I have been following the Tour De France today on the computer just because I was looking forward to this mountain stage. Usually I watch the OLN coverage replay in the evening for a while but today I watched the tracker online.

Well today Lance Armstrong started the day 1 minute and 37 seconds back of the leader Alberto Contador. Today’s race had lots of mountains and Contador, although he did not win ended up finishing a couple of minutes ahead of Lance Armstrong.

It seems in watching the race over the last few days that Lance just does not have the legs for the mountains that he had in the past, he is definitely one of the strongest in the mountains but not quite what he needs, especially when he is on a team with more than one leader where he is not the only rider being supported by the team. Read the rest of this entry »

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I just noticed yesterday that the tour De France has started up again for the year. I am a biker but I only ride as far as to work everyday, I have never ridden my bike a hundred miles before. Every year I watch the tour and I do not watch it just for the drama and entertainment value I watch it partially just to see that there is no real limits except for the ones that we create for ourselves.

This year the Tour de France will cover 2200 miles in 20 days. For someone that has never ridden a 100 miles in a day, also known as a century ride, this kind of race still astounds me. Not only are many of the stages of the Tour De France over 100 miles long but there are a series of stages that go through the mountains were the climb may be tough but also the lack of oxygen at higher elevations makes these race stages even more difficult.

There is another shadow race that occurs the day after each Tour de France stage and this is where people get together and race the same stage that the pros did the day before.

So next time you are on the couch and thinking about how you can get just a little more exercise in your day to lose weight just remember that over the next three weeks over 150 of the best riders in the world are racing as fast as cars to try to be the first to get through Paris.

Later this week I will post a sample training schedule that the Tour de France racers use.

I have watched Lance Armstrong for years in his wins at the Tour de France and was interested in the story that he was going to be running the New York marathon with almost no running training. To be sure Lance is in fantastic shape now although I am sure his 180 pounds now is a little fatter and in slightly worse condition then his prime 165 pound cycling weight. Amazing to me is that he was able to run the New York marathon in just under 3 hours.

As a professional cyclist, perhaps the best that ever lived Lance Armstrong was a true competitor that played to his strengths. Lance is good at riding in the mountains although maybe not the best but coupled with his strength in sprints, also not the best in the world and his strategic vision, which is definitely the best in cycling. Running though is a very different sport than cycling and while running Lance Armstrong had a lot of trouble after about and hour and a half or so because his body is finely tuned for a longer endurance at a lower level of effort, I am sure that the energy Lance Armstrong would put out in a regular day at the Tour de France is likely the same as the top marathon runners on Sunday but he would do this in five hours not two hours.

Still, Lance again accomplished an amazing feat. Most vetran runners would not be able to do the New York marathon in under three hours and I beleive that the two things that made the difference between what he did and just giving up after and hour or tow was his cockiness in knowing that he is one of the great athletes of our time and the mental attitude that allowed him to continue well after his body was willing to give up.

Here is some of what was said in a New York Times article about Lance Armstrong and the race:

After his news conference at the New York Athletic Club, he limped out of the room.

Earlier, Armstrong had said that he could possibly have run a sub-2:30 if he had trained, but now he was quite sure that another marathon was out of the question. Nothing in cycling ever came close to three hours of activity at this level, he said.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’ve never felt this bad, ever,” he said. “My legs are killing me. My back doesn’t feel that great, either. I’m really suffering.”

This goes to show that no matter what kind of an athlete that you are there is always something that is going to be difficult. The next crazy thing I would like to see is a marathoner riding the Tour de France and seeing how that would go. Two different disciplines but there are a lot of parallels to training and how to get your head into the sport.

Usually people do things in half measures. I have in all of my articles talked about the things you can do to make a change and most of them are not particularly hard. Take a look back now at all of the changes that I have put forward. Are you comfortable with each of these changes? Probably. But once all of these changes are instituted you are looking at a whole new you, a new outlook, a new body, a new way of looking at eating as well as exercise.

Most change in life that is really serious and permanent comes from radical changes. When you make a break from the past and change the way that you look at all things in your life you are changing a paradigm and you never need look back. I have been in points in my life in the past where I would look at some kind of exercise or lifestyle change and would kind of chuckle saying “No, I couldn’t do that” and six months later I am at that point.

I would like to pop up some role models that you can look at to see what is in fact possible. First lets look at Lance Armstrong, as many of us know Lance Armstrong endured cancer and came back to win the Tour De France seven times. Here are a few things that make Lance Armstrong seem like a normal guy: he has 2 kids, and a failed marriage, part way through his first Tour De France he considered quitting, he came from a trailer park in Texas. Now let’s look at what it takes to do what he does. He leads a team of seven riders that protect his position in the race, he rides 3500 KM in 21 days and in the last Tour De France he only won one stage but was so close to the lead in every other stage that he was able to easily win overall. One more person would be Bill Clinton, like him or not Bill Clinton cam from a very poor family, a broken home, put himself through university to become a lawyer which should have been tough enough but this gave him a chance to become a politician and to become the governor of Arkansas and finally to beat all the “backwoods” stereotype attitudes from the rest of the country to finally become president. Just so we could look at him again as a real person, Bill Clinton committed infidelity within his marriage and is now trying to rise up again as a great international statesman.

Both of these stories teach us that anyone can do great things and that there can be doubt and setbacks to our great changes. The other thing that we see is that most people are normal people and that we can pull ourselves to succeed