Awesome. Lance pounded his fist hard on the Tour de France table today, silencing the critics, at least for now. As they climbed the final hill to the finish the droppage rate went through the roof. The Disco Boys gave everyone a lesson in teamwork along the way, pushing the pace early with Hincappie sheltering Armstrong until the final 12k and Popovich delivering the final coup de gras a couple of kilometers later that put the hurt on the rest and set Lance up for his final push to the finish. At 5k to go the group really starts to disintegrate as Lance puts in another surge. Only Valverde can hang on to the finish, and Lance gives him a nice long leadout to get every second they can and avoid any cat-and-mouse stuff, letting him shoot past to take the stage win. Rasmussen and Mancebo finish nine seconds later. Basso? A minute down. Kloden? 2:14 down. Ullrich? 2:14 down. So Lance takes the yellow with 38 seconds on Rasmussen and 2:40 on Basso. Still plenty of mountains to go, though, and it's a long way yet to Paris. There will be opportunities tomorrow for some.
Meanwhile back in the real world, there was a big group for the long Tuesday ride this morning. The group sat back and let a couple of the guys on TT bikes ride off into the distance, although eventually the pace picked up pretty well. The ride back was jerky, with only a handful willing to get to the front in the light headwind. The pace was all over the place and few of the riders were on the same page today, with many content to sit in near the back. I got home drenched with sweat. I'm still not sure how I'm going to work out this weekend. I really want to do the races in Biloxi, but it's my dad's birthday and he's invited everyone to his place in Ft. Walton. The same thing happened last year and I ended up doing only the Cat. 1/2/3 Crit. Sunday afternoon.
After trying to accommodate other races and various people, and moving the date of the Team TT twice as a result, Shane finally threw in the towel today and cancelled the Team Time Trial. He told me that he had never actually offered to put it on in the first place. "They" had simply assumed that he would and put it on the calendar in his absence, despite the fact that he is no longer a member of the club that promoted it last year. After he rescheduled it there was a fair amount of complaining, proving once again the old saying "no good deed goes unpunished." He's been all over La. and Ms. this year officiating and between that and his new children and all of the other work he does for LAMBRA, I guess that was the last straw. Perhaps someone else will pick up the event and put it on.
GiVo continues getting excellent results at Superweek. Yesterday she was 3rd in a long road race (I think she said it was around 70 mi.) and moved up to 3rd in the overall standings for the Pro/Cat.1/2/3 Women. There's another road race today and I think it may be in the rain thanks to the remnants of hurricane Dennis.
6 comments:
Good to hear about Lance! He usually picks off cyclists after a while...
How's things after Dennis went by? Right now, it's windy outside as the remnants are moving over much of Ohio; we might be getting some rain soon.
Dennis did no damage here in the City that Care Forgot, but the early reports from Ft. Walton were quite a bit on the optimistic side. I'll be driving over there with my dad on Thursday to survey the damage. At least it appears the house was not flooded, but even now there is not power and it's not looking like it will be restored soon as a number of telephone poles were pulled down by the storm.
Oh, glad that you reported good enough as that. :) Dennis is still spinning over the midwest; showers are going to be spotty for the next two days.
I meant, "good enough news."
A crummy keybord and my existing inabilty to type well are not a good combination. :)
While we are slowly sterilizing ourselves with automation I find it very disturbing to see more and more riders with ipods and mp3s. I was in a three man break on tuesday and we were traveling at 28 mph at one point with two riders listening to Celine Dions greatest hits (I guess). Now this poses a number of problems. First and most obvious it's really dangerous when you have to call out something at the last second and then the rider with the headphones has this befuddled look because he can't hear. If the rider has to be told anything " you're surging, let's wait for so and so, there is a dead armadillo in the road" all have to be prefaced by hand signals. Then they precariously reach some where to turn down their volumn. While riding so fast and in such close proximity to each other this is a recipe for disaster. Exercise consideration and caution when riding in a group and use all of your senses to avoid crashing. And above all indulge yourself in good old fashioned conversation.
I am now stepping off my soap box thanks for listening! Matt Rinard
Matt:
Wow! You can go 28 mph?? Yeah, can't tell you how many times I've tried to say something to a certain local rider who always seems to have earphones stuck in his ears only to be rewarded with a blanker-than-usual stare.
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