It's Tour Time!

The Tour de France starts today with the prologue in Liege. I'm really looking forward to following the tour this year, although I don't seem to have been clever enough to have a week of holiday coincide with it as I did last year - so it will be harder to keep up with all the comings and goings.

Road Cycling UK are running a fantasy Tour de France where you can pick a team of riders, and Alberto and I are both participating in that. I appear to have bought into Britain's hype about Bradley Wiggins as my team is centred around him and Samuel Sanchez, as well as featuring most of my favourite pros like Jens Voigt and Tommy Voeckler.

My fantasy Tour de France team

Alberto has selected an all-Spain team headed up by Samuel Sanchez and with sprinting prowess provided by JJ Rojas. It wasn't easy to create a team of all Spaniards within the game's rules; you aren't allowed to have more than two players from each real team on your team, and Spain's representatives in the tour are concentrated in Euskatel-Euskadi and Movistar. But we've managed to make it work!

Alberto's fantasy Tour de France team - Viva Espanya!

Fortunately we're able to make changes to the team as the Tour goes on, as we all know how unpredictable and unforgiving the Tour can be!

Machacas of the Tour

Well, the Tour de France has ended, so Alberto and I will have to adjust to life without the daily scramble to find a computer and/or TV at about 4pm everyday to watch the final km's of each stage. As a final goodbye to the Tour, we thought it would be great to identify a couple of riders who are the embodiment of the idea of machacas.

Machaca of the Tour: Thomas Voeckler

Voeckler (Team Europcar) is known for fighting it out on the breakaway, and this is how he won the yellow jersey in stage 9. So he's always been pretty machaca. But he exceeded all expectations by hanging on to the yellow jersey through the Pyrenees and on the first day in the Alps. Every day, Voeckler would say that he expected to lose the yellow jersey the next day, but he would fight on anyway. He blew everyone away with his ability to hang with the favourites and the hard-core climbers, while remaining humble and humorous. We love Tommy!

Thomas Voeckler in the yellow jersey (image source)

Machaca of a Single Stage: Johnny Hoogerland and Juan Antonio Flecha

This has to be a joint title, going to the two riders who kept riding after being horrifically hit by a media car while riding in a breakaway. Both riders finished not just the stage, but the tour, fighting through all the pain and riding with every extremity in bandages.

Flecha with his bandages the day after the crash (image source)

Johnny Hoogerland keeps riding after being thrown into a barbed wire fence (image source)

Machaca of the Saddle: Fabio Sabatini

In Tour tradition, Fabio Sabatini (team Liquigas-Canondale) will receive the honour of the Lanterne Rouge for being the rider with the slowest overall time. Finally, a machaca after our own hearts! By finishing dead last in the Tour de France, at 3 hours, 57 minutes, and 43 seconds behind the leader, Sabatini has spent the most time in the saddle of anyone on the tour. We always say that the biggest challenge of riding long distances is the amount of time spent in the saddle, so we salute Fabio Sabatini for his perserverance on this measure!

Sabatini at the back of the ride (image source)

Goodbye Tour de France 2011. Bring on La Vuelta!

Taking on Contador

On Saturday night, Alberto and I have a showdown with Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans and the rest of the 177 riders still in the Tour de France. That's right. And we are pretty sure we're going to beat them.

This is because on Saturday, the participants of the Tour will ride a total of 168.5 km in Stage 14 from Saint-Gaudens to Plateau de Beille. Meanwhile, Alberto (not Contador!) and I will be cycling 180.7 km overnight on the Dunwich Dynamo!

Okay, so the riders of the the Tour will take care of these km's in an afternoon, while it'll take us all night. They'll be greeted by spectators and shouts of "Allez!" while the best we can hope for are some drunk Londoners shouting abuse at us. They'll have support cars carrying everything they need for the ride and more, while we'll have our saddle bags and a couple of 2-liter water bottles. And at the end of their ride, they'll get a nice, relaxing sports massage, while we'll get to feel the sensations of hundreds of little flies landing on our skin.

But the fact remains that we will ride further than Contador on Saturday. And I can't predict how he'll fare in the Pyrenees, but I can guarantee that Alberto and I will both be wearing yellow at the end of the day!

Great writing about pro-cycling

I am currently back home in Philadelphia visiting my family, and a happy combination of jet lag making me wake up early and my parents having finally decided to get cable TV a few years ago means that I have been watching every stage of the Tour de France live! I've kept up with the Tour in past years, but never to this degree. It's fantastic!

The problem is, as a newbie to cycling I feel like there is so much I'm missing out on because I don't really understand it. The team tactics, the following cars and feed stations, the camaraderie and competition amongst the riders... the things that make these racers into humans. For instance, in Stage 3 I thought it was really amazing that the peloton allowed Anthony Charteau of team Europcar to break away from the peloton so he could meet his family on the side of the road, stop and say hello to them, and then rejoin the peloton as it passed by!

Anthony Charteau pulled over on the side of the road to greet his family. Photo from dailytelegraph.com.au.

These are the kinds of things that aren't easily communicated by commentators on TV and are not really covered in Wikipedia. In searching for more information on all this, I've come across some great writing about the sport:

First, a great story about the way that the riders in May's Giro d'Italia paid tribute to Wouter Waylandt, along with some critique about the way pro races are organised these days and the way the media covers crashes and injuries.

Back in March, there was this article by Michael Barry which helped me understand how pro-cyclists use drafting or slipstreaming. Not just of each other, but of the motorcycles and cars associated with the race as well! It's a pretty good introduction to understand what's allowed and not allowed in that area. I thought it was an interesting point that it is impossible to simulate a pro-racing situation without actually motorpacing, because nothing else creates that drafting effect of a 200-strong peloton.

Then there are the pro riders that have their own blogs. It's really fun to watch a race on TV and then read about what was actually going through riders' minds at the time. Of these, my favourite is Jens Voigt's Hardly Serious. Jens (team Leopard-Trek) is the oldest rider in the tour so he's got a lot of perspective -- plus I think he's a great writer!

Until yesterday there was also Chris Horner's blog (team Radioshack) but sadly he crashed out of the race.

There are also twitter accounts -- too many to mention. But I did thoroughly enjoy Alberto Contador's tweet after a crash that left his jersey torn up -- "Here's my summer jersey," he said!

All this has really enhanced my experience while watching the tour. Now, if only I knew other cycling fans to show off my knowledge to!