After a group dipping of our toes in the Atlantic, we depart at 09.00am and head up the coast road for a while before turning inland on a selection of beautifully quiet roads. Today we pass through the Basque heartland with distinctive burgundy and white buildings, bullrings and pelot courts. Unfortunately we will not have much time for sightseeing as we undulate our way over the Col De St Ignace (169m) and the Col De Pinodieta (176m) before lunch. The walled town of St Jean Pied de Port offers a perfect lunch stop, and we then cycle on to our first proper climb over the Col D'Osquich (500m). From here the route undulates quite a lot, to the small village of Lurbe st Christau, where the hotel will no doubt be very welcome at the end of this monster first day!
For those of you feel that you have not had enough, there is the option of taking on the western side of the Col de Marie Blanc (1035m) - adds 700 very steep meters of climbing! We get our Raid carnet stamped twice today - we are well on our way!
Click here for details of the ride.
The main feature of today was the continuous heavy rain that fell for much of the day interspersed with short periods of bright sunshine just to make it muggy. The group toe dunk in the Atlantic didn't work out so well as quite a few people decided they didn't want to have their picture taken standing in the pouring rain in a gale.
When I turned my Garmin Edge 500 on shortly before the start it got all upset that it could see many cadence and heart rate monitors and didn't know which one(s) to use, so it disabled them all. This had never been a problem before as I mostly ride alone and the only sensors it would have been able to detect were mine. It seems that you either a) have to enter the sensor numbers manually or b) rescan for the sensors once you have moved away from the crowd so you can see yours again. I didn't figure this out before the group left so I had to ride without the sensors working properly. The heart rate and cadence data in the ride data should be ignored.
The Garmin was to prove an on going frustration mostly due to problems in its "course" function. Any comments relate to firmware version 2.8 which was known to have some issues. Firmware 3.0 released while I was away apparently has fixes relating to courses but I have not been able to try them yet. The trip organisers provided TCX files with navigation information in them for each day of the trip. While this did work on the Edge 500 the TCX files were very large and it took a long time - 10 minutes plus - to load them and be ready to go. By this time half the peleton had already left. Any turn on the route resulted in an "off course" indication to be followed shortly after by a "course found" indication. Overall I would say that the feature worked well enough to be useful but it was frustrating and on one occasion I ignored a genuine "off course" message and climbed 1Km up the wrong mountain - doh!
