Have you ever done the the Galibier in March while the forecasts are telling you it’s heavily snowing in the Alps and every ski fanatic is going crazy on the pistes? Last fridaynight after I finished work I climbed the Galibier from the southside!
After a hard day of work it’s always good to free your mind. So together with a colleague of mine I went to a gym that had a special RPM event: climbing the Galibier. A big videoscreen placed right in front of the RPM bicycles and a video taken from a motorbike had to give us the idea we were climbing the Galibier. It was a nice change doing a RPM training like this because the scenery was beautifull. But the music, oh my god the music. The music was selected especially for this film and it was so incredibly booooring, so.. not inspiring. Music is an important part of RPM, there is not much else then the music that will take your mind of the dull and contiguous cycling while staying in exactly the same place, not moving one millimeter, not seeing some great views or feeling the wind in your hair. It can really motivate you and make the RPM sessions more “funky”. And we were definitely not swinging up the Alpe on some groovy tunes here. A little dissapointing also was the fact that we (the film) did not reach the top, it went through the tunnel. The road to the top was probably still closed because it was filmed early in the spring, I think in 2004 or 2005. And the guy who lead the RPM session was so dull, and he did not know where the end of the movie was so he was somewhat surprised when we were finished going uphill. Normally you build up your race to a climax, no climax this time. Also the Queen song “We Are The Champions” that was supposed to lead us to the top (yawn, yawn) finished at least one minute to soon. Yes, you could say I am a little sensitive when it comes to music.
You wouldn’t say it after hearing my complaints, but I enjoyed it (I’m so good at seeing things in a postive way). It was fun to see that every steep turn in the film you tend to accelerate and you want to stand on the pedals. While going downhill in every bend you could see people moving their body to the left or to the right. I had a very pleasant training, and this was my 4th RPM training of the week. So after two hours of cycling we ended up in Valoire, the village between the Galibier and the Telegraph, and we took a hotel because it was getting somewhat late. And the next day we could ski and enjoy a blue sky and the sun with the knowledge that I now climbed the Galibier from both sides. Isn’t that a great way to start your weekend?!
Leave a Reply