans we’ve been in the saddle six hours already, and the legs are three-quarters empty, or indeed, for some, empty. Not all in our 44-strong peloton make it to the top, at least not on their bikes – although they are all up there in spirit.

I ride up some of the way with Paul Edson, from Kilrush, a veteran of the two previous Hospice Cycling Challenges, and known in our peloton as “the goat”.

Like the marathon, it’s not the distance here that kills, but the pace, so we end up riding it alone – or at least in between those passing us in either direction. To cyclists all over the world, Alpe d’Huez is a pilgrimage, and even for the amateurs it’s often a race.

The Italians, perhaps the most obsessive cycling nation of all, have two words to describe the best climbers; the scalatore floats up the mountain; the arrampicatore flies up it. Marco Pantani was an arrampicatore, and still holds the three fastest times clocked on the 13.8km ascent: 36 minutes and 50 seconds in 1995, 36:55 in 1997, 37:15 in 1994. Next best was the 37:36 Lance Armstrong clocked in the 2004 time trial in 2004.

Pantani, we know, consumed industrial amounts of drugs: you do the math.

“I climbed it without ever seeing the road,” said Pantani, after his 1995 stage win. “The crowd just guided me. All I could see in front of me were the fans, who yelled out my name. I ascended like a blind man, in the middle of a sea, that opened up for me.”

The road is a little less crowded for us, but if there is any pleasure – if that’s the right word – then it’s recognising the 21 switchbacks, each one sign-posted, in descending order, and marked with the names of a stage winner. Several names of the Tour riders who just four days earlier had also passed this way are also painted on the road in bright colours: Schleck, Voeckler, Contador!

It’s just before six-o’clock when I make it to the top, or about 55 minutes after leaving the bottom. Climbing is not only a rhythm, but a trance – and it’s hard to snap out of it.

Time for a quick picture, then the only really pleasurable part: the ride down takes about 10 minutes, and that’s with both hands gentling the brake levers.

At the bottom, back at our hotel, Edel Hallissey – a Hospice team leader – has a tray of Stella Artois waiting for us, and we all indulge. Of course there will be a price to pay, and soon we’ll all be realising why so many of the pro cyclists resort to the harder drugs.

Jacques Anquetil, the five-time winner of the Tour, used to take his water bottle out of its bike cage before every climb, and stick it in the back of his jersey. Surely he was carrying the same weight either way? Anquetil reckoned a rider is made up of two parts: a person, and a bike.

The bike is the instrument the person uses to go faster, but its weight also slows him down on the steepest inclines. His secret was to ensure the bike was as light as possible. One quick and simple way of doing that is to take the bottle out its bike cage, transfer the weight to the rider.

The morning after climbing Alpe d’Huez I put my water bottle into my jersey, shortly after we begin the spectacularly scenic climb of the Col du Lauteret, which rolls up to 2,048m. But things go rapidly downhill – in more ways than one – from there: with the obvious exception of the first four years or so, I’ve been riding a bicycle my entire life, and the descent that day, off the Col d’Izoard, was unquestionably the toughest, most challenging and possibly most brutally exhausting thing I’ve done on two aluminium wheels.

That’s what happens when the clear Alpine skies suddenly produce a thunderous downpour – not of rain, but blue chips of ice. Within minutes the shivering and numbness takes over, and the handlebars are effectively out of control. Breaking has little effect, and the back, arms, legs, neck, shoulders and knees all shudder in reprisal.

How do the pros do it? Halfway down it was no good: the bike wanted to go on, but the body cried stop. I pull into the side suffering from what seemed like a possibly fatal bout of hypothermia, and wait for Tim O’Dea in the Irish Hospice van. A few hours later, brilliantly reheated by several glasses of Cote-du-Rhone, we’re already looking forward to Thursday’s stage four – the toughest of the lot.

After warming up on the Col de Vars (straight out of Ski Sunday) it’s on to the Cime de la Bonnette – the highest mountain road in Europe, which is obviously quite high. The highest stretch is at 2,802m, and dwarfs anything any of us had cycled in Ireland. Once again it has us touching the void of our cycling limits – and cursing who on earth had the idea of building such a road.

Eventually, we all make it down to St Etienne de Tinee, and the mere 6km climb to the ski resort of Auron – our stop for the night. That just left Friday morning’s descent into Nice, a sweet 98km towards the warm scent of the Mediterranean. If there was anywhere better in the world to finish a long, mountainous trek on a bicycle then none of us had heard of it.

It’s been a tough, exhausting and unforgettable five days: 523km, and something like 35 hours in the saddle. It’s definitely not for everyone, and was never intended to be. But for those looking for an honest cycling challenge for a good cause then they don’t come any better than this. Look out for details of the 2012 Cycle Challenge on hospice-foundation.ie.