Les Trois Ballons

205km 4300m Ascent (Master course)

My first sportive of the year was the closest Grand Trophee event to Basel, up and down the Vosges mountains starting from Champagney, a small town to the north east of Belfort in Alsace. It starts at 7:15am and when I registered I had the idea of just getting the first train to the event. This would have worked if the event was in Switzerland, however public transport in France was not going to allow this.
Instead, I picked up the mobility car share vehicle at the very early time of 4am with Falk of ChezVelo Tuesday night fame, and drove up the very quiet motorway to arrive at Champagney before 6am, but we were still not first inline to register.
It was obvious early on that the large field of around 2500 riders were from Belgium and Holland, they could have been noisier but seemed to outnumber the French at times.
The race itself started with an extremely narrow track to the start gate, which was good to spread the riders out, but it took me 15mins to get to the start line. Then out along a decent road beyond Plancher les Mines. This town had bike memorabilia strewn by the roadside such as paintings of riders like Jan Ulrich weathered by time, many painted bikes, white and yellow jerseys of various materials proves this town and area has enjoyed celebrating past Tour de France and hosting many other cycling events over the years.

Here we had a sneak look to the right up the steep ascent to Planche des Belles Filles, but we were marshalled to the left and off on a 190km loop before we would have the pleasure to cycle this Alpe d'huez of the Vosges.
The first climb, and first Ballon, was the Ballon de Servance and I found this to be a very cramped climb. So many riders, narrow road I had no room to overtake and was quite boxed in at times. The descent is incredibly rough, anything loose was being thrown off riders bikes such as water bottles, spare tubes, glasses, food, and already the first puncture victims were replacing tubes by the side of the road.
At Thilot the ride splits into the riders on the Senior route turn right, I have to say this was poorly marshalled as there were no signs as to who was going right or straight on, just a few marshals waving to the right. I had to confirm with another rider that we were still on track for the senior course.
A second climb warmed us up after the chilly first drop, then on to my favourite section from Kruth up to the Route du Cretes. This is my kind of gradient, I was matching for speed and chatting with a slim Belgian as we ascended through the forest.
A strong side wind blew at us on the Route du Cretes, tugging at my deep rimmed wheels and forcing the pelotons to ride in echelon formation. The Grand Ballon is reached after 100km, so just halfway! This is the most spectacular scenery on the route, but today I was so happy to get off this mountain, out of the wind and into the warm valley.
We knew Ballon D'Alsace would be another big test, but en route was another hill, Col du hundsruck proved to be more troublesome than one would think for its small size.
Climbing the Ballon d'Alsace we pick up the riders from the half distance event, but they're all going strong (or am I getting slower?) and so theres always a large number of riders on the road to small a small pack between climbs. I found 4-5 riders would work well, we would sweep up many lone riders until when we looked back, there were ~30 riders in our wake, all happy that we were still feeling fresh and heading towards the final climb.

As we turned right this time from Plancher les Mines, a Dutch man said "This is the beast." Its only 6km, but it doesn't let up and after 200km there was nothing to do but hit the bottom gear and grind towards the finish line. It really does feel like Alpe d'huez, the first 3km are painfully steep, then less so but luckily this is all over in a relatively short time. It will be good to see the Tour de France finish here next month, this stretch could be enough to put some daylight between the overall contenders and the chasing pack.

I finished in 8hr 7min, 25.24km/h average speed, so well below the gold standard of 9hr 20min. Falk also had a great ride, 8hr 33min, so excellent considering he only knew about the event on Tuesday night and signed up on the morning!

I finished in position 720th out of 2403, ok I know there are many much faster riders than me, but this seemed relatively low after a decent effort. In Etape du tour last year I finished  890th out of 6415, so this might suggest the field for this event is of higher quality. Also I had a poor start, near the back, so of course the faster riders only get faster ahead on the road. Must try to get a better start position in La Vaujany.

In general a tough ride, 6 climbs so lots of ascent and some very bumpy descents through the forests of the Vosges. It was never going to be as scenic as a high alpine sportive, but its longer and as much climbing as any of them. Chapeau to all who completed the challenge today.

Tips for next time - seem to be all car related:

• Try parking halfway between the finish and the start, theres loads of land and space here. That way, its downhill to the start, and its downhill from the finish!
• Drive via Altkirch, avoid the peage at Belfort which is less than 3 euros but will cause everyone 20-30 min delay.
• Don't take a mobility car on a 200km journey as the price per km is huge!

*** Edit *** next years route (2013) is completely different!