Madeleine, my kinda girl

Let me tell you about Madeleine.  She looked like a nice girl, all 26kms of her - attractive, comely even: available, which is always a plus.  And very easily do-able, if you forgive the crude vernacular.  But there's always something about these kind of girls isn't there?  You think you've done all the hard work, think you've got a result (it always works for a friend of mine when he says "my Porsche is outside", or so he tells me)...and then she turns into the b*tch from hell.  This is also true when the Madeleine in question is a famous, iconic, Tour de France climb.  She looked innocent enough: the plan said she only started to get a bit tasty at over 22km.  Well, plans can be wrong.  Like some other women I have met, she went on and on and on and on, seemingly never to end.  4% became 5% became 6, then 7, then 9%, and it was game over. I no longer liked this date, and it had promised so much.  The worst bit should have been the best: at 4km to go, the Col flattened out and became 1km of flat.  Except, at that distance, I died...I simply could not continue.  So there I was, stuck 1,900m up a mountain, with sheep and grasshoppers for company, and couldn't move.  Even getting out of the pedal clips was a monumental task.  So, for five minutes I sat and wheezed and drank loads of water, and recovered.  4km and around 20 minutes later I conquered her.  So there was a happy ending.  But I won't be seeing her again any time soon - too much of a challenge for me this time around.  Thankfully there is no photo of a sweat-drained, emotionally dead cyclist at the top, as everyone else had gone.  As usual...