I mentioned in my pre-Etape post last week about my need to get a good night's sleep the night before, and all was going according to plan until a huge thunderstorm woke me up in the early hours, and I realised with a shudder just what might be in store the following day. By the time of the off, at 7am at the racecourse on the edge of Pau, torrential rain had given way to steady drizzle, and for the 7,500 of us lined up at the start, the talk centred on two things: Did we have the right clothes on? How treacherous would the road surfaces be?

The 169km ride to Hautacam really divided into two. The first 95km - as far as the bottom of the Col du Tourmalet - were by no means flat, but it was possible to bomb along in big groups, and I covered them in three and a quarter hours, including a brief stop at the feed station in Lourdes, where they know a thing or two about bringing people back to life. So - only 75km to go. I was in good shape. But then the ride proper began.

The Tourmalet - 23kms of climbing in all - was where the weather really set in. The magnificent views I remembered from a previous visit were completely shut out by dense fog, and the sheer toil on wet roads was unremitting. Finally, I reached the feed station at La Mongie, the ski resort 4kms from the summit, and after some two and a half hours of uphill struggle I was over the top.

Now came the best bit of the ride - a 35km descent that was sheer exhilaration and which, for me, happily coincided with a rare dry spell. It was cold, though. At the top of the descent I was shivering, and I could feel the bike shaking beneath me. Travelling at 45mph may have had something to do with it too. 

Technically speaking, the ride was now almost over. We turned off the main road, went on a gentle climb up through some pastures, and all that lay ahead were the 15kms to the top of the Hautacam. But a friend of mine who had recce'd the route warned me about the Hautacam, and he was dead right. It was a shocker - steeper still than the Tourmalet, with stretches of 13 per cent - and it wasn't long before I was riding back into the cloud and rain. There was an added challenge here: the road was also the way back down for people who had completed the ride. So it was divided into two, with bollards down the middle, and there were so many people on the ascent who had got off their bikes and were walking that there was very little room to squeeze past. I was determined not to walk, and I didn't. I stopped a few times - to eat, drink, and get my head together - but I did not walk.

Someone had told me that the Hautacam contained a 3km section where it flattened out. I was waiting for it, and I kept waiting. But it never happened. I was misinformed. That messed with my head too. For the final 2kms, above the tree line, the brutal gradient did ease off a little, and eventually, mercifully, the shape of the 1km-to-go banner emerged through the fog. Not having a computer on my bike, and reluctant to waste precious moments by fishing for my mobile phone, I had no idea what the time was.

Earlier in the ride I had deluded myself into thinking that I might break eight hours. I soon had to revise that downwards. Eight and half, maybe? Nine? I crossed the line with the clock showing 9.32. That's a long old ride, but hey - I finished, which was always the main aim after my non-finish in 2007, and I never felt the hot breath of the broom wagon.

I had a strategy, and I guess it paid off - to go as fast as I could over the opening section to give myself the maximum possible time for the climbing. And boy did I need it.

According to the results on the Etape website today, there were 7,500 starters, and I finished 5,613th.  So I squeezed into the top three-quarters, if I have done my sums right. I'm happy with that, and much as I think it was a shame about the weather, it surely suited us cold-blooded northerners. There was certainly never any danger of heat stroke.

Were you on the Etape? What did you think?