Stage 7 - Good Food and Good (Steep) Climbs

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Let the climbing begin! Wooohoo! We have finally arrived at our mountain stages and I'm ready to take em down one by one! Stage 7 wasn't a 'high' mountain stage but it had a couple significant climbs with one real ass kicker at the end. The La Planche des Belles Filles climb was a first for the Tour I think, but I hope they keep it for some years to come.  That thing is crazy steep and so hard to get up!  Maybe it was the fact that is was the end of 200km that it hurt, but it hurt bad.  You know when you have to have that conversation in your head like, 'don't puke, don't puke, don't puke'?  Ya, it was one of those moments.  I'm not going to lie, there was some swerving going on to get up that last little pitch.  The climb is about 5 or 6km long and for the first 99% of it, you're going pretty steep and it hurts, but it's nothing crazy.  However, that last 1%, that last little bit, just takes every last bit of energy to get up.  Making it up that climb makes me really want to thank Grant and Neal for that really hard Wednesday Apex ride where we did a bunch of power pyramids and then had to go up Lickskillet at the end of 4.5hrs.  Getting through that definitely made it possible to finish stage 7 strong.  Did I mention I love the mountains?

Once at the top, Kate and I took a quick look around and then headed back down to get some more pizza and beer at the expo-type Tour venue thing going on at the bottom.  Pizza and beer have been a bit of a common theme around here late, but it seems to be getting us through and ready for the next stage!  I'll take it!