Tour de France Tomorrow! Allez!!!

I think my heart rate has gone up.  I might need to see a doctor, but I'll only go if there's a TV showing the Tour de France in the exam room.  I don't want to miss a day of it.  I've been hooked on the Tour since the days when Eddy Merckx was cannibalizing his opponents on the high mountains of France,  all across Europe.  I was riding a Schwinn LeTour around town and hanging out at the local bike shop where I read all the cycling magazines and every VeloNews cover to cover.  No TV coverage back then and hardly a squeak about it in the paper, but I was enthralled.  It has that kind of ability to grip the imagination.  Intrigue! Suffering! Controversy! Heroism!  I'm all over it every year.  

The Tour starts tomorrow (July 3) and goes for three weeks.  Skinny guys the size of your average whippet climb like angels on bikes that weigh 14 lb (by regulation).  They have hearts the size of cantaloupes with resting pulse rates like blue whales (30-40 beats per minute).  They spend all year racing each other on long courses in France, Spain, Italy and dozens of other countries, but the big race that really matters to most of them is the Tour.  

It takes time to understand the nuances and get what matters about the Tour.  Try this:  Get on any bike and try to ride up your neighborhood hill - fast - and then watch a mountain stage where the climb goes for 20 miles up, reaching altitudes above tree line, and then has three more climbs just like it after that - and they are actually racing all day.  It's just plain nuts, defies imagination and sanity like no other sporting event, and it has been contested for a hundred years.  I hope it goes on for a thousand more.

France is getting ready to host its big circus while the whole cycling world watches, just like we do when the Super Bowl is played every year, only this is a super bowl every day for three weeks.  It's that big.  Le sigh....

Versus TV channel is carrying live coverage.  You can also check it out on VeloNews.com, CyclingTV.com and by Googling Tour de France 2010.  Each team has a website, of course, so you can look them up that way too.  Lance Armstrong is riding for Team RadioShack; he's the most recognizable rider and one certain to be at the center of the traveling storm that is the Tour de France.

Raising the White Flag

I've been watching spandexed bodies flying, spinning, flipping, running, skating, and flashing by so fast I can't see them unless I see it all again in slow-mo.  I am held willing captive by my television, white flag held high, taken prisoner by the scenes before my eyes.  It happens to me every Olympics, this surrender.  This is bad.  I have yielded heart and soul to the fantasy of Olympic endeavor even though I know it is a representation of only the most elite, most talented and gifted athletes the world has to offer in an arena created at extreme expense, leaving out the vast majority of humankind who also strive and compete.  But, then again, maybe they aren't left out.  Not totally.


It's true I've never come close and never will come close to being an elite athlete, but I need to know that those flying-squirrel ski jumpers are out there gently floating down long slopes to settle lightly and gracefully as you please 140 meters from liftoff.  I need to see a girl readying herself on a pair of skis before she slides down, and then up, and then way up into the cold sky where she does turns, tumbles, flips, and somersaults and lands again back on earth.  I need to see two people dancing with impeccable grace and flair on razor sharp skates to a cacophony of corny music and see them look effortless and fine.  I need to see an icy toboggan chute that barely contains a heavy sled with four muscular men crouching down, slashing downhill at 90 miles an hour.  


I need to witness it all that because I believe it's impossible to do those things.  I need to see the huge cauldron of fire set alight after a million-mile relay all around the country because I am small.  I am small, and I have attempted to live a good life, and my life has been safe.  I live in a small town where a few of our citizens can run pretty well or swing a golf club respectably, but from which no one has really distinguished themselves to Olympian heights.  


I swim and I think of Olympic swimmers who seem to have some ungodly ability to accelerate from an already insane pace.  I run and I think of diminutive Kenyan runners with the lungs of a whale who are so fleet that 26.2 miles is the same to them as my 1 or 2 miles are to me.  I ride my bike up Forest Avenue and I think of Tour de France riders storming up the slopes of Mt. Ventoux in France, a severe and horrible climb created by Lucifer himself.  


I need inspiration and hope and all my heroes, every one of them.  They are the gifted angels who fly among us, tapping us on the shoulder, nudging us to give it another shot, try again, go a little harder next time.  They have bitten off more than anyone should chew, swallowed it and grown up to be nearly immortal.   



Their movements are beautiful and they make it all look so very easy, so simple.  The simplicity is deceptive, but this is good.  A simple deception is beguiling and alluring, tempts us to believe that if we really do give it one more shot, maybe we'll do better, overcome a bit of adversity, prevail somehow.  The coolest part of it all is that when you believe you have the possibility of prevailing, beating the odds, sometimes you actually do.  


I will keep watching the Games, fascinated by the wild abandon represented in each arena, the attainment of rarefied glory because I need to.  I know this is a very specific groove, probably the most stirring and exciting one around.  However, you think this is bad, you should see me when July comes along and the Tour de France commences.  I'm gonna be soooo gone then, and happily so.  I surrender!  

Tour de France and nothing else

I'm held captive in the clutches of the Tour de France, unable to wrench myself free until the final rider crosses the finish line in Paris tomorrow. I was hooked on the intricacies and spectacle of it years ago when I tried racing and rode my bike all over everywhere. While it's complex and there are many aspects of strategy involved in the sport, the visual appeal is hard to deny. Riders everywhere imagine themselves riding up the huge mountain climbs or bombing down twisting devilish descents, but only a very minute percentage of racers have a realistic chance of competing. Among those, an equally tiny percentage have a hope of competing to win.

When the Tour coverage begins in July, I'm glued to my TV and love every second of it. Like one little French lady said a few years ago, "The Super Bowl? Pooof! What is that compared to three weeks of the Tour?"

I agree.