Tour de France, Week 1

After a rather long and painful train trip to Nice, I was finally at the Tour with Bikestyletours once again. I was on a trip covering the first few days of the race. Monaco and the TT course was great. A really good start to the Tour with a great course.

Levi, doing what Levi does.

The trips was once again really good fun. Not quite as much riding and not quite as fast as I would have liked, but we were sun-drenched and in a great part of the world.

It's been a very hard week early in the this year's Tour, even Jens has been grimacing!

So far the race has been very exciting and interesting. It’s great to see some old-school style racing coming into play in the first week of the tour, with Bordures in the wind and some unexpected time gaps.

Lance Armstrong seems to be in pretty good shape and his meticulousness and ability to be in the right place at all times and waste as little energy as possible is really shining through. Astana came through with a stunning TTT and showed their preparation. Though I did think it was a bit of a shame Garmin didn’t win the TTT. I would have rather see them win, as I don’t honestly feel they have many other cards to play throughout the rest of the Tour, and they deserve success. Astana on the other hand have plenty (maybe even ALL) the cards play in the next 2 weeks.

Hinault and Armstrong after the TTT: Best mates 4 ever?

Today is the first day in the mountains. Today we should see how everyone is really going. Will be very interesting to see how Astana race once the group of the favorites is whittled down. Great stuff!!!

First Mountain day into Andorra: Alberto Contador eyes the hights of the Pyrenees.

For me it’s time for a couple days at home. A quick race and then I fly up to Paris for another Bikestyle trip covering the last couple weeks of the Tour to Paris… oh great, I’ll have to ride bloody Ventoux again. L Actually last week’s ride up Ventoux wasn’t too bad. I rode up with a client who was pretty keen and it took us 1 hour 29… but we have ridden up there with clients where it’s taken over 3 hours… A quick nip up the Ventoux to keep the legs spinning (at about 50rpm, hmmmm)