A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and stings my right eye. I blink, hard, to try and get my sight back, but it doesn’t work. I then lift my hand from the bars, stick my fingers under my glasses and rub in desperation. This only makes it worse. My hands, too, are sticky from the heat, and I start to realise that the amount of sun cream I put on might have been excessive. The oily gleam has begun to melt, and there’s nothing I can do as it slimes my skin and floods my eye sockets.
It’s 30 degrees in Paris, and I have decided to lug a 20-kilogram bike up a cobbled hill. Not just any cobbled hill, of course, but Rue Lepic, the short Montmartre climb that’s expected to detonate the Olympic road races this weekend. In fact, I’m out to ride the whole 20-kilometre finishing circuit, whose roads will no doubt launch the winners in both the men’s and women’s races. They’ll ride it two times. I drank four beers the night before, so once will do for me.
I start in Pigalle, a district at the foot of Montmartre, once famous for cabaret but now known for its rows of sex shops. It’s here that I pick up my steed. With no bike of my own, I’m left with the city’s fleet of pay-as-you-go Vélib bikes. I approach a line of them, and start my thorough selection process, kicking their back tyres, and giving their brakes a half-hearted squeeze. There’s one I take a liking to, so I pay my €3, and free it from its dock.
My first pedal strokes tell me this bike is a world apart from those the pros will use. It’s too heavy to lift, made of aluminium and plastic, and is supposed to have three gears. When I hit the lower slopes of Rue Lepic, my middle gear skips and whirrs, so I declare it redundant. It then takes 14 seconds to eventually shift down. (Yes, I counted).
I swing up, past the Moulin Rouge and onto the cobbles. The gradient is manageable at this point, but I fear I’ve started out too eagerly. I’m giddy just to be riding in Paris, and fuelled by three pieces of bread – my breakfast order has earned me the nickname ‘Pain Pain Pain’ in the hotel – I feel invincible. My 40-odd millimetre tyres are making light work of the surface. The road then curves round to the left, bends back to the right, and kicks up again, narrowing this time, and at a tougher pitch.
It’s here that my bike begins to labour. Worsened by the uneven, square cobbles, the 9% gradient feels like I’m trudging through water, riding against a downhill torrent. The suffering, however, lasts only minutes. The climb is barely a kilometre in total, banked at an average of 5%. I do it at 9km/h. The pros will go three times as fast.
At the top, I catch a glimpse of Sacré-Cœur’s chalk white dome through the houses. It’s there that I’m heading, but first I have to navigate through Place du Tertre, the artists’ quarter, where tourists fork out up to €120 euros for a quick portrait. I lose my momentum behind an older gentleman trailing an easel behind him. Then, finally, the road drops down, and I’m standing at the steps in front of Sacré-Cœur.
It’s eerily quiet for 11am, I think to myself. There’s been very little bustle in Paris over the past week; the locals, generally opposed to the Games, have fled elsewhere, and tourists have been deterred by the fear of price hikes. What’s left is a city of sports lovers, one that’s sparsely populated, and pleasantly breathable.
Still, it comes as a relief to cycle out of Paris’s tourist hotspot. I leave Montmartre on yet another cobbled street, this one just over a car’s width in size, and file alongside the traffic to the front. The next 6km take me out to the city’s eastern limit, void of notable features. Then comes another one-kilometre climb, and a long descent back into the city centre.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the 30-degree heat, or the four beers perhaps still present in my bloodstream, but the third climb, which comes after 14km, is the one that gets me. This one drags up into Belleville, again on rough cobbles, along a strip of Chinese restaurants. The gradient maxes out at 10%. My back throbs as I stomp down on the pedals. When I roll over the summit, I look across the street and see the entrance to a metro station called ‘Pyrénées’. How appropriate, I smile to myself.
I’d originally hoped to do the circuit in under 45 minutes. Why 45 minutes? Well, because I have to pay an extra €1 for the bike every half an hour after that. Now, an hour has passed, and the money is the least of my troubles. My clothes look, and feel, like I’ve worn them to a water park; I can barely see through the sweat; and, to top it all off, I’m at drink-straight-from-the-tap levels of thirst. My finish line, fortunately, is nearing.
I cut through a bike lane in Barbès-Rochechouart, laden with scraps of cardboard and plastic, offcuts from the morning’s market. Then I spot an oasis. Never before have I been so happy to see a sex shop, or rather ‘Love Store’, per the neon sign. I have no desire to walk through its doors, but it signals I'm back in Pigalle, the place I set out from. It’s time to shackle up my bike again.
Seeking, perhaps, to get my own back for the damage it has done to my back, I jam it into an empty dock. There are no sad goodbyes. Instead, I make a beeline for the supermarket across the road, frantically buy a bottle of tropical fruits flavoured water, and inhale it as I walk out into the street. Then I turn to Strava for the lowdown on my performance.
20km. 248m elevation. 15.1km/h. Typically, I’d aim for twice that speed, but on a bike three times the weight of my own, and wearing cotton clothing, I consider it a victory.
When I return to my hotel, the sight of me seems to shock the receptionist. “Hot outside, huh?” he says. I nod, before scuttling away for a cold shower and a snooze. One lap was enough for me. I'll leave the rest to the pros.
