Big Gears

It was another hot and humid morning down in New Orleans. This is the time of year when things on my bike start rusting, corroding and generally getting all gummed up from the gallons of sweat they're exposed to. It's a constant battle. This morning I put a little drop of oil on the rusting thumb-shifter mechanisms on each shifter. Of all the things I've tried, good old 3-in-1 oil seems to work the best for that. As I do every morning in the summer, I cleaned the lenses of my sunglasses with a little soap and water. By the end of the day's ride I knew they'd be covered with sweat once again. The first pair of gloves I grabbed was still damp from the day before, so I pulled on an old pair of team gloves instead.

We had a pretty big group for the long Thursday ride today. We also had a rather unusual, at least for summer, northwest wind. That didn't seem to slow things down very much, though. The ride out to the turnaround was your basic hammerfest and I soon found myself well into the big gears just trying to stay in the draft. I was determined to stay in the rotation at the front today. It wasn't easy. I don't think it was easy for anyone. After the turnaround, it took a long time for the pace to ramp back up, but once it did, I stayed there. I got back home a few minutes after 8 am, completely drenched in sweat.

I caught the last 10 km or so of the Tour today, watching it in a little window on my computer thanks to Eurosport.com. The sprint today started out like a big free-for-all, but once the leadouts really got started things at the front thinned out pretty quickly. Julian Dean came over and tried to move Renshaw, Cavendish's leadout man, over toward the barricades with about 300m to go, but Renshaw held his line, delivering a couple of head-butts to Dean in the process. Seeing the possibility that the door might close on him, Cavendish saw daylight between Renshaw and the barricade and started his sprint early, blasting past his leadout man. Renshaw then glanced to his left, saw clear air and swerved over to try and catch a bit of Cavendish's draft, nearly taking Tyler Farrar, who was accelerating down the left side, into the barricades. I was impressed with Renshaw. The officials were not and kicked him out of the Tour, which I think was way too severe a penalty. In my humble opinion, based on the helicopter video, Dean was more out of line than Renshaw. I guess they'll be arguing about this for a while.