Torino Nice Rally - Day 3 & The End
With a sore body and mind I make the tough decision to end my Torino Nice Rally adventure. Some huge highs and some huge lows in only two days of riding. Do I regret it? No way.
It’s 2am and I’m awake stressing (not an uncommon trait for me). I’ve woken up with a swollen knee and some sharp pain on the outside of my lower thigh. Not ideal when I’m currently in the Italian alps, on my own and am relying on my legs being able to pedal to get me from A to B. Thing is I’m not surprised. I’ve just ridden two of my most demanding days of cycling ever, in a time zone 12hours different to my hometown, on extremely limited training, with an existing knee injury. Oh and I’m sleeping at 2000m above sea level which is 2000m higher than my home in Auckland, NZ so I naturally just feel like awful and my body is obviously not recovering well. In hindsight it probably wasn’t a smart idea to even start this journey. But I’m forever a dreamer.
So where to from here? The answer is clear in my head, I need to change my plans, it would be stupid for me to try to finish the Torino Nice Rally in my current state. Yes I could probably do it but at what cost? I’d be in pain, miserable and would probably wreck my knee to the point where it would likely ruin the next 5 weeks of holiday I have planned with my family. I don’t have the option of riding less each day and extending my trip as I already have a flight booked out of Nice in 6 days time. Feeling deflated (and I admit also slightly relieved that I have an excuse to get the hell out of the alps), I make a plan to ride to Briançon (mostly downhill so my knee should manage), stay there for the night, catch a train from Briançon to Marseille then ride from Marseille to Nice which would be predominately flat along the coast and easy compared to the last couple of days. Decision made, I book a B&B in Briançon and try to go back to sleep. Its 3am afterall….
With only 35km to ride, I’m in no hurry to leave when I wake again later that morning. I’m feeling disappointed but am still excited about going to Briançon and then riding along the Côte d’Azur, places in France I’ve never been before. I have breakfast and head on my way. It’s slightly uphill out of Sestriere and my knee is ok, not great but better than I expected and I just take it super slow. The sealed road turns to gravel, and starts to descend steeply. It’s rough in places but with my front suspension on it’s quite fun and is probably the first proper downhill I’ve done since Torino.
At the bottom of the descent I stop for an espresso in a quintessential Italian village with narrow cobbled streets and old stone buildings with colourful shutters. It’s pretty darn cool. I’m right on the border of Italy and France and the next part of the ride involves a solid hill and through a long tunnel to Montgenèvre, France. I’m still feeling pretty shattered and that combined with my sore knee make the uphill pretty miserable but I make it, stop for a coke and then make my way down an absolutely epic sealed descent into Briançon.
Briançon is the highest city in France at 1,326 metres above sea level, and has a beautiful historical centre. I wander through the town, proud I made it this far but also feeling like a failure for stopping my TNR journey here, especially knowing that hundreds of people doing the route before me have made it to the end. In my head I’ve always thought I was a good cyclist and pretty determined so it is a blow to the confidence that I’ve given up but it also still feels like right decision. I just wasn’t prepared mentally or physically for how hard the riding would be.
I’m fully aware that I have an imagination that often gets the better of me. Having been an elite athlete in the past I often forget that I’m no longer as fit as I was and I still imagine myself flying up hills and feeling invincible. Add to that, seeing other people riding in beautiful locations on social media sets the dreamer in me alight and it is so easy to picture myself doing the same. I know social media can portray a distorted view on reality and the gruelling nature of a situation is often made beautiful through the addition of a shot of the sun rising over a glassy lake or a birds eye view of switchbacks cascading up a mountain side but it’s so easy to ignore this reality especially when feeling a bit stuck in your own life. I think on occasion you have to lean into that dreamer side of yourself and plan the adventure, book the flights and test yourself to really see if that kind of thing is your cup of tea. You might find that it used to be and no longer is or you might find that you really thrive or maybe you find that you absolutely hate it.
The key thing I’ve found is to remember how you felt during and immediately after so you can keep the dreamer in you in check in the future, or, maybe lean into them a little more. For me, I actually don’t regret planning and executing at least the start of my Torino Nice adventure. Sure in hindsight I might have done things a little differently but I still learnt a lot about myself, gained a lot of respect for the people that do complete those kinds of routes and definitely had many moments of absolute awe at the beauty of the little villages speckled through the Alps and of course the incredible mountains. Onwards!
