Well, the route was announced 10 days ago and the excitement surrounding the possibility of riding the stage where Tom Simpson passed on seems to suggest it will be a sell out. The previous 2 years haven't sold out probably due to the severity of the routes, particularly 2007 (more later).
Photo right, Etape du Dales May 2008 - fantastic ride 175k / 3750m Yorkshire Dales, under 8 hours.
Sportstours UK, the tour operator has 1,000 places, 100 sold entry-only within 3 hours of going on sale, it was going to be a rush for places. Lobbied mates at our running club for interest, 6 positives, amazing. So it was to be Sunday night, midnight the packages came on sale. Numbers had dropped to 4 plus myself, still not bad for such a commitment, more on the team members later: frosty / tommo / pete starkey and gazbmw. We had selected our package (based at Bollene / Orange) fixed centre package, 3 nights just over £700. The application went off within minutes of them coming available, it was done, now it was a case of wait and see.
It was Tuesday 28th October before I received confirmation, we were in on our selected package, now the hard work would start. I've been doing long rides thruoghout the summer: Etape du Dales / Wicklow 200 (IRL) / TDF Etape Pau - Hautacam / Holiday on the Tourmalet / Spud Riley Memorial and the secret is to keep up the miles thruoghout the winter.... I keep telling myself. The rest of the group have been coming on Sat / Sun rides for the past 2 months up to 50 miles, all athletes (team photo to follow):
tommo (52): running with Chorley Harriers for over 20 years - fells / XC / road (numerous marathons - too many to mention !) / duathlons, road biking (regular Manchester > Blackpool)
pete starkey (54): running with Chorley Harriers for many years - prefers the fells / XC / mountainbiker until recently
gazbmw(40): running with Chorley Harriers for about 3 years - road / tri's and road biking - New York and London Marathons 07 / 08
frosty (48): mountain biker - convert to roads about 3 years ago - veteran of 4 x Wicklow 200's, 2 x TDF Etapes 07/08, Etape du dales 08, Dragon Ride 07, various kilotogo 100 - 125m sportives, running GNRun every year
The team regularly raise monies for their chosen charities by doing these events, most recently at my 50th birthday party which raised over £1,000 for Macmillan and Cancer Research.
So a 35m ride due in the morning, it's going to be cold and a 8.5m road race on Sunday - going to be painful with the hip injury, more on that later.
