The 2006 Tour de France has started… How hard is it really?

Nothing short of actually trying to climb, say, Mont Ventoux, averaging 18mph on a bicycle, could ever make you wish you were dead understand what just one day is like in the Tour. This article in The Christian Science Monitor may be the next best thing.

There are ways us mere mortals can ride some of the stages of the Tour. Various companies offer this service, which usually entails riding the stage or a part of it the day before the pros come speeding through. If you get The Travel Channel they show folks doing it, and they look like they’re having the time of their lives. I’d love to do it some day, even on my recumbent, but since the pro climbers usually weigh 130-140 pounds, I’d have to lose… Oh forget it.

On a side note, some fool of a sports journalist made the mistake of questioning if Lance Armstrong was an athlete at all, never mind a great athlete. This fool’s reasoning was great athletes must be able to do more than “pumping your legs up and down while your feet are strapped to bicycle pedals.”

The article is archived here, but be warned: the public was pretty graphic in their disdain for the guy.

I would pay good money, really good money, to see this fool’s feet strapped to bicycle pedals, and watch him pump his legs up and down as he completes any mountain stage of any Tour in the last twenty years.

Explore posts in the same categories: Bicycling, Bicycling- A Fan's View, Steve's Peeves

Tags: tour de france

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