Oww, that hurts!

Good morning from London! Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday but we were busy being tourists. Actually, we started our trip on the 5th, flying out of Boston around 6 PM. We arrived in London around 5 AM local time, and from the minute we got off the train it was a non-stop day of walking and 'sploring. Our hotel puts us right in the middle of everything; just across a park from Buckingham Palace and a little over a mile from Westminster Abbey and Big Ben.

In France, the 3rd stage of the Tour was poised to be somewhat of a differentiator between some of the GC guys, and it was; just not in the way many expected. All those miles of cobblestone tore up the peloton. For one, Frank Schleck crashed out, which can't be a benefit for Andy Schleck's effort for Saxo Bank. Lance was having a really good ride, about 30 seconds ahead of Contador, when he got a flat while riding along the gutter of the road. It cost him over a minute and at the end of the day, he was 50 seconds behind last years winner. He's sitting 19th right now about 2 1/2 minutes back, but this really doesn't mean much right now. There are only 3 people ahead of Lance that really have a chance at wearing yellow at the end of the race. The real stages are still the mountains, but it adds more intrigue because if Lance is going to win he now has to come from behind to win. 

So on the day in the Tour were putting themselves through all sorts of pain riding on the pave, we absolutely killed our feet with more than 15 miles of walking throughout London. Touring Westminster Abbey was amazing, and standing amongst the tombs of kings, queens, statesmen, and writers who previously were no more than names in a history book was something I'll never forget. Built over hundreds of years, it's seen everything, and is now the place where royalty is crowned. Sadly, it's one of the few places in town where photography is not allowed, so I don't have any shots of the inside of this wonderful place.

We followed it up with a long walk out to the East End of London to participate in a Jack the Ripper walking tour. It was truly interesting to hear about this gruesome series of murders hundreds of years ago. I learned the City of London itself is only 1 square mile, and everything else around it is a suburb. Pretty amazing to see this many sites, so many things that are so old and so well preserved. Heck in the Abbey, I actually touched a door that is almost 1000 years old. It's unreal how amazing everything is.

We've seen most of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. I liked that but was even more impressed with watching the changing of the Horse Guard at their building. It's all been pretty amazing but what's funny is that my favorite place here so far is actually a shop. At the Guard Museum, they have a toy soldier shop. They sell all sorts of metal soldiers painted and positioned in various acts of combat, parade or guard. They have hundreds of different kinds available, and if I had tons of money, I would have bought quite a few. I picked up a medieval knight and a Scottish Guard (the guy seen below). I'll probably pick up one or two more of the ones on sale yet before we leave for France. 

Discipline: Standing still for 8 hours in THAT hat

In terms of eating, we had a HUGE breakfast because the room wasn't ready and we were exhausted. It's difficult eating on a trip like this because most places I have no idea how many calories I'm eating. Thankfully, we're walking or cycling everywhere from the trip except to and from the airports, so we're getting plenty of exercise, even without our planned workouts. My (United) Kingdom for a scale!

They're preparing for a very violent game of polo.

Notes:

- You can get more and better details on our first day on Rach's blog. She got to the PC first, so she got it for longer. We're off to tea soon, so I could only fit in a little post.

- Proof that douchebags are everywhere: bikers all over the place here, and about 1 in 10 is a helmetless brakeless hipster on a fixie. In a country where it rains a lot.

- I get to take an english tea!

Rach and I in the park across from Buckingham Palace

Ready and not ready

I'm sitting on the couch with just about 2 hours until we leave for the airport. We've already checked in, the bags are packed, and all we have left is to shower, dress, and walk out the door. It'll be a lot of waiting for the flight to London, and I'm both excited and nervous. I'm excited because we finally get to go on the honeymoon, and nervous because I have finally reached 310, and I'm concerned about the fact that it happened just a day before we leave for vacation. The last thing I want is to have gone through this effort.and then pack on a bunch of pounds as a tourist. I guess I'll just have to find the balance between excited honeymooner and athlete on a mission. But I know with a little discipline that I can and will keep the pounds off on our trip.

While crashes are a relative rarity in airplane travel (and let's hope they stay that way), the same cannot be said for bike racing, especially in the Tour de France. Between Sunday and Monday's stages, nearly every one of the threats for the General Classification riders hit the deck on wet slippery roads. Sundays crashes were somewhat minor but disrupted the peloton inside the safety zone so that it didn't have much affect on time, but a few racers were forced to retire from the race.

Mondays crashes stirred up the race with Andy Schleck, one of the guys who can make a real push for the win going down hard. He appears ok, and got back to the peloton to finish at the same time as the rest of the field that neutralized the finish in protest over the conditions. The stage winner was Sylvain Chavanel who as part of an early break led essentially from the 10km mark. That's a ride of 180ish km with only minimal help and the last bits totally on his own. Pretty good for a guy who cracked his skull on these same roads only months ago.

Lance, Contador, and the other real GC guys seem to have escaped the worst of things, but the chief lieutenants for some teams as well as some of the more distant GC contenders were caught out in the cold, coming in several minutes behind the rest of the field. There's some intrigue going on over night, as the cause for some of todays crashes came from a camera motorcycle crashing in front of the riders.

Tomorrow will be a big day, and not just for Rach and I as we explore London. The 3rd stage of the tour has the riders going over 8 1/2 miles of cobblestone streets which will certainly cause all sorts of mayhem.

A ride in the rain and a ride in the sun

First, Happy Fourth of July, I hope you all have a great holiday weekend.

Now, If you're hoping to avoid coverage of the Tour de France, results of the race, or any other spoilers... you should probably either read another blog or come back later after you've seen Day 1 of the race. Spoilers will be posted throughout. I'll be mixing in my daily tidbits as well, and hopefully, the race and my day will blend each day as well as they did today.

In case you missed it in the above paragraph, the Tour de France started today. Well, technically it was the prologue to the race, but the times they cycled today count towards the total. A Prologue stage is a very short time trial (todays was a 9k ride). Fastest guy wins as usual, but instead of the whole field gunning it out at once the riders are sent onto the course one at a time, with the next guy following a minute later. 

A ride this short usually doesn't offer a lot of drama other than seeing where each guy places, but the weather in Rotterdam provided a little extra intrigue in the form of rain. Slippery roads on a twisting course on the first day of the Tour caused some guys to be (too) cautious, and others who went all out early wound up crashing. At least one rider is already out of the race, and a couple of the overall contenders are down 30 to 45 seconds from the overall lead.

Speaking of the overall lead, you might remember about a month ago I mentioned Fabian Cancellara, aka Sparticus. The world champion time trialist didn't disappoint today, laying down the fastest time by almost 10 seconds. Doesn't sound like much, but that's a huge amount of time amongst top level pro cyclists on a short course. Plus, he was the second to last rider on the course, with only last years overall leader Alberto Contador to follow. 

While the latest details of the Floyd Landis doping allegations against Lance Armstrong have added the backdrop of suspicion and suspense to the race, Sparticus hasn't been completely clear of the fray. After his string of very strong rides this season, some people began to suspect he was possibly using a motor in his bike to power his dramatic breakaways.This led the organizers of the Tour to begin randomly x-raying bikes at the end of each days stage. When they scanned his bike after the win, here's what Spartacus had to say:

"After the race, they scanned my bike, and I said to them, ‘You better scan me, because I am the motor,' "

- Fabian Cancellara.

It would seem Spartacus' thighs aren't the only things that are gigantic. 

While it will probably be overplayed in the American media, Lance had a fantastic day, especially for someone hasn't been good against the clock this year. Benefiting from a change in weather, he wound up fourth, only 22 seconds back and 5 seconds ahead of Contador. It doesn't mean much in terms of the whole race, but it's something that could put a different spin on the psychological aspects of the race.

So, while the pros were racing their way through the wet Netherlands, Rach and I were training our way through the hot suburbs of Boston. We had a 45 mile ride planned again today, and for the 3rd straight time we were thwarted at hitting that distance. Last Saturday, Rach wound up getting dizzy on our long ride, which pointed to her getting sick this week. Fortunately, today she didn't get dizzy. But after a week of not feeling great and pushing herself to workout anyways; she just didn't have the legs for the longer ride.

In fact, she barely had the legs for the ride we did, which still pushed us past our previous best distance and ended at 33.5 miles. While Rach foundered, I have to admit I flourished. I got to a point where I was doing well above 20 MPH, and was even down in the drop portion of the handlebars for a couple of minutes pedaling strong. I've never been that fast before, and in the times I've been close; it's never felt so easy. If I hadn't wanted to slow down to keep Rach from falling too far behind, I could have gone hard for quite a while. I managed to do it on the long gradual uphill part of the Minuteman Bike Trail. I guess that means my cardio is getting stronger.

Now if only someone would tell that to my running.

Notes: 

- Tomorrow we leave for the honeymoon and we're both getting more excited by the day. We're catching the Boston fireworks tonight, and packing today and tomorrow. We even did a currency exchange today, and I now have British Pounds in my wallet.

- Thanks again for all the tips and well wishes. We're making use of the suggestions, and we promise to have a lot of fun no matter what.

It's not about the fat

With his recent announcement that the 2010 Tour de France will be his last, Lance Armstrong took the world's most popular cycling race, and if it's possible ratcheted up the attention even further. With cycling interest in the United States comparative to soccer (meaning it gets national attention only during the biggest events), to say this story will be inescapable is probably an overstatement, unless you read this blog.

I've always been interested in cycling, from an early age. I remember the late 80's, watching some of the stages on TV as Greg Lemond became the first American to win the Tour. I remember thinking how cool it was that they rode so fast, and climbed mountains on bicycles. And then, like most Americans, I went back to baseball once the race was over and forgot all about it. Until Lance, that is. Like many folks here in the US, I was captivated by his "invasion" of France each year, made only more amazing by the disease he had overcome.

With the race starting tomorrow, and our honeymoon in Paris happening during the Tour I feel an even stronger connection to this race than I have in years past (ie. I'll be talking about it a lot more). Though the timing of our trip likely won't allow us to see any of the stages of the race in person, we'll be only a few hundred miles from where it's occurring. And we're going to do our best to catch part of the race each day while not giving up any of our sightseeing.

The title of one of Lance's books is "It's not about the bike", which obviously inspired the title of today's post. Whether you believe anything about the most recent doping allegations that have will certainly be a sideline to this years race, overcoming the cancer to succeed in such a physically demanding profession is an inspirational story.

It serves to remind me that if people every day are overcoming far more life threatening and uncontrollable diseases like cancer, I can certainly overcome the urge to cram too much food into my pie hole. The amount of willpower it takes just to get out of bed when you're fighting a battle where the medicine is almost as deadly as the disease is just blows my mind.

I have a friend who currently is fighting Acute Lymphblastic Leukemia and is doing it right out in the open on her Facebook page. While I talk about the daily struggle to lose weight fairly candidly, I'm not sure I have the emotional honesty to share something like that. The courage that people show on a daily basis just astounds me. I can't even find a comparison to make that won't sound stupid so I'm not going to even try.


On top of all of the Tour stuff, Armstrong has already announced that he's definitely going to start doing triathlons again in 2011. He says his ambition is not to try and win the Ironman World Championship, but he hopes to be competitive and do some of the big races both in the 140.6 and 70.3 distances. Love him or hate him, he's a guy who like probably no one else in the sport will be able to put butts in the seats. For that reason alone, I think he's going to be good for triathlons. Already the single fastest growing participation sport in the country, adding Armstrong will be another big lift that could add even higher profile sponsorships, with the potential effects being felt even at the amateur level.


Of course all this inspiration makes me like a heel when I talk about my big struggle of dropping below 310 pounds. Rach and I have both been feeling under the weather at times this week, and the intensity our duration of most of our workouts since Saturday have not been where they should be. I've also been plagued with midnight snacks a few days this week, so I'm currently floating between 311-314 depending on the morning. 


At least the good news is that everything will be expensive on our trip, so I'll be less inclined to snack as it will cost too much.


Notes:


- I'm going to talk a little about what I notice each day of the Tour, and try to equate what I see with what I experience when I'm on a bike or in a race. Until we get to Europe on Tuesday, there will probably be mostly short quick posts as opposed to the long winded posts like todays


- Last night I had a dream they had to cancel an Ironman somewhere because the ocean had too much oil in it for people to swim. They really need to plug that damn leak.

- 1250 yard swim last night. I know I just complained about the lack of distance or intensity in our workouts, but then I looked at what we did last night; 1250 yards in less than 35 minutes. 6 months ago I was barely able to get through 1250 yards, now I'm whining I didn't do enough. It's amazing what raised expectations will do for you.

I'm glad running is last

When they designed the order for a triathlon, I sometimes wonder what they were thinking. But when you really think about it, it couldn't be done as well in any other order.

Swimming - It's easy to see why swimming is first, and that's risk of drowning. Triathlons are already a challenge, so imagine a race where you bike 56 miles, run a half marathon, and THEN go swimming. Probably not so many people finishing races, and some of the non-finishers would also be non-breathers. I can't even imagine the number of people in a full Ironman who would be in trouble trying

Biking - Technically, you could probably put the bike anywhere in the order. It might be just because I enjoy biking most, but realistically it might be in the worst place as it comes before the run. Biking before running leads to lots of pain in the groins as you transition from biking to running. Unfortunately, with swimming needing to be first for safety reasons, if you put the run before the bike, you'll have too many dead legs to ride very fast. So I guess it is where it should be.

Running - This is the discipline I like the least, but know that if I was any good at it, I might like the most. I see people running everywhere and how much they seem to enjoy it. Rachelle in particular loves running, (except when her IT bands are acting up), and I'm often jealous of how good at it she is. Even when I beat her at the other 2 disciplines, she still cleans my clock overall because of how fast she is on the run (and conversely how slow I am).

In fact, I'm still struggling with running enough that even the day after a hard run, my training is way off. For example, I ran 3.5 miles on Tuesday. I ran the whole thing, and afterwards was pretty tired. We had a long ride planned last night, but Rach wasn't feeling well so I went out on my own looking for some hills to ride. Instead of riding a long ways out, I stuck to the man made hills (overpasses and bridges) close to home, and used those to my advantage, doing some repeats and just roaming.

There was a pretty strong wind, and it seemed like I was always riding into it. This is good for training because wind is something thats hard to predict on race day. Though I tackled some hills, and worked hard, I didn't have anywhere near the energy I normally do, and after about 10 miles I called it a night. It could have been attributed to any number of things, but I'm fairly sure it was due to the run the night before.

Notes:

- I found a teammate i started near, and knowing where I finished, I can say with some surety that my time for the Chase Corporate Challenge was around 46:30. Pretty happy with that and excited for my next race.

- Swimming and running tonight. It's cooler here today (high in the 70's) which always makes running more enjoyable.