ALPE D’HUEZ – Phil Wins the Tour de France – Worst Retirement Ever

I’m Phil Gaimon. I was a pro cyclist for 10 years, but I never got to do the Tour de France. Now almost ten years retired, I’m going back to correct that. We’re headed to tackle the most iconic climbs in cycling, and I’m going to win the Tour because no matter how fast I go up, we’ll going to enjoy the food, the wine, and only suffering few a few minutes instead of 21 days.

Stage 3 is Alpe d’Huez. We’ll tell you what to expect from Bourg d’Oisans, of course have some French bread, and show you the everything you need to know about the climb.

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Attempt: https://www.strava.com/activities/14778233780
café ride : https://www.strava.com/activities/14786970665

0:00 Intro
1:08 Bourg d’Oisans
2:08 Bread segment
2:44 Climb history and recon
5:47 Emily’s Plant Corner
6:55 Phil’s Attempt

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So far we’ve tackled the tormale, climbed Monvon 2. Our next stop on the Phil wins the tour to France series is ald due. This is by far the most legendary, the most famous, the most known, the most iconic of all the tour to France climbs. I’m also going to say it’s the most overrated. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m not saying it’s bad. Don’t click away. I’m just saying there’s better out there. And we’re going to show you why. This series is a Cole collaboration between Worst Retirement Ever and the Cole Collective. And looking at the drone shots he took, I’m going to have a tough time proving my overrated thesis. The Alps are incredible. Oh, come on. That’s an old shot. I’d even see an Ibex until Golibier. I’m also going to have trouble competing against the times of, well, weren’t we even going to call this a KM attempt? I’m Phil Gin. I was a pro cyclist for 10 years, and the dream is the tour to France, but I never got to do it. So now, 10 years retired, I’m going back. I’m going to tackle the best climbs in the tour to France. And I’m going to win the tour because no matter how fast I go up the climbs, I’m enjoying the food, the wines, the culture, and the people. And I’ll put my routes and links to points of interest in the description so you can win the tour to France, too. Thanks for following along. I mean, merci. The town where you’ll base for Al Duz is Borg Dant. There’s really not a whole lot going on here. There was some coal mining, silver way back in the day. The geology is beautiful from the glaciers up there. The whole area of course is super bike friendly. You can get around without even touching the main road on these little cycle paths. Bike friendly doesn’t even do it justice. This place is bike obsessed. The town is full of artifacts. Tour to France memorabilia history. Everywhere you look is a bike statue, a mural. Our Airbnb had a bike cleaning station. Half the stores are bike shops and just about everyone is wearing tights. This vintage shop, get the camera away from I’m not vintage. Rim brace doesn’t make me vintage. Emily and I started with a nice little ride along the river, some accidental gravel, and a cold plunge. Do it. It was a short ride, but enough to work up an appetite. Of course, this trip focuses on the pain of riding bikes up mountains as fast as we can. But we can’t ignore the pain of French bread. Similar to champagne can only be grown in the specific region of France, baguettes have their own rules. For example, the traditional baguette has to be 250 g, 50 cm long, and can only have four ingredients: flour, leavenning, water, and salt. America, of course, has similar rules in that our Subway subs. If they’re only 11 12 in, you can go get your money back. Um, also two cookies, please. This all s gluten, right? Song gluten. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I normally don’t trust a European cookie. The one thing that I believe in American supremacy, but this is delicious. The next morning, I met up with Mike Cotti and our friend Mo, who was in town from Germany for the Marmmont Grand Fondo, which starts in Bordon and finishes on Aldz. They join me for a little climb recon with my effort planned for the next day. The bottom of AldoZ has a nice little parking area for cyclists with water, a pump, and a weirdly high-tech bathroom. There’s also a little gizmo that counts how many cyclists have ridden up, but every time I try to talk about it, either a car came by and messed up the audio or I messed up what I was saying. So, here, you know what? Three takes is way too much for this. There’s also this statue at the bottom which had really been bothering me. I think this guy needs a bike fit terribly. His neck is going to hurt. His seat is too low. His knee has way too much flexion at the bottom of the pedal stroke. That’s why it looks so mad, huh? Doesn’t it? Let’s get out of here. Let’s go ride. It’s almost silly to do recon for a clown I’ve seen 100 times on TV, but I got to do some efforts to warm my legs up and a chance to enjoy the 21 famous switchbacks instead of suffer up them. What makes Altoz a little different is it’s not a mountain pass. Like the road doesn’t connect anything. It just dead ends at the top. There is a village up there which in the summer it’s either deserted or filled with a million bike fans. There’s no in between. It looks different in the winter. This is a known ski destination. It has 84 lifts making it one of the largest ski destinations in the world. And in 1936, this was the site of the first platter lift. Platter lift is when you’re carrying a huge pizza uh to the table. I should have said Rocklet. That’s all right. I’ll be honest. I grew up in Tucker, Georgia, and I’ve never been skiing. Should I try it? It looks like fun, but it also looks like you need a lot of gear that there’s no way I’m getting sponsors for. Also, I break my ankle just looking at this Of course, up at the top, there’s also hiking. There’s paragliding. Plenty of mountain biking. Look, Altoz, beautiful climb. There was a fair bit of traffic. You could smell the the brakes of the cars coming down. But I still stand by the overrated thing. Kind of a very windy highway. It is the most famous climb of the to France. So you really got to do it when you’re here. And it’s not just ald duez. Nearby you’ve got the gibier, the telegraph. Mike, what else is going on around here? You got the glandon quad fur lay. So it’s a bit of a who’s who. But if you go slightly further north, there’s a lesserk known climb, the coder cog. How did you know my nickname in high school? At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering where Emily is. So, as you might know, I’m part of the Fireflies organization, and every year we ride down the California coast in order to raise money for cancer. Last night, we ran into them in town. Today, they did four pretty epic climbs in the area, and their last one is Al Duz, which I’m going to try and intersect and find them. Here we go. There they are. How you feeling? All right. Tell tell them what you’ve done today so far. First one was Glendon, then Telegraph, then Gibier, and we’re at the base of Aldz. If I said ros at the top, recovery rose is in effect. I don’t know when Emily also did a little bit of recon for a different kind of plant corner this episode. [Music] Emily’s corner. [Music] So, the villages Flores was established in 1959 to promote the enhancement of green spaces throughout France. The sign, as you can see, features red flowers against a golden background. And similar to the star ratings awarded to restaurants, the more flowers you get, the higher the designation. So, I really love this. The idea was to incentivize different villages to beautify their areas, planting flowers on their balconies and the common areas. and driving through France, when I enter a village and I see this sign, I get really excited because I know it’s about to be really beautiful. So, the max is four and after the first two, each designation gets higher with the fourth being a golden flower and it’s the highest reward. So, there’s about 4,000 villages right now with some level of this designation. And there’s probably a whole tour that people travel through to go from each town checking it out. I planned the next day for my attempt, but it was super hot out. So, we waited till the evening, killing some time with delicious coffees. And then we checked out the openell store, a famous knife brand that’s based there. I got some gifts, hoping the customs wouldn’t flag me for bringing 11 knives home. They say these are the the bread and butter of French knives. Uh, and they also have bread knives and butter knives. Mo was kind enough to give me a lead out into the start. [Applause] Thank you. Nice job. I was going to need it. Of the four climbs that I targeted for this trip, Altoz is the shortest by far with fast times around 40 45 minutes compared to an hour for Tormal Vontu and Gibier coming up. That means a fast start and a sharp effort. By this point in the trip, the record pollen count that had me half six since I arrived had also been taking dudes out of the doofan. Back home, I’ve been crushing 40-minute intervals at 380 watts, no problem. Today, my legs topped out around 350. Not going to cut it for Optus. My bike setup is the same as it was on Bontto and Tormal. If I go through it and list all of my sponsors, people complain about ads. And then if I don’t, they’ll have a thousand questions about the bike. So I made a reel that goes through it all. Here at the bottom, you’re up against a rock wall doing its best to hold the road up on these steep cliffs. Of course, Aldoz has the 21 famous switchbacks, but despite all the twists and turns on the map, it’s a steady 8.5% gradient. You can let off the gas a little bit going into the hairpin and then accelerate out of it, but I wouldn’t call that recovery. I’ll just say in general if you’re planning a visit, this is the hardest climb just to ride up from bottom to top. But it’s not that bad. I think in general people get intimidated by the leaderboards and the fame of the climb because you’ve seen it on TV. If you just want to experience the ride, it’s nowhere near as hard as say Mount Washington or even Mount Baldi. Another story, of course, if you’re me and want to set a good time. Altos is also the trickiest one to film on. Most of it’s not legal to fly a drone, and because there’s so many cars, Mike and Emily couldn’t really drive next to me much, and passing in general was tricky. Still, they couldn’t help but get some great views. Here’s me passing Dutch Corner. When the tour goes up, this corner is the wildest. I think they’re pregaming with beers for days. They probably camp out, all wearing orange. 99.9% of the time, this climb is super peaceful. On that day, and especially this corner, it’s a rave. Deep in the pain cave, you could almost hear the crowds. [Applause] But today was just the wind. I’ve got to say, it’s super weird being here because I vividly remember watching Lance Armstrong rip up this climb when I was a kid and it was awesome. Which of course hits very different now. It’s like if you grew up listening to Millie Vanilli. I’m grateful that at least those climbs are pre-strava. I think Strava is probably grateful for that as well. They’d have to double their flagging department. But just in general, I dreamed of racing this and this is as close as I’ll get. Luckily, if you’re going hard enough, you don’t really have the mental space to feel emotions or even think at all. I’m sad to report that we failed to see a marmet, which is the local mascot and supposed to be common there. The cows are cute, though. The top of the climb goes right through the village, which we knew would be quiet at 400 p.m. in the summer. Then you go through a tunnel. And I should mention there’s two official finish lines. There’s the top of the climb and the end of the village, which is sort of the logical finish line. Good lord, that is my chin. In all of my filming, my chin has never made the chess cam. I guess I was going hard enough then. I went for the longer one where the tour to France finishes their stage, which is another 1.5 km, including a couple turns that would be easy to miss if I hadn’t done my recon and a little downhill that had a bunch of construction and gravel today. If I was anywhere near the KM at this point, I would have been very annoyed at the seconds this cost me, but that wouldn’t be a problem. After the downhill and some very careful cornering through gravel, I was able to sprint to the line for the camera. There’s the chin again. God, my time put me 29th, which isn’t that impressive, but out of 53,000 on Straa, it’s better than top.1%. So, I’ll take it. Of course, I can’t help but think what I could have done if I wasn’t sick. Or if some pro cycling team had let me do the race 10, 15 years ago when I was much better. Well, I showed them because I’m winning now. Yeah, buddy. Finish strong. That’s it. So, this is the first place podium. By my time, I think I’d be like way down there in those apartments. When I say this climb is overrated, that’s because it’s not the longest or toughest or most scenic or most peaceful, and there’s not much else going on here. When you look up the history of this area, most of the Wikipedia focuses on the tour to France. But that’s also the point. This climb is cycling. This climb defines cycling. And if you love this sport, like Mo said, you’ve got to do it. Thank you, my dear. So, you should absolutely do this climb. Come for a visit. Check out all the other great roads and climbs nearby. I need to come back and climb the cold to I don’t think I could get that KM from your mom, though. Up next, Gibier. See it coming up. Everyone’s Everyone’s first place. We’re all winners. Emily, what do you want for dinner? Duck. It’s okay.