23 Days In July

That’s how long the tour de France lasts. I am reading the book "23 Days in July" these days while the tour is going on. The book outlines Lance Armstrong's 2004 tour win and it has been fun reading it alongside the current tour.

So stage 11 through the Pyrenees did throw up a clear winner, Floyd Landis (Phonak). Floyd became the overall leader of the tour leading the other contenders by more than a minute. Such a lead would have been enough for Lance Armstrong to win the whole tour but Floyd's team Phonak allowed a lesser known rider who was some 28 minutes behind Floyd to make up 30 minutes on Stage 13. This allowed Oscar Pereiro (Illes Balears) to take the overall lead by about a minute and a half.

Pereiro is expected to relinquish the lead in the mountains but still it’s so dangerous to give up 30 minutes to anyone. Lance describes how once an unknown rider gave him a real scare like this once. The thing is that when you are the overall leader and wear the yellow jersey it is really hard on the team. The team of the wearer of the yellow jersey has to do the entire pace setting defend against attacks and lead from the front, I think Phonak was just preserving its riders but 30 minutes is huge...Every Second Counts!!!

Today is a rest day before the tour now heads for the Alps...really grueling stages coming up including the famous L'Alpe-D'Huez stage which ends with a 13.8 kilometer climb to the finish at a gradient of 7.9% (category H climb)...