Race Across France 2500: eight days to cross a country#
If I had to sum this race up in one sentence, it would be this: it truly was an adventure. Wonderfully beautiful, brutally hard, and full of glorious mishaps. 2,589 advertised kilometres, 31,000 metres of climbing, from Lille to Mandelieu-la-Napoule by way of the Atlantic. A race you no longer count in hours but in days, where the question is never “can I ride fast” but “can I start again tomorrow”.
Lille, 10:38 pm#
I had arrived in Lille the day before, impatient to start. Two months after my scratch at the Race Across Paris, I had put enormous pressure on myself again: this RAF 2500 was supposed to be the race of my season, the one that justified the sponsors, the training, the ambitions.
The seventh edition set off from the Btwin Village on a Thursday evening. A 10:38 pm start for me, straight into the night. I set off calm, faithful to the plan, but with the unpleasant impression that everyone around me was going fast. The sensations were not great, and on an eight-day race you have plenty of time to think about that.
The first 251 kilometres to Ocquerre, in Seine-et-Marne, are flat: only 1,640 metres of climbing. The kind of terrain where the average climbs by itself and you forget that the body records everything.
Teeth in my pocket#
The first mishap arrived on the very first night, and it appeared in no scenario.
I eat an energy bar, a very sticky PowerBar. And I feel something give: my fixed dental retainer has just come unglued. There I am, riding through the Picardy night with my retainer in my pocket, unable to chew properly, and seriously rattled. On an event where you have to swallow several thousand calories a day, not being able to chew is no small detail. And there are 2,300 kilometres left.
My brother had planned to meet me at the first base de vie. I handed him my teeth the way you hand over a precious object, and I rode on. There are more conventional resupplies.
Four punctures on a greenway#
Between the first and second base de vie, the route took a greenway. On paper, a kind idea: no cars, smooth surface. In practice, within about thirty kilometres, I punctured four times.
And I was carrying only three inner tubes. You fix the first one methodically, the second with irritation, the third with your nerves. At the fourth, you take inventory of your pockets and grasp the problem: nothing left to fit, and the race moving on without you. A fellow competitor bailed me out, with a simple patch. That solidarity between riders, at the side of a greenway, probably saved my race. I lost time and my calm, which costs more. But anyway: onwards.
Gueugnon, back to my tennis year#
And then the race gave me a gift. The route passed through Gueugnon, in Saône-et-Loire, the town where I had spent a year in a tennis sport-study programme. What a joy to arrive there, years later, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a 2,500-kilometre race.
And the joy did not stop at geography: for one short night, I was reunited there with my parents, my girlfriend at the time and my brother. It was incredible, and thank you. You leave that kind of stop with something better than sleep.
I rolled out of Gueugnon at 2:34 in the morning, into the biggest block of the race: 343 kilometres and 5,501 metres of climbing across the Massif Central.
The deluge, then the Sancy#
Before Clermont, we took the deluge. The real one, the kind that turns the road into a river and every descent into an exercise in patience.
Then the Sancy, and a moment I keep preciously: two friends were waiting for me there, and my girlfriend at the time took a photo of us. An image of three silhouettes among the volcanoes, in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of my race. What a memory.
Aurillac, wrecked#
I arrived in Aurillac wrecked, at night, again. The Massif Central had just invoiced its 5,500 metres of climbing, the rain had done the rest, and there was not much left in the tank.
A short night there too, and she was waiting for me. Seeing her again picked me up, a little. On this kind of race, “a little” is more than enough to get going again.
Towards Anglet: the heatstroke#
The route then drops south-west, Montbrun, Eauze, Gascony, then Anglet and the ocean. And that is where the machine truly seized up: progress was slow, there were no watts left. It had suddenly turned very hot, and I must have picked up heatstroke.
I stopped to put on sunscreen, surely too late. But that lesson had consequences: it is what led me to discover, for the seasons that followed, UV arm and leg warmers. Two years later, in 47 °C at the BikingMan Alpes-Maritimes, that kit saved my race. The expensive lessons are the ones you remember.
Crossing a country from one sea to the other remains, despite everything, an unreal moment: you left a city in the North, and here is the Atlantic. There are then 3,433 metres of climbing to get out of the Basque Country, and the real business begins.
Marie-Blanque by night, and a shared dormitory#
Leaving the Basque Country happened at night, and it ended with the Col de Marie-Blanque, taken from the Escot side: the final kilometres at more than ten percent, brutally steep, the kind of gradient that, one thousand five hundred kilometres into a race, can only be climbed on willpower.
I did not climb them alone. Another participant was riding the same road at the same rhythm, and we tipped over into the Ossau valley together. At Louvie-Juzon, on the eve of the Tourmalet day, the two of us stopped in the same dormitory. There is something very fitting in that image: two competitors in a self-supported race, side by side in a valley gîte, a few hours from the great cols. You fight the same course, not each other.
The Tourmalet#
On the morning of 25 June, out of Louvie-Juzon: 248 kilometres and 4,685 metres of climbing. The Pyrenees.
I climbed the Tourmalet on the fifth day of the race, with more than 1,500 kilometres and 15,000 metres of climbing already in my legs. It is an ascent every cyclist knows by reputation before knowing it from the inside, and in that context it resembles nothing you had pictured. You do not climb it like a col: you get through it like an administrative formality, forbidding yourself from working out how much is left.
And then you reach the top. The sky was clear that day, the clouds stayed down over the valleys, and there was the statue of Octave Lapize, that concrete cyclist frozen mid-effort for decades. You put the bike down, you look, and you understand why you came.
It is the highest point of the race and, for me, its centre of gravity.
The hotels that cost me the race#
On my races of a thousand kilometres or less, my rule is simple: I do not sleep. Over eight days that is obviously not sustainable, and I had set off with a plan that seemed reasonable: a hotel every day, a few hours of sleep, then back on the road.
The plan held. The restarting did not. Every stop stretched out, and what was meant to last three hours lasted close to six, every single time. It is not the sleeping that takes the time, it is everything else: the shower, the meal, a body that refuses to move again. Over a race of this length, six hours of daily stopping quickly adds up to more than a full day standing still.
The winner, Germany’s Lucas Becker, covered the 2,589 kilometres in 5 days, 18 hours and 10 minutes. I took close to eight days, and finished beyond twentieth place. The gap does not show up in the watts. It shows up in the hotels, the punctures, the heatstroke and a dental retainer.
Malaucène: the crêpe that cost a derailleur hanger#
At the foot of Mont Ventoux, in Malaucène, a sudden and non-negotiable craving took hold of me: a crêpe. I stopped, and I ate it, with a scoop of ice cream. Eight days of racing entitle you to a few whims.
It was on leaving the bar that the next mishap was waiting: a customer knocked my bike over, and the fall bent the derailleur hanger. On a modern bike, a bent hanger means a drivetrain that no longer shifts, and potentially a derailleur in the spokes.
Then one of those little chains of solidarity that cycling specialises in kicked into motion. I called the BMC shop in Bédoin, which had a compatible hanger and offered to bring it out to me. Meanwhile, a bike mechanic in Malaucène managed to straighten mine. And at the Sault base de vie, a surprise: Olivier Reynard, cousin of the Chalet Reynard of the same name on the slopes of the Ventoux, brought me a spare hanger anyway. It was wonderfully kind, and very typical of what this sport does best.
Since that day, I always carry a spare derailleur hanger. It travels on every one of my races, and it weighs nothing compared to what it insures.
Apt, the last descent, and Chez Mimi#
Out of Sault on 27 June at 8:58 pm for the final segment: 269 kilometres, 4,137 metres of climbing, and close to twenty-three hours to complete it.
In Apt, she was waiting for me again. And she found me one last time in the final descent, before Mandelieu. It remains a wonderful memory, the kind that keeps you warm long after the legs have forgotten the race.
On the last climb, a wink that readers of my 2023 report will recognise: the pizzeria Chez Mimi, still faithfully at its post at the top of the final col before the line. Mimi being my childhood nickname, the loop was closed, in the truest sense.
Mandelieu#
I arrived in Mandelieu-la-Napoule on 28 June, with 2,504 kilometres and 31,727 metres of climbing on the watch.
My family and those close to me did the rest: my brother and my teeth at the first base de vie, my parents in Gueugnon, two friends under the Sancy rain, messages everywhere else. On an event where the rules require you to travel alone, they are what turns a crossing into an adventure.
I finished a long way down the standings. I never once felt I had missed anything.
