OT: 2008 Tour de France AWESOME
The Tour de France is the pinnacle of cycling so I felt compelled to annouce the results. By the way, Christian Vande Velde of the USA finished 5th. He rode for team Garmin-Chipotle which is based in Boulder Colorado.
Sorry if I talk too much about cycling here in the locker room. 
Spain's Carlos Sastre wrapped up his maiden Tour de France triumph on Sunday following the final stage of the race into Paris. Quick Step's Gert Steegman won the stage 21 sprint finish up the Champs-Elysees.
Sastre, a 33-year-old climbing specialist who rides for the CSC-Saxo Bank team, became the eighth Spaniard to win the race's yellow jersey and the third consecutively after Oscar Pereiro (2006) and Alberto Contador (2007).
Silence-Lotto's Cadel Evans was runner-up for the second consecutive year, the Australian finished 1 min and 5 seconds behind Sastre after failing to eradicate a 1 min 34 sec deficit to the Spaniard in the penultimate stage time trial.
A surprise third place went to Gerolsteiner's Bernhard Kohl of Austria, who stepped onto the podium in Paris wearing the polka dot jersey for the race's 'King of the Mountains'.
Last year's 'King of the Mountains' winner, Colombian Mauricio Soler, quit the race before the halfway stage after a number of crashes.
Last one, I promise!!
How hard is the Tour de France?
Ask Andy Hampsten of Boulder Colorado, who rode the tour eight times and finished fourth twice. He says it was the hardest thing he ever did as a cyclist, so hard that it is difficult for him to convey the stress and utter bone-tiredness that sets in during the three weeks of competition. At night, the cyclists could barely move.
“It hurt to walk, it hurt to lie in bed and do nothing,” Mr. Hampsten said. “When we were not racing, we were sitting down or lying down if we could. It’s funny to see these 20- and 30-year-old superathletes never standing up. Even when we would sit on the edge of a bed, we would slump down to a horizontal position as quickly as possible.”
This year’s tour, which began on July 7, will cover 2,205 miles over 23 days, including six days in the Alps and Pyrenees, before ending next Sunday in Paris. Only two days are set aside for rest.
For pure energy expenditure, it is hard to match the Tour de France, whose riders consume as much as 8,000 to 9,000 calories a day.
By studying four racers as they rode in the 1985 Tour, Klaas Westerterp of Maastricht University in the Netherlands concluded that their metabolic rates increased 4.3- to 5.3-fold. That sort of increase in metabolic rate, he added, is what birds reach when they fly and is thought to be a physiological limit.
David Gordon Wilson, an emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “Bicycling Science” (MIT Press, 2004), calculated that Tour riders generate 400 watts of power when they are riding up mountains or trying to break away from the pack. An average person riding a bicycle and working as hard as possible puts out 150 to 200 watts, he said.
In any event, Dr. Wilson said, no ordinary human being could even dream of matching these top athletes.
Hey Scott,
Comparing what I can do on the bike vs. these guys is like being a recreational golfer and watching Tiger Woods play. No comparison but makes me want to improve my game so to speak.
Here's another thought I always use to motivate me...."ain't too many ex-500 pounders doin' what I'm doin' on the bike. Not an ego thing but helps keep me from getting discouraged when a bunch of "young pups" go blowin' by me out on the road.
Boner
