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Debra was a complete new comer to the sport of long-distance cycling, but then she couldn’t sail before she sailed the Southern Ocean and couldn’t row before she signed up to row the Atlantic!  In a bid to throw herself in at the deep end Debra joined a team of professional athletes to take part in the 2007 L’Étape du Tour.  The Tour took place on Monday 16th July 2007 and followed the exact route of Stage 15 of the 2007 Tour de France in the Pyrenees Mountains.

 The 2007 L’Étape was a very difficult route. The stage was a classic Pyrenean mountain stage that started in the town of Foix and climbed 5 mountain cols.  But this was not ridden over a series of days.  The whole lot had to be ridden in less than 12 hours.  This meant that to make up for the few hours of crawling up the 5 steep mountain sides it was necessary to gun it at up to 70km per hour down the other side of the mountain around the hairpin bends to make up time.

Debra completed the race in 11 hours and 39 minutes.  Over 7,000 cyclists started but almost half did not finish it.  Less than 100 starters were women.  Debra has also taken part in the Time Megeve Mont Blanc Race and has a number of long distance UK sportive races on the horizon.

16th July 2007

Once upon a time the hills on Dartmoor had seemed long and steep.  They still seem steep in places but having taken part in L’Etape Du Tour even the longest climbs on Dartmoor now seems EPLS (Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!).

The 2007 L'Etape du Tour (stage 15 of Le Tour de France) was deemed to be one of the hardest races in years, so I am enormously proud that I completed it, even though it nearly broke me!  Five mountains was bad enough but the heat made it unbearable at times.  The side of the roads were littered with cyclists who had collapsed in the shade of trees due and the tarmac was melting as temperatures neared 40 degrees.  Hundreds of people attempted to make it to the summits by pushing rather than riding their bikes but with time elimination points all along the course it meant thousands of the 7000 starters did not finish and were sent home on coaches with their bikes in the back of a lorry.

The thought of having to be taken to the finish on a coach gave me huge determination to keep spinning those wheels.  I had no aspirations what so ever about putting in a fast time.  I simply wanted to complete it in the time limit of 12 hours.  Mercifully I did not take a flyer over the edge of the many hairpin bends we belted around on the descents, which is a minor miracle considering I cycled like a woman possessed down the last mountain in order to make it to the finish before the cut off.

I just made it!  I completed the 200km in 11 hours 39 minutes.  It hurt heaps but what a fantastic event.  They closed the roads for the whole route across the Pyrenees and all the French villagers came out on the streets to cheer us on.  Many were armed with hosepipes to cool us down. 

As one of only about 100 women to enter L’Etape I was very aware of my minority status, none more so when I went through a village.  The locals love it when a woman is still going for it and scream “ALLEZ ALLEZ MADAME”!   Their excitement increased the further along the course I got. I felt a bit sorry for the guys cycling around me as the attention and encouragement from the locals was all directed towards me!

Thank you so so much to TriUK (Ali, Chris and Richard) for sorting me out with such a fab bike and to Mark Turner for letting me join Team OC.  I blame you entirely!

L’ETAPE du Tour

“Bizarrely I was more concerned about the physical challenge of L’Étape than I was about rowing the Atlantic and I was right to be concerned.  I have never come so close to reaching my mental and physical limits as I did on this race.  I loved it! “ Debra Searle

"The sheer distance and the severity of the course profile is a challenge even for the experienced sportive rider.  For the first timer it borders on suicidal!” 

Quote from ‘Etape du Tour 2007 uncovered’ - Cycling Weekly Magazine

DEBRA’S L’ETAPE 2007 race report

I can highly recommend this race... if you like tormenting your mind and body! It was a fantastic challenge in the truest sense so if you are looking for an adventure that pushes you to your mental and physical limits then this is the one for you.  But be prepared to put in a fair amount of training for at least 6 months before as this isn’t one to take on lightly.

To watch a movie of Debra taking part in L’Etape CLICK HERE.

bike l’etape

L’Etape du Tour 2009 was a toughy - using the same stage of Le Tour de France that the pro’s completed up the legendary Mont Ventoux (1912m high) and in 40 degree heat.  Even Lance Armstrong thought it was the hardest climb of the 2009 Tour!  The route was shorter and with less Cols to climb than I had completed in the 2007 L’Etape but the ‘Giant of Provence’ loomed large.

I started back on the bike 6 weeks after my baby girl, Heidi Grace, was born.  It was an emotional roller-coaster as I tried to get back to my post pregnancy fitness levels.  My body definitely was not responding as it used to and my mind was weaker than it had ever been.  I would often daydream of being at home cuddling Heidi while I was slogging across Dartmoor in the rain - not helpful!  But I did it. 

I got back to fitness and completed the 100mile Dartmoor Classic race to prove to myself that I was ready for the 106mile L’Etape.  One day later I was crippled (literally - stuck on the floor with the baby!) by a back injury from the 100miler.  With three weeks to go until L’Etape there was nothing I could do but rest, take the heavy-duty muscle relaxants I had been given by the doc and visit my amazing physio, Tim Edbrooke.

With this kind of lead in to a big event you can probably imagine my elation at finding that on race day I actually felt fantastic.  My back pain was manageable and I was loving the ride as we whizzed passed the beautiful lavender fields of Provence.  I felt mentally strong and determined to live out the movie I had been running in my head of that moment when I would cross the finish line where Tim and Heidi would be waiting for me and give my baby girl a big kiss (while attempting to stop her sucking my face or hair – must get her out of this habit!).

That movie moment never happened.

After the first decent and on leaving the 45km feed station my gears would not engage properly.  As I attempted to ascend the Col de Fountaube my chain came off 6 times.  Tim and I had changed my back block the night before so that I had a more suitable gearing for the big climb up Mont Ventoux.  I broke one of my biggest rules - never change anything, wear anything or eat anything during an event that you haven’t used in training. 

Bike mechanics are not my strong point.  After various attempts to readjust my derailleur but without really know which screw I should be turning and which cable I should be tightening/loosening I was almost in tears with the frustration of it all.  Various French spectators tried to help me but they spoke no English and I speak very little French so I gave up trying to explain myself in sign language and rode off in the one gear I could get it to stay in. It was a downhill, not an uphill gear!  The grinding noise from my misaligned sprockets and chain was horrendous and I could see other competitors staring at me as they shot past.

At around 100km into the race I was stopped in my tracks as the chain jammed.  On inspection I could see the pin from one link was poking out and the chain was broken.  It was one of those defining moments in my life when I realised that with the right attitude I could get through this and find a solution.  Failure was close but I had a choice not to accept it just yet.  The easy option would have been to give up but as I wrote about in my last book, the easy option is never the most rewarding.

I managed to get the pin back in place but it was obvious that the chain was buggered.  A nice old French guy had seen all this happening and got some long handled pliers from his car.  He squeezed the link back together and I prayed it would hold until I go to the Mavic Mechanics Station 16km away in the town of Sault.

I had lost so much time and nervously looked over my shoulder for the broom wagon (if it passes you then you are eliminated and they take your bike off you and put you on a coach to the finish line).  5km from Sault the chain gave up for good.  But I felt I still had a choice.  I chose to do whatever it took to get to the Mavics guys in Sault.  So off I free-wheeled and pushed!

These photos say it all!  I was so elated at making it to the mechanics and was running a moving in my head of leaping back on my mended bike and sprinting off to put some distance between me and the broom wagon… when it came slowly trundling up behind me and they put a barrier across the road so that no competitors could carry on.

I was gutted.  After all the hard work I had put in and the hours away from my baby and husband to train for this it was over.  It seemed so unfair, but it wasn’t.  The reality was that it was my fault and I knew it.  I was so angry with myself as it could have been avoided. 

Success doesn’t happen by luck.  I had shown up at this event under prepared.  It is not good enough to be fit, to have managed a back problem, to have paid attention to detail about my nutrition and hydration, to have dragged Heidi’s Grandparents to France to look after her so I could compete.  I also had to be armed with the knowledge of how to fix my gears and chain and in that one part of my preparation I was left lacking.   Just one tiny, weenie mistake in preparation leads to one big fat failure overall.  Lesson learnt.

The thing is… it wasn’t a failure overall.  I cycled 115km – for most people this would be a huge achievement in itself!  Having the race to aim for got me back to fitness much quicker post baby than I otherwise would have done.  I shared an amazing experience with my family and the friends on our team.  I was able to celebrate with Tim (Hubby) at his amazing 8 ½ hours competition time.  Heidi got to have some special time with her Grandparents and we raised about £5000 for children with Cancer and Leukemia to go sailing with The Ellen MacArthur Trust.

But probably the biggest success is thanks to my big failure to prepare fully… I have learnt a valuable lesson.   We all know this lesson but perhaps I needed to experience it personally so that I wont make the same mistake again.  Another time it could have been life threatening.  This was just a bike race, after all, but what if I had learnt it while stuck in the middle of the Atlantic in a rowing boat on my own! 

It won’t happen again – ever.

The Ellen MacArthur Trust takes young people sailing to help them regain their confidence, on their way to recovery from cancer, leukemia and other serious illness.  Thank you to everyone who sponsored me.  We raise around £5,000.

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DEBRA’S L’ETAPE DU TOUR 2009 race report

L’ETAPE DU TOUR 2007