For those riding this year’s L’Etape du Tour with West london Cycling, you may be interested in the table below which illustrates a worst case scenario if you want to avoid the Broom wagon and be eliminated. Because the roads must be re-opened for traffic, the police are quite strict on having roads cleared by the allotted time. The table below assumes the speed you must do to avoid the Broom Wagon, but it is based on a departure from the last starting pen at 9am. In reality most of us will start earlier and have slightly more time, we assume. So long as your average speed, including stops, exceeds 14kph you’ll be fine … although 4,200m of climbing is likely to slow you down!