My personal story

Thursday evening, 23:00 hour, driving away from home to pick up two other colleagues to go direction Mont Ventoux. I wandering how I'm going to make it, because 33 day's ago I had a second hart surgery and my doctor said that it was OK to bike the Mont Ventoux. But in my head there was a little voice that told me that this was not a good idea. Well if I want to test my heart this would be the perfect occasion.

So we picked up the two colleagues and started to drive to France. In the early afternoon we saw the Mont Ventoux for the first time and during the ride to it we got more and more impressed about the height of it. Because the weather forecast was not so good for the rest of the weekend we decided to drive up to the summit so that we could already enjoy the fantastic view.

It was fantastic and after a quick visit at the monument of Tom Simson we went down to Sault where we had our Hotel.

During this afternoon and following evening all the members dropped in and at 19:30 we enjoyed our first meal. Her a lot of people started to tell what there challenge would be, some wanted to climb ones and some wanted to climb it several times, 4 of them wanted even to climb it 3 times in one day. But for me was my challenge to climb it ones from Bedoin.

Saturday morning, the weather is OK, no rain, only a little fog. the Mont Ventoux was covered in clouds and at 8 o'clock several people started to drive up the mountain. I decided to join the group to do a ascend from the easy side. I was able to join the group over about a 5 kilometers and then I kept behind to ride my own speed, I didn't want to over stress my heart to much because I still was not sure if this was OK what I was doing. After a break in the Forrest a Deer jumped in 2 meters front of my bike and ran down the mountain, this was a good test for my heart I felt it knocking in my neck. The fog got thicker and the temperature got down when I came out the Forest and started in to the naked part of the mountain. The slope got steeper and steeper and my speed dropped down. "My god what am I doing here"was my thought "taking two day's of vacation, driving with 5 people 12 hours to France and 12 hours back and hurting my body on a mountain" I must have something wrong in my head. But I kept still going on and was thinking that I could make it to the top. When I came to the Tom Simson monument I knew that I was getting to the top, and I thanked Tom for this great moment. 1 Km to go and my complete body was screaming for rest. The wind got stronger and stronger but still it was to do. Last straight part, the wind got even stronger but still no problem, then the last corner, I knew this is it just 40 meters and then I'm on the top. I turned in to the corner and got hit by a enormous wind. "What is this? O god I can't hold my bike" I was blowing to the edge of the road and I clicked out of my pedals. I could grab a fence to hold me with one hand, the other hand had to hold the bike which started to fly in the wind like a flag. I just couldn't do anything as holding my self in this position. Then there was a Dutch men who helped me straight up and to the summit. I was so happy that I forgot to thank him and when I looked for him he already left the summit. This was the moment that I was breaking, I was thinking about the period of surgery that lay behind me and the emotion got to much at this moment. I will never forget the great feeling I had on this particular moment where I could share this with a lot of good friends, colleagues and my son Peter.

Thanks to the Doctors, my Colleagues, Friends , Family and specially my Wife Annemie who supported me I was able to climb the Mont ventoux again after this hard time. THANK YOU ALL!

My experience from the Sunday when I climb the Mont Ventoux from Bedoin, will be on this web log on a later stadium. From this side I want to ask the other members of the group to write down you personal experience and tell us on this weblog. Send it to me and I will publish it as soon as possible, please send also some picture with your story that shows what you experienced.