TP ICAP L'etape London 2018 by Tour de France

One thing is certain. Cycling is more fun than writing a blog post about it. As you can see from the date of the previous blog post. It's like a few light years ago! BUT, maybe I will try to do it more frequently from now on. Like once a year, at least. Maybe?

But now, for some completely different. It's L'etape London. Just have to write about it, so I can remember it. Really cool story. Read on!

It just so happens that Tahtejõu tuur (not the fish) was in August this year. Because, you know, Priit. He had other things to do this fall than bicycle in cold weather. Just read his blog starting from about here, really inspiring stuff, for a young lad, as he is. So, instead we had Tahtejõu tuur in hot weather, in August. Maybe I will blog about this one day - there's evidence! But the important fact is that it was done by 10th of August! In other words, after all the biking and prep for L'etape (maybe i should also blog about that?) and then 1000km in Tahtejõu tuur and then doing a 3-day bike tour of my own racing Filter Munamäe RR (40k), Rõuge MTB XXL and then Tartu-Tallinn Gran Fondo there was, like no reason to train for.

No, really. Everyone knows that there are only two possible cenarios for any significant training to happen: either you have a goal or you don't have a family. It's either of the two. Ok, three - if you buy really expensive gear. So, it's three - no family, expensive gear or a goal. Or Spanish inquisiton! So FOUR main reasons, among them, selection of those mentioned above. So, in my case, no-goal, no-training. Middle of August! A bit early to start preparing for next season (unless, of course, you do xco skiing, in which case you are already late).

So I did what any almost sane white man would do - go to find motivation on the internet, especially F5ing the letapedutour.com tab on my browser that had been left open since mid-July, in case any clues about next year's route suddenly appear.
Well, no clues. I did find however that there are some other L'etape rides, which are not REALLY etape rides, but kind of are, at least by name. Most of them are in third world countries nobody knows about like Australia or Mexico, but there were two in UK. I immediately thought it would be cool to do more than 1 l'etape per year  because that's what everyone in Estonia does these days anyway - just think about it:

• What was your main achievement this year?
• I was one of the million people that rode a bike uphill in the summer!
• Well done, Sir, keep at it!

But doing two sounded quite nice and since L'etape London is held on a course TdF riders once did, then it kinda counts, don't you think? Right? Right..? Well, good enough for me. Also, the medal - it did look very nice. Actually better than the EdT one. And not to forget about Brexit. Because, after that, who knows what might happen, right?

So I quickly checked the flights to only find out that flying to London is cheaper than taking a ferry to Helsinki and I signed up! 4 weeks of motivation right there!

Now, fast forward four weeks. Did I mention that the plane tickets were so cheap I was gonna bring my wife? Well, I did. We had everything planned - babysitter to take care of the kids for 4 days. Bike box from my friend Jaak. Hotel booked. Rental car booked and paid for! No, wait, the rental car. Of course, I'm glad I checked the rental car like few days before departure. Because, for no apparent reason, my Small size rental car - had been changed to Mini size rental car just like that! You can't even fit two people in Citroen C1, let alone bike box! Never use Goldcar from rentalcars.com! So, had to upgrade to Normal size from Budget, much better!

So, everything was going swimmingly. The weather was going to be all nice every time I checked all four different weather channels. They even sent me my BIB and stickers to EE mailbox! No need to go and pick up stuff at the expo or anything like that. So well set. See, you are expecting some twist in this story, aren't ya? Well, here it comes. We got in the plane. We got off the plane. We got the rental car. We drove to the hotel on the wrong side, successfully. Everything actually went according to the plan. Except as soon as I sat down to chill and look at weather report and read email there was notice from the organizer - the race is cancelled due to the apparent stormy grade winds! Just as we had arrived in London, less than 40 hrst to go!

I have to say I was pretty dissappointed. Even Sipsik said he has not seen me so dissappointed, like, never. On the other hand, the winds were bloody crazy already on Friday, when we arrived. Could not reach bus door to go pick up rental car, as the wind was blowing me away, because I had suitcase! I could have imagined something along these lines for Sunday in my head. Plus rain. So, it made a lot of sense, but the only question on my mind was - could they have done it perhaps few hours earlier, I had not boarded the plane and would be chilling at home.

As you can imagine, the story does not end there. Since we were in London, we went to eat at Jamie's nearby and scouted the best shopping center in the area. Mind you, it was the first day the new iphone was on sale, see:

Then on Saturday I thought I would go for a ride anyway to get few km in before the rain and wind comes and justify dragging the bike along anyway, but then I needed to find a bike shop for inflating the tire and then I discovered I have no London map in my GPS and by then it already started raining. So instead we did some bad-ass shppping and then I had KFC and beer, ofc for reconsiliation.

And guess what happened then? The storm winds never came! Yes, it was raining cats and dogs in the morning, but it almost cleared by noon, so I decided I will do the race solo anyway. Not with 7AM start and not the big loop originally planned, but certainly small loop or perhaps the middle one, if possible. Unluckily I started perhaps an hour too early, so I was almost wet before 30 minutes was done, so decided to go for the small loop (which was a little bit different - counterclockwise).

The weather did also clear up eventually and was looking pretty nice, for London anyway!

Of course, it wasn't real London, more like Midsomer minus the murders. You'd have to go to a library, to take a phone call, for example:

And with a bit different circumstances I would have loved to do a slightly larger loop. But here I was, I did the small loop exactly as planned, on the correct day! Also to make sure the day counts, I did a few extra laps around the bike track near the Oval. Felt pretty good about it, too.

A week later or so it was announced that the event will be rerun on 21st of October, so participants had to decide whether to join then, ask for refund or transfer the amount to another event. I suggested to the organisers - since I did the race, on actual day: please send me the medal instead. It took them about a month to answer me finally, but answer was yes! And just last week, two months later I finally received the medal in post! Very nice! Thanks!

ps. I am considering going to their other events, especially the Dragon Ride tour, which was the Welsh L'Etape this year, but changed back to Dragon for 2019. Probably not this time, but for 2020 - quite likely!

pps. Got the bike toghether at night and went on to 6.30 PFA morning ride next morning. ofc!

Aand.. one more thing - guess what also happened. Yep, the luggage handlers managed to break the bike box. Found out later. Not badly, but still, broken. Luckily, there is insurance, so now Jaak can buy a new and more robust one :)