For those who hadn't seen it yet, I am on holiday in France at the moment. And whenever I go on holiday by car, I try to bring my bicycle with me to make some rides. So I did this year again.
In this blog I will try to give you an impression of the rides I made here.

Roquebrune sur Argens

In the first week we stayed at Roquebrune sur Argens (the east coast of France near Fréjus).
I didn't expect it to be that hilly, but I made some nice climbs in the two rides I made there.

The area is really lovely. The first ride was quite short (40 kilometers with 500 meters of elevation). I did this because I hadn't been climbing for over a year, so I had to test my legs a bit and see how I coped with the warm weather (+30 degrees C).
Since it went pretty well I planned my second ride later that week. I started early in the morning, so it wouldn't be that hot yet.

The profile of the second ride was challenging with over 1000 meters of elevation 😀

After I had done most climbs I came through a lovely small town in the hills. It had such a lovely atmosphere. There were some musicians playing live in the street and there was coffee! What else could a cycling tourist wish for?

The two rides this week resulted in a total distance of 121 kilometers and 1656 meters elevation.

Week 2: The Auvergne

In week 2 of our holiday we stayed in the Auvergne region. This region is famous for its chain of vulcans (Chaîne des Puys). The most famous one of them is probably de Puy de Dome. The volcanoes in the area may be dormant, but climbing them is still no joke. I did two rides, 136 kilometers in total, with 2,481 meters of climbing.

One of them was the climb from Ceyrat to Berzet, which wasn't that long, but had some serious steep parts.

This climb has been done in the Tour de France this year as well. I still saw the names painted on the roads when I climbed up. And the town on the top (Berzet) still had some TDF decorations.

I didn't go up as fast as the pro's, but I did manage to get up the climbs in my own pace. I wasn't unhappy with my overall fitness.

The second ride that I made that week was even harder. The ride resulted in 66.56 km with 1,394 meters of elevation. This was more than I initially planned, but there were some detours.

The first detour took me through the Rue de Roc Blanc, which was getting steeper and steeper in the end. The 16/17% really hurts 😀

It were some lovely rides in a beautiful area.
Here is a short video from one of my rides in the vulcan region:

The totals for these two weeks were:
257 kilometers with 4,137 meters of climbing. Not bad if I say so myself 😀

Yearly stats

As you might have read in my earlier blogs, I have set myself a cycling goal for 2025, which is to cycle at least 5000 kilometers this year.

In the graph below you can see my progress over the weeks of this year.
I've had a serious injury in the beginning of the year that kept me from cycling for a couple of weeks.

The blue line is indicating the 96.15 kilometers I need to ride on a weekly basis to reach the goal of 5000 kilomters by the end of 2025.
The red line indicates the actual kilometers I've made.
With 121.19 kilometers in week 30 and 136.43 in week 31 I'm catching up nicely.

I cycled a total of 2803,65 kilometers where I had to be at 3076,80 already, so I still need to catch up 273,15 kilometers.
I will need to cycle at least 105 kilometers a week to reach the goal, which I think is achievable.
I'll keep you updated in following posts!