Cycling: 'Only with 2km to go did I know I would finish'

Mont Ventoux proves gruelling for the Tour's pros, so how would an amateur rider survive the climb? Simon O'Hagan tells of the pain and the gain

He was lying flat out on his back, his bike by his side, about halfway up Mont Ventoux. I was put in mind of a medieval knight, fallen in battle, memorialised in stone alongside his trusty steed. His eyes were closed and he actually looked quite content.

After completing the 2009 Etape du Tour – the public stage of the Tour – 170km from Montélimar to the top of Mont Ventoux, this is the image that keeps coming back to me. It seems to sum up that final climb, the climb that all of us Etapers had been thinking about – imagining what it would be like, getting our heads round it, reading about it, stressing about it, overstressing about it, burying ourselves in the legend of it, for months on end. And now finally I was on it, and here was this poor man, too exhausted even to drag himself off the road, and I was weaving my way round him, determined not to suffer the same fate, but enduring my own pain and by no means certain that I would.

As I'd speculated, this Etape was two rides in one. There was the first 148km, from Montélimar to Bédoin, and there was the last 22km, up the Ventoux. The first took me six hours precisely. The second 3hr 20min.

The first 4km of the Ventoux are manageable. It's probably only a 4-5 per cent gradient. But it was here that I really began to notice the heat. The sun was right behind me and hot on my back. I began to crave the shade of the trees that I knew was coming, but which I also knew marked the start of a 10 per cent gradient stretch that would continue almost all the way to the top. It was here I began to see people walking. The road suddenly ramped up through the trees. I sat back, tried to get into a rhythm. Back pain was kicking in.

And so it went on, kilometre after kilometre. More and more people off their bikes and walking. The silence of a defeated army. Not many spectators now. A few people here and there, under the trees, sitting on their camping chairs. What fun to watch us all toiling up the mountain.

Periodically I stopped at the side of the road – to eat and drink and get my head together. Just 6km to go. "Just" six? It wasn't over, by any means. Yes, the gradient eased very slightly, but I was still so wrapped up in my own ordeal I didn't notice when I passed the memorial to Tom Simpson, marking the point where the British rider collapsed and died during the 1967 Tour de France. But I did notice the cyclist who was standing by the roadside and, as I passed him, was violently sick. Now there were more walkers than cyclists. I kept going. I still had the odd burst left in me.

With 2km to go, I think then I knew I'd do it. The observatory at the top of the mountain looked quite close. The yellow "1km to the Arrivée" sign appeared at the side of the road. The sun was beating down, and I was still turning the pedals. Round the final bend, and up out of the saddle. Then the beep of my transponder as I crossed the line. I had done it.

Extracted from Cyclotherapy, Simon O'Hagan's blog, http://cyclotherapy.independentminds.livejournal.com