Another week down, another weekend of races missed. Although, given the late-July "hazy, hot and humid" forecast, I am not devastated about missing the Lost River Classic in WVa. We (Team CycleLife) have spent a lot of time on those roads in the spring/fall; I can't imagine those climbs in this kind of heat. I suspect this will be more of an epic than a race and I can't wait to hear all the trash talk that comes out of it.
Tour Musings
Speaking of trash talk and its close cousin, drama, I'm strangely disturbed and yet comforted by the amount I've seen through the media coverage of the Tour. I think we all like to have these idealistic ideas about how much more mature and professional bike racing is at those levels. As long as we realize it is idealistic, not realistic, that's all fine and dandy.
Trash Talk: It's really funny to see how a little bit of success can turn the nicest, sweetest person into an arrogant arse. When the Tour first started, I thought Mark Cavendish was a cutie- confident but not arrogant. After the first few stages, where he completely dominated the sprint finishes, he crossed that line into arrogance and I can't stand to hear him talk right now. Okay, I have no idea if he was "nicest, sweetest", but we've all seen it happen in real life so work with me, here.
Drama: Hincapie and his almost-yellow-jersey. Interesting that Lance calls Garmin out after Hincapie called Astana out and, honestly, for 5seconds, couldn't Hincapie's own team's leadout have made that difference ? That whole day went badly for Columbia, as Cavendish was relegated after a dangerous sprint.
Bummed about Jens - that crash looked awful but it sounds like he's doing much better than I'd have expected. A broken cheekbone sounds terrible, but he's already talking about next year.
Another sad instance: a spectator was killed by a police motorcycle while crossing the road in the middle of the race. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often with the crazy fans running around on the race course ... I'm truly amazed (and thankful) that this is "rare".
As you can see, I'm racing vicariously through the Tour - I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of my spare time when it ends on Sunday.
Happy Friday.
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