Etape Garmin stats

Just had a look through my Garmin stats still quite proud to have finished the ride but still quite annoyed that I wasn't a little quicker.

• Time to the foot of Marie-Blanque (take that as Escot at 54.5km): 01:57
• Coming off the summit at 64km including the walking (so annoying!): 03:01
• To summit of Col du Soulor at 125km: 06:10

So let's say 10 hours was a realistic target at this point. I've got 3 hours 50 minutes to complete just 56km. Roughly 20km of that is downhill and 20km up the little lump called the Col du Tourmalet. And this is where it goes wrong.

I can see that I descend far too slowly off Solour (I knew this even before looking at the stats because I was really suffering from that blasted foot thing at this point). Then on the Tourmalet I am slow which might be expected but what is annoying is that my HR on the Soulor ascent was sitting up at the mid 160s and on the Tourmalet it averaged out at approx 147 bpm. Should have been able to push harder. My official time for the Tourmalet climb was 02:49: I've gone for months thinking that climbing the Tourmalet was a 2 hour job. The reality is quite different though!