Etape Jitters... Lance was wrong. It’s ALL about the bike. Or that’s how it feels, having recently joined Kingston Wheelers cycling club and signed up for a hellish day of pedalling in the Alps. Never have I spent so much time orbiting the indifferent deer in Richmond Park, or rubbing manically at oily marks on my once pristine bike frame. What possessed me? Not only am I attempting a real 187km stage of this year’s Tour de France, it ends on one of the most infamous and daunting climbs in that strength-sapping race, L’Alpe d’Huez . Do four revolutions round the park at top speed do this task any justice by way of training? I doubt it. Not even repeated ascents of Box Hill’s three mini switchbacks are much good as preparation - and you can’t stop for coffee and a sticky chocolate bun on the Alpe’s Hairpin 15. There’s a word which looms larger as I strain to increase my cadence up Sawyers Hill, ‘hell-for-leathering’ it as best I can, towards the horizon. This multi-syllabled term warns...