I thought I rode hard during my lunch hour last week...

... and then I dug these up on youtube from the 1987 TdF:





yeah, when you need supplemental oxygen, and can't stand up on our own, well, I reckon that means you laid down a maximal effort.

Something to think about when comparing race efforts to training efforts, and the definition of "maximal" vs "kinda hard".

Those tours, and the CBS weekly coverage in the late 80's, hooked me on the sport...

JF-Bernard and the Ventoux - with Phil's call "how high, how far, how fast" stays with me to this day...

Leipheimer's thoughts on the tour...

...since he's not there...

here he is guaranteeing more victories for Contador in the future:



and on whether or not he'll be watching the tour this year:



Here's what Levi did yesterday morning, when all his euro-dawg buds were throwin' down in letour:

cascade classic TT

d'oh! he would have put 10 minutes on me!

Nice to see lots of familiar names on that TT result sheet - BTR folks and many lswt.com folks too!

Final TdF Plots

Finishing up this tour plot thing - here's the final individual stage placings with the jersey holders and initial GC contenders highlighted.



The whole sawtooth trend from day-to-day held true throughout the tour, huh!?

Here's how things progressed from a GC perspective:



How many "GC days" would you pick out from this plot?

TdF Stage 10

Stage Placings today:

The see-saw pattern we saw early on re-emerges.

The GC after today:



Just looking at this plot, how many guys were in the break today?

TdF Stage 9

Stage Placing Plot:

GC after stage 9:

TdF Stage 8

Here are some plots of interest through stage 8.

This one is the daily stage placings:








and the GC through stage 8:

TDF Stage 4

This new plot was based on a suggestion in the BTR forum from DMC (he wanted to see where the GC contenders were finishing in each stage). Here is what that plot looked like after stage 3:

And after today's stage 4:

Here's what the GC plot looks like - I reckon on the "GC days" we'll see some action on this sucker!