best strava segment - ever!

can be found here. all backed up with actual, if unfeasible, cycling. congrats to  mike and the other finishers. good luck to the others still out on the trail. bad weather brewing which is good for putting out the fires but not so much for anything else. top effort!

100!

it's a special day but that doesn't mean eurosport isn't on for the start of the 100th edition of the tour. neither of us can muster much enthusiasm after the past year and certainly after the dauphine etc it appears that for at least some of the top riders 'preparation' goes on as normal. eurosport set out their stall with an intro absent of the parade of drug monkeys but it only served to expose that era more. still it's the tour and once t's mum appears doubtless we'll be glued.

results? really, i'm not that bothered for the reasons of above, so rather than that chapeau for mike hall who's nailed the tour divide despite fires which have stopped him claimed the record. great tweet as well when he realised his main competitor had scratched. top quality performance and should the tour chat become a bit old worth going back to the tour divide site for those who've yet to finish.

tour divide

it's that time of year for the madness that is the tour divide. true there is some localish interest this year but it's an event i'm tending to become more aware of, esp in very stark contrast to the bloated creation that is the tour. be warned if you do look at the all important leader board it's all too easy to get sucked in.

where is mike in relation to colin? have they really not stopped yet? who is that on the detour? you can, if you want do the call in thing and all those variations but if you're doing that you've got it bad and, inevitably you'll find yourself thinking, maybe....?

i'd love to do it but the simple fact of the 40 degree plus temperatures the leaders have been riding thru would rule me out. I am just too pallid and northern - anything over twenty just cooks my brains! I got asked if I fancied a race in Italy a couple fo years back but declined citing the evidence of someone a tad more into it than me who'd overheated, started seeing things, and cycled into a tree!

but i'd love to do it. maybe over a couple of months or three, more of an amble down the divide. certainly I wouldn't be beasting any 250 miles a day! but there are precedents. this guy was regularly doing more miles than me up until very recently.  i first heard of him a few years back, when he was in his early nineties. I'd just done a strenuous 90 miler only to finds he'd done more or less the same route, stayed overnight in a hostel, then cycled back! I'd just missed him but he was in buying a new bike at the lbs. they were trying to persuade him it was maybe time to slow down but, rightly, he predicted he had a few more years in him.

neil sinclair - a total legend!