Special Edition: Racing the Haute Route Alps - The Arrival - Meet the Drunken Donkeys
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Welcome to day zero of our Haute Route coverage. The day before the excitement begins with stage 1 tomorrow.
This is our first daily report and official kick-off show.
Matt and his team are assembled and ready to ride. In this first preview of the Haute Route Alps, Matt introduces us to the gang and sets the scene for things to come.
Be sure to check out our daily video breakdown of the day, every day, and follow us on all of our social media platforms for coverage of Matt's Journey.
We'll have plenty of insights and observations from Matt along the way.
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:29
Hi there, Matt Dixon, and we're going to call this day zero of our Haute coverage. Yes, here I am in hotel Westminster on the Promenade --- Nice. And literally, just hours away from setting off on this adventure with 600 other cyclists 800 kilometers of cycling through the Haute Route - it's going to be well, let's call it an adventure. But it's been an adventure up to this point, I promise you. The seven of us arrived from around the world into Geneva had a very nice dinner to welcome it but we were also met with the rain, torrential rain. So we decided to crack on we skipped out on our planned early morning ride and instead we started to venture on down to Nice, of course, that involved quite a bit of packing of the van seven big guys plus in our support vehicle and team from La Fuga. We got into that van seven bikes luggage for 20 because of course we always have to overpack and some rather sweaty men as well. It was a little bit cramped but it was all good seven or eight hours heading down to the --- but of course, us being so paranoid about our hydrationals we cracked on and we had rather too many pee stops along the way of course dragging the journey help a little bit as we went. Finally, we got down to Nice about 4:30 In the afternoon, the sun was out. Promenade des Anglais, very, very busy. We got into our bicycles, and we were very lucky to go on a really nice ride about an hour and 40 minutes, ended up doing about 700 meters of climbing all of course, smoking jackets nice and fluid. We've got some views of Cap-Ferrat and all of the --- and we all stayed safe until one of our team. Oh, poor Chris had a little bit of a spill. So we've had one crash so far. And here the ratings on the scale and that public embarrassment and shaming nine out of 10 promenade --- physical damage, that was a zero that was very, very lucky. And on the Baxter scale of impressiveness I'm afraid its a rather lowly three. Chris Kakoullis first crash of the day. I hope it's the last for the group. Now we hope that we don't have to do too many of our crash reports. In fact, we're hoping for zero but at least Chris was absolutely fine. Nothing bruised apart from his ego of course. Now with that, I think it's a wonderful time. There are seven of us, myself, and several wonderful people that I'm really delighted to be joined with the OT wrote, and I think that you should meet our team.
Martin Dixon 03:06
Okay, Martin Dixon, Crantock, Cornwall, the United Kingdom 55 years of age.
Peter Dixon 03:12
Hi, I'm Peter Dixon. I'm 54 and I'm from London, England.
Panos Kakoullis 03:17
Rob Caune. Sydney, Australia. 67. Panos Kakoullis, Brentwood UK, 54.
Christopher Kakoullis 03:25
Christopher Kakoullis, London, UK, 25. I'm Simon Hague. 52 coming from UK, Cornwall.
Matt Dixon 03:35
Matt Dixon. 48, From San Francisco, California by way of South end in Essex. So the name of our team we are called the drunken donkeys. Sounds very British dun it. Yeah, going down the pub. But in fact, it's nothing really to do with alcohol. That's a Purple Patch saying it is the three-legged donkey that we always talk about that is lower zone three. And our prediction is that we're going to be spending quite a lot of time in lower zone three as we navigate through the climbs and the challenges that face us through the Alps over the coming week. So the team itself while 25 years of age to 67 years of age, very, very busy. All of us are time-starved and each of us have had to get ready for this event navigating some torrential rain and really cold weather through Australia. It's very damp down there at this time of the year. And of course, people have been very busy in their work life all of us have had to think out the box a little bit and as we go through this week, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the training. But the interesting thing is every single one of us have leverage multi-sport to get ready for this riding challenge. I myself utilize a lot of running to help me get ready for this my brother Peter, very good swimmer that he is swimming, biking, running Panos and Chris bike and run. The story goes on. And I think that's a really important component is if you are time-starved, a multi-day writing challenge like this. Well, I guess we'll find out if we can be successful.
Matt Dixon 05:07
But I'm pretty convinced that we're going to have a very good experience on this trip. And you can get ready it can fit into multi-sport training. In fact, you can leverage training in that manner to get ready for a multi-day event. And on the backside, it feeds in nicely if you're a triathlete to Ironman 70.3 or Ironman events that are going to be upcoming even next year as well. All right, so what else can I tell you? What else do we do over the course of the day a lot of people have asked how do you set up the day before the actual day off and it's very simple. We got up we went for a very easy spin along the promenade --- was very pretty nice and smooth. I think my brother Martin was particularly eager and, and highly confident of his success over the course of this week. Martin, there's a shift in mood. It's warm-up morning. You ready to go tomorrow?
Martin Dixon 06:04
Absolutely. I was born ready obviously as you know. Absolutely. The it's all about the actuality now. The mind game begins tomorrow.
Matt Dixon 06:16
And following the promenade --- we went on and had a very nice breakfast. I woke up in --- we'll talk about hydration in a couple of minutes, but I woke up had a very enjoyable breakfast, little bit of a downtime. We got all of the bikes ready. And then of course we had to head off to checking in registration. You get a lot of stuff. Bike tags, bike bibs, number of bibs to go on the bag, the whole registration.
Matt Dixon 06:44
Then, of course, it was a nice lunch, a little bit of a nap for me, I'm still catching up on jetlag, and I just think Sleep, sleep, sleep, rest, rest, rest, because I'm feeling a little bit rundown just from two nights in a row of four or five hours of sleep, and that's nowhere near enough for me. And now we're off to dinner. And then well, it's guns blazing tomorrow.
Matt Dixon 07:04
And so a couple more questions that folks have come in in advance what bike am I riding, so my bicycle is the ventum NS one gear selection, most of the guys are riding 50 foot 30 fours on the front for you gearheads, I met you riding a 5236 with an 1130 on the back. The other guys are 1130 or 1132. On the back I just tend to be a little bit more of a big gear guy, and so far is pre-hydration and fueling. So here's my layout of the day I woke up I had 1500 milligrams of precision hydration. Went out drank a bottle through the 30 or 40 minutes spend that we did came home had a large breakfast have plenty of coffee with that, of course, through the day I drank two bottles of 500 milligrams of precision hydration, nothing crazy a little bit of sparkling water with my lunch. My lunch was chicken, hummus. And what do we have with that, rice, very simple. And then tonight I'm going to crack on and I'm sure I'll have steak something to stick to me bones before bed 1500 milligrams of precision hydration that will be before right before sleep and then the same in the morning and then we are off to the races. Stage one tomorrow 184 kilometers. It has got two major climbs that is the --- and then the --- very very long I think 25 kilometer. It's on the top tube I should know but a very long challenge. And so if you want to follow along, we'll be posting stuff on the Purple Patch Instagram at Purple Patch. We will be posting daily on here. And we have lots of footage lots of action from the days and so from now. I said I was confident now I'm just excited. Let's go and crack on with this. Let's stay safe, have fun, and hope it's a fun experience. I guess I get to say I will talk to you tomorrow. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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