Today that should be again such a mountain stage and it became again 205 km and 3,617 meters of altitude, but they are the last mountains, which gave me motivation at the end, because today I was not as good as yesterday.

I still had this film in mind – look at the first blog – which shows the tour in time lapse and here was today’s stage after the first climb a stretch through a beautiful landscape with a high, very large reservoir. Here are a few pictures from this morning. We were also all kind of sightseeing at the beginning because of this, also of course because it is the last stage in the Alps.

Watch this dia show and you get an impression of this wounderful day:

At noon it was over and we started the ascent to Col de Vars at 2.109 m above sea level.

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Here already it ran today not as fresh as yesterday and I had to fight quite nicely to cope with these constant 10/11% slopes. Is just not every day the same. But in the end it was then done around the Col De Vars and I was on top.

*) I would have made so gladly more photos, that goes on a tourist tour, but not with the speeds and distances.

These are then the signs on the road for the cyclists. There you always think to yourself, oh dear, I know what’s coming. But they help mentally enormously, because they show you that you can go further. What do you think that releases for forces, when the sign says, only 7 km left. When I then have to fight, I tell myself 100 times, 7 km to go. Then comes the sign with 6 km, then I say to myself, hey only 6 km left, etc. About so it was today on the way up to 2,400 MüM to the summit of the Col de Isoard.

Ich habe echt jeden Kilometer gezählt, das ging am Ende nur noch mit 8-10% nach oben und das war schwer für mich heute. Christoph hatte mir auf den Weg gegeben, dass es am Ende nur eine Kopfsache sei und mit der beschriebenen Technik konnte ich es genau so bewältigen. Ich wusste auch genau, wenn ich jetzt nachlasse, ist es vorbei mit mir, um dann sofort dran zu denken, hey nur noch 6 km, noch 5 km, … Am Ende dann war ich dann oben und hatte wenig Energie mich zu freuen.

How gladly I would have now put my legs up and a big beer rushed. The tour stage is here to end, but I still have to go about 35 km down to the hotel.

Once there, there was still a celebrity photo with the Tour Devil, who just stood on the road just before the hotel. You surely know him from television.

Now take a look at the altitude profile of this stage. Then I’ll tell you what the best thing about it is.

I have won my Tour de France, ridden everything, mastered everything. Now nothing hard comes, what comes now is easy and no longer worth mentioning, except the parties of course in Marseille, Paris, Limpach.

What this means for me, I’m sure I will only gradually fathom …