I went for a bike ride a few days ago that I will never forget it.
We left at 7 in the morning to get to “la route du volcan”. Once on the road, we left the car halfway to our destination and started riding the bikes. The weather was nice, the top of “le piton des neiges” was not yet covered with clouds, I was wearing an extra jacket because it was cold. The bike ride started with an easy pace, I tried not to go too fast because I knew that we had quite a long way to go and I wanted to keep my strength. I found out that I started having difficulties as soon as the road tilt reached a certain level. I was riding my bike while being on the fourth speed of the bike in the middle plateau but I quickly found myself on the first speed in the largest plateau. I was not used to riding a bike for long distances, I tried to ride as slow as possible to not tire my legs too fast: I was going so slow at some point that I had a hard time going straight.
My legs were hurting so much in the hairpins that I had to stop at each curve to rest. I gave myself goals to reach during the ride to help me go forward. The few times I have been on a bike I was either riding in Paris or going down “le Maido” on a mountain bike. I felt a great deal of satisfaction when I reached “le pas de sable”, there were only a few hairpins left separating me from the place I like the most on this earth: “la plaine des sables”. We had a short boomerang session, it was everything I needed to relax after the suffering. Throwing boomerangs in “la plaine des sables” is the third thing I like to do most on this island after scuba diving and mountain bike hiking. I caught the boomerang twice, lets hope I will catch it even more next time. We concluded the bike ride to reach “le pas de bellecombe”, we were on a dirt road and had to breathe all the dust that each car passing us by was raising while we were avoiding potholes.
The way back was easier as there was more down than up but the climb up from “la plaine des sables” was tough. The ride to “le pas de bellecombe” had killed my legs and I didn’t have the energy to climb that kind of road without stopping to rest at each curve. I found out on the way back that I could actually ride without any problems when the tilt of the road was light but my strength went very fast when the tilt increased. When I was speeding down the road I couldn’t stop myself saying: I rode all that up! The clouds started to gather and a light drizzle started that was quite refreshing. Of course the drizzle turned into rain and I had to slow down to avoid getting out of the road. The change of the strength in the rain made me feel like I had stepped through an invisible door. I was feeling like I was close to the end of the ride and remembered that we had started with a slope, the ride had to end with a rise! I remembered the rise to be short but it just wouldn’t stop, I don’t remember how many times I had to stop to relax my legs. At some point I think I even stopped every 5 or 10 kicks.
I eventually reached our starting point, the whole ride was 32km long and had roughly 300 meters of positive elevation.
La suite!
