Tour de France

As many of you know, one of my passions is bicycling. Whether it is mountain biking or road cycling, I love to ride my bike and find the dynamics of a good bicycle race fascinating. For a biker like myself, this coming Saturday marks the start of what is undisputably the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Series, of bicycling - the Tour de France.

As such, while I always have time to discuss the shortcomings and numerous failings of the Frogs, for the next few weeks I will instead be blogging the race. While not in France itself, the wonders of the internet coverage by Velo News and Bicycling Magazine (and OLN's awsome coverage) will enable me to witness every moment of this tremendous race - the most difficult sporting event in the world with 198 riders on 22 teams covering 3607 km in 21 stages over 23 days. Those stages range in length from 19 km on day 1 of the tour 239.5 km in the 17th stage and go from sea level to 2004 m as they crest the 10th stage climb at Courchevel. All this, while 15 million spectators line the course itself (and untold hundreds of millions more follow on TV and the internet). To give you an idea of the effort these riders exert - the average racer will consume, on average 5,900 calories a day (and sometimes max out atbetween 9,000 and 10,000 calories) while burning 123,900 calories over the course of the event.

It is a feat of mind and body over matter, and as the world watches to see if Lance Armstrong can recover from yesterday's training accident (a bumblebee got behind his sunglasses and stung his eyelid causing him to crash hard) and hold off long time rival Jan Urlich and more recent challengers Ivan Basso and Alexandre Vinokourov.

Look for updates here throughout the month of July.