My First “Alpine” Climb

For the first time, I was going along a road, and there was a sign saying how steep and long it was; 7.7km at 5.5%. Didn’t seem too steep – similar to Box Hill – but about 4 times the length. How hard could it be?

Col de Femenia

Well, if you’ve never done a long climb, let me tell you it is completely different to any short, sharp hill you’ll find in the UK – particularly in the the searing heat of a Majorcan afternoon. Just try and imagine doing your favourite “hard hill”, but for the best part of an hour, not 10 minutes. Forget all that pony in the cycling magazines about “stand up occasionally to use different muscle groups” – just sit down, keep your breathing at a manageable pace, and grind out the kilometres. Spanish roads helpfully have km markers, so you know how far you’ve gone. Unfortunately, on a climb like this, it takes 5 or 6 minutes to reach the next marker, and, by that time, you’ve forgotten what the last one said. Nothing worse than rounding a corner, seeing a marker poking out of the undergrowth, thinking “here we go, 15km”, only for it to say, somewhat mockingly, “12”.

The top

Next time I’m on holiday here, I’m going to drive this climb, and make sure the km markers actually increase, and by a km each time.

Having said all that, I did do this climb twice (smashed PB on the second climb by about 5 minutes), as the scenery was unbelievably stunning. The first time, I came back down the same climb, but the second, I carried on, up a further climb – out into the unknown – and found myself skirting down the side of a deep, steep ravine round a myriad of switchbacks on probably the most stunning and scary descent I’ve ever done.

Let’s face it, this is what cycling’s really about – all that training, all those winter miles in the fog and frost, all that dull commuting to get the miles in – it’s not really about PB’s and KOMs on Strava (however much we pretend it is), it’s about being out in the open air seeing great scenery that we’ve not seen before and breathing in nice, clean country air. Yes, a great feeling getting to the top of a climb, but it’s all about just being out on the bike.

And boring the wife stupid with tales of PBs, average cadences, maximum gradients and average km/h over a beer when you get back…