Tour de France: Stage 5 Live Thread (Thursday, July 6, 2006)

I love the wind in the face, and also that cycling makes you start to think like an animal - or so I imagine. You have to be alert to everything - potholes, curbs, sewer grates, traffic, overhanging branches, road texture, hills, wind, shade, and I like that heightened sense of alertness that cycling requires.

Agreed. It's a very "Be here now" experience. And when you're doing it on a beautiful country road there's nothing like it.

As the frogs say, I have the envie to visit Normandy, including the D-Day beaches! Sounds like you had a great trip.

If you are not "of a certain age," as they say, you may not be aware of one of the romantic movies of all time. Un Homme et une femme, (A Man and a Woman), was largely filmed in Deauville. You might find it a very nostalgic way to extend the pleasure of your visit. At the first least, you get the exquisit pleasure of an hour and a half of the companionship of Anouk Amie, a woman of both style and beauty who killed all us 60s guys who were not on acid.

OK, enough colour, now back to the Tour DAY France! LOL!! (w/ apologies to LK44-40 :) : Tu es fou!

There used to be a patchwork jersey, part yellow, part green, part polka dotted. A formula was used and this jersey was handed out to the rider who was rated the best according to this formula. Specifically, a rider would have to be performing well in all three categories in order to get it.

They stopped handing it out years ago, but it is an interesting competition. Only Eddy Merckx has won all three jerseys in the same year, in 1969. That was the one year in the tour when one man truly dominated the rest of the field.

I'm not sure how the formula worked so I can't say who would have it right now, but if I had to guess, I would say Matthias Kessler of T-Mobile, who is 11th in GC, 22nd in sprint points, and 12th in mountain points.

In a year like this, if a GC contender who is a good climber can stay in the top 15-20 in the green jersey competition during the flat stages, and then goes on a tear and wins several of the big mountain stages (especially the ones that finish on a climb where KOTM points are double), anything can happen. The points are weighted so that the winner of a flat stage earns more, but still.

Do you remember a couple of years ago, a break away of about 14 guys got out 25 minutes on the peloton? The size of the group enabled them to work together and stay away. They finished 25 minutes or so ahead of the field giving the race organizers fits b/c the entire peloton essentially was eliminated by the time restrictions. In the end they made an exception b/c of the size of the field group.

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