Riding in this Year's Tour de France

This was what Bernard Hinault, 5 time tour de France winner, said when asked whether or not Lance Armstrong’s cancer medicine may have boosted his endurance. Yet another example of how much the French hate us:

"To those assholes I say, I wish you just one thing: that you have the same sickness, that you have one foot in the grave. Then you’ll see how much you’ll want to do what you love, and do it to its maximum."*

My goal is to watch every single broadcast of this year’s Tour de France. I want to savor every single minute of every day’s coverage. Because I am too cheap to have my own television I will be forced to go to the gym and ride the exercise bike during the daily hour and a half rebroadcasts. This is what I have trained all year for and I think that I am ready.

Riding indoors is a very distant second to riding in the street. It isn’t really fun and it is hard to really work hard. I have an hour and a half ride around Seattle that is all up and down. When I reach the top of the tortuous Queen Anne hill I am gasping for air—I’m not talking about breathing hard, I mean I am dying. I don’t care if you are Lance Armstrong, that hill will kick your ass. My ride up and down the hills of Queen Anne, Magnolia, and Capital Hill is fairly sadistic but I really like going uphill more than coasting downhill. I especially don’t like flying down hills in the city—too many yahoos in cars who cut in front of you.

I remind myself of Bill Murray’s character in Caddy Shack. I, too, mumble in a faux sportscaster’s voice. Instead of the Cinderella story hitting a 585 yard tee shot at the Masters, the voice in my head usually has me winning a merciless mountain stage. I try to mimick the voice of Phil Liggett, the British guy who broadcasts the Tour.

Trust me when I tell you that we have some streets in Seattle that are much steeper than anything the riders face in the Tour de France, and if you drive a few miles, there are mountain roads longer than anything in the Tour—the 18 mile ride up Mount Rainier comes to mind. Oo, the Alps, I’m really scared. Take the longest climb in the Alps, add a few miles of vertical road, throw in the possible threat of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption, and then you have Mount Rainier. The chance that Mount Rainier will erupt is about as likely as Greece winning the European Cup so don’t worry.

I don’t expect anything too exciting to happen in today’s third day of the Tour but you can’t be too careful when you are a fanatic viewer of the world’s greatest spectacle in sports. So I’m off to the gym. Today I won’t forget to bring a water bottle. Yesterday I practically dehydrated on my 90 minute exercise bike ride. I had to pee for about 45 minutes of that ride. If the room had been empty I probably would have peed in a corner so as not to miss any of the race. I was afraid that if I left to go to the bathroom, someone would change the channel. There are actually people in this world who don’t like to watch the Tour de France. That’s creepy but it’s true.

*Outside magazine