STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Shortly before the Tour de France, there was an event you might call the Tourist de France. Amateur bike riders attempted a mountainous stage of the ride. It was stage 10, the portion of the race that the pros are riding today. The everyday bikers who tried for themselves include Phil McGlade. He's an Australian accountant who paid a tour group thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting really sore.
PHIL MCGLADE: My legs are extremely sore. They're very tight. I haven't been able to go in for a massage, but my wife sort of - who didn't ride - managed to somehow slip in a massage.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Well, she had more time.
MCGLADE: (Unintelligible) sort something out there.
INSKEEP: Now, I'm looking at a map of the different stages of the Tour de France. And stage 10, in terms of miles, looks pretty short. But it's way down in southwestern France in what must be the mountains, the Pyrenees.
MCGLADE: That's exactly right. There's two major mountain sections in the Tour de France. The Pyrenean in-climbs and the out-climbs. And the Pyrenean in-climbs tend to be a lot longer. One took me about almost two hours to climb up and the other one took about an hour fifteen.
INSKEEP: Two hours on a bicycle going uphill?
MCGLADE: Two hours on a bicycle going uphill in a lot of pain. It was - it was pretty tough.
INSKEEP: How many of you were doing this stage - stage 10 - all at once?
MCGLADE: There were 9,000 people. I've never seen so many bikes in one location. Just phenomenal.
INSKEEP: Nine thousand?
MCGLADE: Nine thousand people, which is absolute bedlam. But the really, really good thing was we were able to slot right in front of the other 8,900 people. It was absolutely fantastic.
INSKEEP: Although of course then you're going uphill with 8,000-some people chasing you.
MCGLADE: Yeah, exactly right. It's sort of - you sort of have to pick up the pace a little bit, but that's good.
INSKEEP: How many hours did it take you to do the stage?
MCGLADE: It was seven hours fifty-eight minutes and thirty seconds. It was a long time to spend on a bike. That's for sure.
INSKEEP: So when you're in some of these long climbs, what's the road like?
MCGLADE: It's a really, really good atmosphere. There's people to the side of the road giving you some encouragement, you know, sort of the local people there with their kids and their grandparents cheering you on. I mean, we're all suffering, but there's a really nice bond there.
INSKEEP: Are you on the edges of some cliffs here and there?
MCGLADE: Yeah, absolutely. Halfway up the climb you could look out and see some of the valley floors, but then we actually climbed into the cloud line. So the visibility probably dropped to about 40, 50 meters. But it was beautiful countryside, fantastic people.
INSKEEP: Are you a serious cyclist, Mr. McGlade?
MCGLADE: I train about 12 to 13 hours per week, and I've done a couple of Iron Man races, but certainly not the level of the Tour de France riders. That's for sure.
INSKEEP: Well, just to understand where you are in relation to them. You finished this state in a little under eight hours. What would a Lance Armstrong kind of time be on that stage?
MCGLADE: Lance Armstrong, I believe, did the same stage and he was around five hours or something like that.
INSKEEP: Just because it's the Tour de France and because of the scandals, I have to ask if part of the experience was you got to do a drug test?
MCGLADE: If I had had a test like, that it would've shown up absolute copious amounts of red wine partaken the previous few days. But the days after would've been far, far worse. Lots of red wine.
INSKEEP: Phil McGlade, thanks very much.
MCGLADE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Phil McGlade is an account who spends his leisure time biking uphill. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
