Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2026 Paris-Nice Stage 8

Introduction

Almost thirty years ago my wife and I were visiting the south of France, and at a train station were spied by a fellow American. This was disappointing in and of itself because we were trying not to look like tourists. We probably thought we were dressing in a Euro style, and lots of foreigners wear Levi’s, but clearly we were easily identifiable by our countryman. He looked like Elmer Fudd and, in the loud and uninhibited style we Americans are known and despised for, he hollered across the platform at us, “Does REE-tard mean late?!” He was referring to the signs announcing the delays caused by the almost inevitable rail workers’ strike that day. I resisted the temptation to reply, “No, REE-tard means you!” Because of course I was too politically correct, even then.

And what does this have to do with the Paris-Nice stage race? Almost nothing, unless you saw the word “Nice” and sounded out our English word “nice” in your head. It’s pronounced “neece,” you retard. Pardon my French. (Don’t pretend you thought I was using a vulgar and insensitive English word; I was using the French word that’s pronounced “ray-TARRR,” to suggest that you were late to grasp that this race ends in a city in southern France. I mean, come on!) Anyway, today I cover the final stage of this eight-day race, in my unprofessional blogger’s style, jettisoning journalistic traditions of impartiality and tongue-biting, particularly in the case of someone I think is doping, whom I might flippantly refer to as a … dummy. And during lulls in today’s action, I’ll fill you in on what happened in the first seven stages, too.

Paris-Nice Stage 8 – Nice to Nice

As I join the action, the riders have finished the first categorized climb of the day and are descending toward the Category 1 Côte de Châteauneuf-Villevielle which I translate as “coast of nine castles old city.” Whatever, French dudes. Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) is off the front solo, chased by Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates – XRG) about 35 seconds back. A reduced peloton is another 30 seconds behind Soler. There are about 50 kilometers to go so obviously the breakaway’s only hope is if some great riders bridge up to them. Here’s a photo of Paret-Peintre. Sorry it’s so grainy … Peacock blocks screen captures, because you know, if people are able to grab still images of cycling footage, the terrorists win.

Since nothing important is happening at the moment, I’ll catch you up on what’s gone down in this stage race so far. First off, Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates XRG) is not here. If he were, I wouldn’t bother to watch, much less report, since he wins constantly, easily, almost inevitably, without needing any tactics. For example, he soloed with like 80 kilometers to go in Strade Bianche recently. He makes the race and the sport boring AF. (If you’re not familiar with the acronym “AF,” click here or ask a teenager.)

In Pogacar’s absence, his perennial nemesis Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma – Lease A Bike) is dominating the Paris-Nice GC, having handily soloed to victory in stages 4 and 5. The Dane is 3:22 ahead of the next rider, Daniel Martinez (Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe) and 5:50 ahead of Georg Steinhauser (EF Education – Easypost). So it would take a lot (e.g., a crash or illness) to shake up the GC today. The only really close GC battle is for the best young rider competition, which is currently led by Steinhauser who has just 19 seconds over Kevin Vauquelin (Ineos Granadiers). Fun fact about Steinhauser: he shortened his first name from George to Georg to save weight. It seems to be working. Rumor has it Vaquelin is going to start going by “Kev.” It’s what his girlfriend already calls him.

They interviewed Soler earlier and are showing that now:

INTERVIEWER: How are you feeling about the stage?

SOLER: It’s a good, tough stage and I’m only in sixth overall, so if I feel good, I’m going to attack.

INTERVIEWER: Let’s talk about that tantrum you threw during the 2019 Vuelta a Espana when you were off the front and your team called you back to help your team leader. That is, to do your fricking job. And then you were gesticulating and whining like a little bitch.

SOLER: Are you really bringing that up? Come on, man, I was young, inexperienced, hotheaded, and I made a mistake. Why do I have to be tortured about that for the rest of my life?

INTERVIEWER: It left an indelible memory. You were acting like a big spoiled child.

SOLER: Haven’t you ever done something you regret?

INTERVIEWER: Well, when I was in grammar school I lost an 8-inch acrylic rod. I cried for weeks.

Okay, I should come clean about something: I don’t always render those interviews all that accurately, especially if nobody’s saying anything interesting. And that bit about the 8-inch acrylic rod? That was my dad’s self-acknowledged “sole regret.” My brothers love to dredge that up, even more than Soler’s tantrum.

Speaking of Soler, he’s been caught.

The riders are starting their way up the Châteauneuf. Ineos heads the peloton, setting up their leader, Vauquelin. OMG, there’s a crash! It’s Martinez!

It looks like he was passing his teammate, who altered his line and bumped Martinez right into the ramped curb there, flipping him over. Martinez has gotten up but looks like he’s really suffering. His teammates drop back and the team car arrives. They’ve got him a new bike and his team is pacing him back up. But he’s lost a lot of time.

Ineos continues to pound the pedals and the gap to Paret-Peintre is coming down. Vauquelin sits fourth on GC, almost four minutes behind Martinez, so it’s possible he could make it on to the podium, if Martinez is hurt and isn’t able to keep that gap under control.

Getting back to my recap, in terms of the stage results, the first was won by an American, Luke Lamperti, in his first season with the EF Education – Easypost team. He then placed fifth in the second stage, thus keeping the yellow leader’s jersey and (virtually) the green points leader jersey. Stage 2 was won by Max Kanter (XDS Astana Team). The third stage was a team time trial, won by the Ineos Granadiers. Oddly, ASO—the race organizers—have been tinkering with the rules for their TTTs and instead of taking the fourth or fifth rider’s time, they take the first, so teams have much less incentive to stick together. I guess they’re embracing the every-man-for-himself, dog-eat-dog mindset more associated with Americans. Somebody should point this out to the ASO so they come to their senses and go back to the original rules. Anyhow, the result is that Lamperti was left for dead by his team and dropped to 70th place on GC. In the overall, one of the favorites, Juan Ayuso, was well served by his Lidl-Trek squad and took over the GC lead.

Getting back to today’s stage, Visma is on the front setting tempo, presumably to keep Steinhauser from attacking. They’re nearing the summit of this climb.

To finish up my recap, I already mentioned how Vingegaard handily won stages 4 and 5, destroying everyone else. Stage 4 was a monster, with absolutely frigid, wet conditions that saw Ayuso crashing out. Vingegaard was dressed in like five layers, with the straps of his bibs pulled up over his yellow jersey. It was really the most undignified look I’ve ever seen for a race winner. He didn’t do a victory salute at the end, probably for this reason. Stage 6 was won by another XDS Astana Team rider, Harold Tejada, in a bold solo move toward the end. And yesterday’s penultimate stage, which was supposed to have a mountaintop finish, was shortened to just 43 kilometers due to fresh snowfall in the mountains. It was absolutely frigid out there … look at this guy’s crazy getup.

Without the climbs, the stage ended up being another opportunity for the sprinters, with Dorian Godon (Ineos Granadiers) taking  the stage. Lamperti managed fifth, but this wasn’t good enough to save his green jersey.

I would say the most exciting aspect of Paris-Nice so far was this amazing snot comet that Godon had to contend with after his victorious but very cold race yesterday:

Commentators are already calling Godon  “the snottiest man in cycling.” Rumor has it that Kimberly –Clark, the company behind Kleenex, is offering him an endorsement deal.

Paret-Peintre is over the top and maintaining his lead. And now the GC group is up and over. Martinez looks pretty good in the chase group behind, his teammates pacing him and keeping the gap steady.

They’ve got a long descent now and Papi (I’m coining a nickname since I’m too lazy to keep typing the full hyphenated name) is really digging deep. I note that he’s on a Specialized bicycle, which bodes well for him, even if it’s 40 km to the finish.

Now Papi’s on an uncategorized climb and we shall see what this does to his lead. He’s clearly suffering, as his shoulders are rocking and his head is bobbling a bit. Not bobbing, mind you. Bobbling. That’s a much bigger deal.

Visma has three riders left in this group, which is more than other teams do. With Vingegaard’s main rival more than a minute back, Visma doesn’t have much to worry about. It’s not like Steinhauser could take six minutes out of him on the final climb, the Category 1 Côte du Linguador. I mean, it’s only 3.3 km.

It’s time to talk about climb rating inflation. Paris-Nice is terribly guilty of this: all week they’ve had these piddling little climbs they’re calling Cat 1s. It’s total BS. Just looking at today’s climbs, we have the Col de la Porte at Cat 1, and it’s only 7 km at 7.2%. And that Chateau thing they just did: Cat 1, but only 6.6 km at 6.6%. No way is that a true Cat 1 … it gains only 435 meters. You want to know a real Cat 1? The Col du Télégraphe, which is 11.9 km at 7.2%, gaining 1,567 meters. That’s more than triple the elevation gain!

Well, that last little climb was too much for poor Papi. His lead is down to nine seconds with 32 km to go. Surely he’ll get Most Aggressive for the day, which is kind of nice (but doesn’t come with a cash prize like he’d get on a Tour de France stage). Maybe he’ll at least get a bottle of salad dressing or something.

They show Martinez’s crash again and again, like it was the most spectacular footage ever. But it’s just not. We get the frontal shot, then the aerial view, and it’s like come on, the guy basically tipped over. I’m sure it hurt but it’s not that remarkable.

Papi is burying himself but it’s all for naught, you can see the GC group barreling toward him. It’s all over but the crying now. They should play the 1947 song of that name by the Ink Spots. But then, would fans even recognize it? I confess I’ve never heard that song in my life. Maybe I’ll cue it up on YouTube for the next Peacock commercial intermission—of which there are gobs throughout this footage, it’s really annoying.

Now the GC group has caught Papi and he dresses them down. “Thanks a lot, guys,” he complains. “You just shattered my dreams.”

The Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe team is doing a great job for Martinez. The lead is now under a minute as they tackle this last “Category 1” climb. 

Vingegaard has just one teammate left, his super-domestique Victor Campenaerts, who is a total baller.

Campenaerts is totally drilling it and whoa, there Vingegaard goes! Launches a blistering attack! Suddenly the whole group is covered in blisters. That’s gotta hurt.

The Dane instantly has a huge gap over everyone except Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious).

Back in what’s left of the GC group, Steinhauser is drilling it on the front, trying to reduce his losses and solidify his white jersey of best young rider. He has almost two minutes over Lenny on GC and just needs to keep that gap down, and set a high enough tempo to keep Vauquelin from going up the road.

The two stage leaders have just one klick to go on this climb. Is it klick or click? Let me set up a quick reader poll to decide. Oh, wait. I have no way of setting up a reader poll. Never mind.

Steinhauser has one teammate left so he should be able to defend his GC position. Lenny’s main ambition is likely a stage win. Somehow I doubt he’ll get it, unless he descends like a madman and Vingegaard doesn’t feel like taking any risks.

Sure enough, Lenny is going full throttle on the descent. Vingegaard is playing it safe but still keeping the gap fairly low. Behind, the other Martinez and his crew are keeping the gap to the white jersey group down to just over a minute.

The descent is a bit wet, and as a parent I kind of wince watching the riders sail through the curves. “Be careful, guys!”

Now the descent is over and Vingegaard goes to the front. I don’t see this breakaway getting caught unless the chase really gets organized. And after eight days of racing in the cold these guys probably have strabismus. What’s that? You’re confused? I’m trying to coin a new cycling term here. Surely you’ve heard the expression “cross-eyed” to indicate a rider going so hard he can’t see straight? I’m just trying to make it more clinical. Help me popularize “strabismus,” okay?

Vingegaard’s pulls are way faster than Lenny’s. It’s kind of amazing. They’re about a click/klick from an intermediate sprint point. If the Dane can take this sprint and the stage win, he’ll win the points award (alongside the KOM that he already has). Okay, they’re past it and Lenny got it. So now if Vingegaard wants the green jersey he needs to win the stage. I’d guess he kind of wants that anyway. (You think?)

They’re on the last little descent before the flat run-in, the gap to the white jersey group holding at 36 seconds. These guys are just flying, working really well together.

Surprisingly, the gap is coming down now. The leaders have lost about 10 seconds in the last couple minutes. Steinhauser is drilling it on the front. It’s possible this will come together but I kind of doubt it. As it is, I’m kind of excited for this finish … it’s really impossible to say whom I favor in the sprint.

Ah, the gamesmanship has begun, with Martinez not wanting to pull anymore!

Clearly Vingegaard wants him to lead it out but Lenny is slouching! But Vingegaard won’t pull through! That gap has got to be coming down! But this broadcast isn’t showing the split anymore.

Martinez leads out the sprint! He’s totally hauling ass!

But now Vingegaard is pulling level! It’s down to the wire!

Martinez is a total baller! He holds off the Dane and takes the win!

The rest of the group sprints in and honestly, I don’t actually care how the rest of them did. Okay, here’s the stage result.

They’re interviewing Lenny Martinez.

INTERVIEWER: Ayo, that stage looked brutal, bro.

MARTINEZ: For reals, that whole final stretch I got my director coming through my radio straight whylin’ like “don’t let this busta jack your stage win!”

INTERVIEWER: The action was getting’ straight-up hyphy with the chasers bearing down. And then Vingegaard be triflin’, makin’ you do the work. Kinda grimey!

MARTINEZ: Nah, Vingegaard is straight gully, I’d have done the same. Don’t be tellin’ fans I’m butt-hurt about that, I was just glad I didn’t get pwned in the end!

INTERVIEWER: Word up, you salted his move with a quickness! Balls like King Kong!

MARTINEZ: I’m super amped. That stage was off the chain!

Full disclosure: Martinez was interviewed in French and I’m not exactly fluent. I did my best to capture the gist and spirit of what they were saying.

Here’s Danny Martinez, who’s gotta be relieved he held on to his second overall after that crazy crash. He looks like he’s in a lot of pain.

Papi crosses the line almost seven minutes down. That’s got to be a big letdown. I hope he likes salad dressing. Let’s make that a new expression, okay? Whenever somebody misses out on a big achievement, but stands to get some piddly consolation prize, we can say “I hope he likes salad dressing.”

Here’s the final GC.

They’re interviewing Vingegaard.

INTERVIEWER: So you finally get a Paris-Nice victory, after being third in 2023 and abandoning last year.

VINGEGAARD: Yes, It’s the race I couldn’t get right, and now I finally get it right. I’m extremely happy to sit here in the yellow jersey.

INTERVIEWER: Happy because of the yellow jersey, or because you’re sitting?

VINGEGAARD: Honestly, it just feels good to sit down.

INTERVIEWER: Are you using this victory to send a message to Pogacar?

VINGEGAARD: Are you joking? What would that message be? “I can still win when you’re not there?” Or, “I’m still fairly competent, even if I can’t solo for 80 klicks?”

INTERVIEWER: Hey, how do you spell “klicks”? With a C or a K?

VINGEGAARD: Wow, that’s a fascinating question. I haven’t really thought about it but I will now. I’m really curious about it … could you do a poll or something? I’d love to see that.

INTERVIEWER: Unfortunately, no.

Well, the bit about “finally getting it right” and the question about “sending a message to Pocagar” were real, anyway.

Martinez takes the podium. This is actually pretty interesting: this is the first podium I’ve seen in years that features two women standing next to the winner, both of them attractive. In the olden days it was always two beautiful women on the podium and they’d kiss the winner simultaneously, which was admittedly kind of ridiculous, especially given how sweaty these guys are. So then the sport became embarrassed about that, and got rid of the podium girls entirely. They dabbled in having one man and one woman, attractive but very conservatively dressed, before devolving into a bizarre tradition of two utterly dumpy persons there, literally in like a dingy sweatshirt and, like, plum-colored pants and ugly sneakers. Even earlier in the week we were seeing that here. So it’s refreshing to see this now.

Vingegaard mounts the podium for his final yellow jersey, and we’re down to one attractive woman and one random guy. He’s not dumpy, exactly, but the mixture of khaki, charcoal, and purple seems haphazard. Who is this guy and why is he here? You can’t tell from the still photo but he looks just a little bit disoriented.

And now as the Dane gets his final polka-dot jersey, another rando mounts the podium and also seems confused. In fact, look at his gesture as he looks to Vingegaard for guidance. Kind of a palms-up, “hey, what do I do, I just kind of stand here?” kind of thing. They probably just pulled this guy off the street.

Papi did end up winning the Combativity award. Here he is with the latest rando, who really looks like he dressed in the dark this morning. Camelhair jacket, ratty jeans, and bright white Nike sneakers? And what’s that disco-looking shirt? I thought the French were en vogue and à la mode? This guy’s not even presentable. And nobody gives Papi any salad dressing.

And here’s your final GC podium. Sunglasses off, please!

Well, that’s it for Paris-Nice. Tune in next month for my exclusive blow-by-blow coverage of Paris-Roubaix! And, for my entire archive of past race reports, click here.

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All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials - Part 2

Vlog

What could be more embarrassing to my teenage daughters than my blogging? Well, vlogging is probably on the list. For that reason alone I’m providing this post in both text and video formats. If you want to laugh with me, at me, or at my kids for having such a dorky dad, click the Play button below. Otherwise, just scroll down for the text.

Introduction

This post continues my discussion of how lessons learned in cycling team time trials (TTTs) can apply to survival in corporate America. If you haven’t read my previous post, go back and start there.

Lesson 2: Pace yourself

On the face of it, pacing in a TTT is pretty straightforward: you just go flat out the whole time, right? Well, yes and no. When you’re on the front, sure—you go all out (or, more precisely, at your anaerobic threshold). But how long do you stay on the front? That’s the tricky part. If everybody’s pulls are too short, there are too many transitions, too many efforts spent latching on to the back of the line, too many opportunities for tiny losses of efficiency. But pulls that are too long don’t allow enough recovery and riders will grind themselves down. There’s no pre-established pattern, such as everybody leading for 20 seconds. It’s up to each rider to decide how long to be on the front each time before dropping back.

This will vary by rider, by race, and by how the rider is feeling at any point in the TTT. The only rule is, if the team is going, say, 30 mph on a flat road, you better keep up 30 mph when you’re on the front. If your pulls are only half as long as the next guy’s, that’s fine—but don’t you dare take a slow pull. Your team will never get that time back, and what’s more you screw up the rhythm and thus the morale of the whole team. When you take the front, everything and everyone depends on you. To pace yourself accurately means being completely honest with yourself about how long you can pull, per rotation, at the group’s speed. This isn’t a one-time assessment, of course; you must always be ready to adjust the length of your pulls (because your stamina erodes, or conversely if you start poorly but begin to feel better). In short, you are on high alert the entire time (which is part of why I always found these races terrifying).

Needless to say, pacing is important in the workplace too. And yet, I have known plenty of people (over my decades in the working world) who don’t seem attuned to this. They take on too much responsibility and let their workdays drag out too long—which is like taking too long a pull. Eventually they start to get overwhelmed and, for all their workaholism, start dropping this or that ball, or turning out poor quality work—which is like taking a slow pull. Of course it’s hard to admit you took on too much, which can lead to blaming others, making excuses, and so on.

So what does pacing look like in the workplace? Sometimes it’s not always putting your hand up to lead a big project, but more often it’s pushing back a bit on your boss if you’re getting overloaded. I’m routinely surprised how few people do this—they’ll volunteer to work on something over the weekend, for example. (I would never do this; I figure once you’ve demonstrated that your personal time isn’t sacred, a boss would have to be crazy not to take advantage of that. Today’s stretch becomes tomorrow’s job description.)

Another corporate equivalent of a shorter pull is delegation. I’m talking about handing off a task not because you’re too slammed to do it, but because it might be a nice challenge for a colleague, who may appreciate the opportunity. I used to think delegation was just for managers, but it’s not. If you’ve coached a colleague a number of times and thus built up goodwill, why not offer him or her an interesting task? In my experience, a manager won’t fault you for this, as long as the work gets done.

In a TTT, if you pace yourself poorly, you could slow down the team by taking slow pulls or blowing up and going off the back, unable to contribute anymore. This can ruin the race for your whole team. When we consider what’s at stake in the workplace, the analogy falls down a bit because if you don’t pace yourself well in your job, it’s not just a project or campaign that suffers. It’s your whole career.

Lesson 3: Get help when you need it

We can’t all be “on” 100% of the time, but we’re taught not to make excuses, and to deliver on time, every time. Individual ambition drives us to just dig deeper when we’re struggling. This is fine here and there, but if it becomes a habit, it stops being sustainable. Our mental health suffers, probably our work/life balance, and the collateral damage to our personal lives can eventually become a serious distraction. (My father was a hopeless workaholic, and during his divorce, he couldn’t sleep at night and would often fall asleep on the job—the workplace equivalent of crashing out of a TTT.)

Why don’t we ask for help? Surely somebody could pitch in on a project, revise the scope, or relax a deadline, if we ask? I think the problem is often lack of humility … it’s hard to admit you’re not up to the demand. This is easier to spot in a TTT than the workplace because a rider who doesn’t ask for help is just suddenly gone. It’s a disaster and I’ve seen it too many times, usually in the first few miles of a TTT. In the photo below, we lost two guys in the first mile or so … and needless to say didn’t go on to have a great race.

What does asking for help look like? In a TTT, it’s yelling like crazy if you get gapped, or sitting out a pull if you’re feeling crappy. When you’re on the back and a teammate finishes his pull and drops back, you wait until he’s just ahead of you and tell him, “Take it.” You let a gap open for him and joins the line early. Granted, he won’t be stoked about this, as it gives him less time to recover before his next pull, but tagging him in like this is way better than slowing down the group or getting dropped, thus abruptly leaving the team without your services. I’ve had TTTs where I started badly, got some help, and then went on to fully contribute.

So how do we ask for help in our corporate jobs? That’s more complicated, of course, but it starts with humility, trust that your colleagues won’t resent you for reaching out, and a focus on team results vs. worrying about your reputation.

Lesson 4: be grateful you’re in the race

The team time trial was definitely my best event as a bike racer. I recover quickly from deep efforts so the repeated hard pulls on the front, followed by rest periods in the line, suited me perfectly. Unluckily for me, the team time trial is a somewhat rare event. I did my first one in 1982, but didn’t have another opportunity until 1985 when a TTT featured in the Red Zinger Mini Classic stage race. My next chance wasn’t until 1988 when I started collegiate racing. Happily, in college there were several of these races during each season, followed by the conference championship TTT and—since my teams qualified—the national championship. I was so grateful to ride so many of these TTTS during my college racing years, and bummed that there hasn’t been an opportunity for me since.

Meanwhile, I was blessed to be on that UC Santa Barbara team that was loaded with amazing talent. It has certainly helped shape my worldview that my greatest success in the sport came not so much from my own ability, but from having been on the right team at the right time. I can never forget how lucky I was just to get to race those TTTs when I did, so I am always grateful for the opportunities I have in my career, even if it can be difficult and frustrating trying to make the most of them.

Moreover, to even have a career in corporate America requires a lot of luck. You were born in this country; you had the educational opportunities needed to be qualified for a white collar job; and, you had enough opportunity to secure a position. This is a really big deal. There are something like 65 million Americans employed in the professional and technical workforce, and while this is about 41% of US workers, it’s only about 1.4% of the world’s adult population. Think of all the things that had to be true for you even to have your job.

Why does this matter? It’s because being talented and educated enough to get and keep a job isn’t the whole battle. You have your own contentment to deal with, and I suspect lots of corporate employees have a bloated sense of entitlement—which can make them disgruntled, or bored, or restless. This in turn can a) affect their performance such that they don’t survive the next round of layoffs, or b) cause them to job-hop too often (like hitting the Hyperspace button on their careers) because they blame their employer for a dissatisfaction that has its roots in lack of gratitude.

I’ve outlasted colleagues who spent far too much energy fretting over the golden parachutes the executives get, or the fact of younger people passing them up on the way up the ladder, or the apparent lack of advancement opportunities given to them. I find it a shame when someone lacks the humility to just knuckle down, do their job, and be happy to be there. In this country we are all pressured to pursue and gratify our individual ambitions, but I’d like to point out that where life balance is concerned, contentment isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead of worrying about your rise through the ranks, just be glad you’re on a team.

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All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials

Vlog

Ear hair. It’s becoming a real problem for me, but I don’t always get around to trimming it. Nothing motivates me to groom myself like posting a video to the Internet. For that reason (and because I’m told some people prefer watching videos to reading a lot of text), below is a vlog version of this post. Close your eyes and you’ve got a podcast. Scroll down and it’s a blog post. Enjoy please enjoy.

Introduction

I have worked for the same employer for over 25 years, and have made it through three acquisitions, a bankruptcy, and countless reorgs. Along the way I’ve had thirteen different bosses. How have I lasted this long? I joke that my spirit animal is the cockroach. But actually, I’d say my longevity is a combination of the right attitude and the right practices.

Of course it would be a stretch to say that the team time trial, a type of bicycle race, taught me how to survive in corporate America. However, as I will explain here, the same attitude and practices apply to each. The team time trial is a great metaphor.

What is a team time trial?

In road racing, the individual time trial—often called the “race of truth”—consists of each rider racing alone, against the clock  (typically sent off at 1- to 3-minute intervals). A team time trial, aka TTT, is the same thing but with teammates racing together to try to put up the best time. Crucially, it’s not the time of the first rider that’s taken. If it’s a five-person team, the third rider’s time is what counts. For nine riders, it’s the fifth or sixth. To be competitive, a team needs all (or at least most) of its riders contributing to the effort of taking turns breaking the wind for the others. They must cooperate perfectly.

Lesson 1: Work for the team

“Be a team player” is obviously a cliché. It’s something management routinely tells us, and they might even mean it, but it often doesn’t pack much punch in a culture like America’s where individualism, and individual success, are promoted so universally. So it is in sport, and in cycling in particular, with Lance Armstrong being perhaps the greatest example of the self-focused sportsman—a bully obsessed with individual domination, fearful of any personal ambition among his teammates.

The team time trial is ideally the purest antithesis of all this. A TTT team that works well together is a thing of beauty. Every rider is acutely aware of how every other rider is doing. If you’re totally on fire, you carefully channel this by increasing your output gradually, without disrupting the smooth functioning of the formation. You may take a bit longer pull, and you can even slightly increase the speed of the group while you’re on the front … but harmony is your first priority.

This is harder than it sounds. It’s almost automatic to accelerate when you start your turn at the front, because this is right after you’ve recovered in the line. But, if you’re a good team time trialist, you never forget how hard it is to latch on to the back of the group, after having slowed down to let the other riders past. This is the hardest part of a TTT because at the back, you’ve just finished your pull, aren’t yet in the slipstream, and need to accelerate slightly. If the guy on the front increases the pace at all as you’re latching on, he practically breaks your legs.

Let’s think for a moment about teamwork in corporate America. In your workplace, how much energy do you think people devote to helping their colleagues? Is much attention paid to buoying up those who are struggling? Other than managers, do people even care?

It’s amazing how many seasoned bike racers screw up the team time trial by kind of missing the “team” part. In fact, it’s often the team leaders that cause the most  problems—because their drive and talent and alpha-dog-ness is what made them leaders in the first place. Returning to my Lance Armstrong example, to watch him in a TTT was like agony for those of us who understand this event. He pulled too hard when taking the front, screwed up the rhythm, sometimes dropped his entire team, and—as came out later—would terrorize his teammates over the race radios for not going fast enough.

Not that Lance was the only team leader to do TTTs poorly. In the 1993 Tour de France, the Gatorade team was selected, in part, to support their leader, Gianni Bugno, in the TTT stage. This was supposed to be an opportunity for Bugno to take serious time out of the race favorite, Miguel Indurain, whose Banesto team was better suited to helping their leader in the mountain stages. But Bugno apparently couldn’t keep it in his pants and his team floundered in the TTT, actually losing 12 seconds to Banesto. How was this possible? Well, Indurain—though he was hands-down the strongest individual time trialist in the race—matched his team’s pace perfectly. As reported in Winning magazine, “When asked how it was that Banesto stayed more or less together while Gatorade were all over the place in the TTT, [Banesto team director] Jose Miguel Echavarri responded that ‘it was necessary that the king went with the people, rather than that the people try to follow the king.’”

(Ironically, pro cycling teams are run like companies, and yet all too often the prima donna behavior of riders like Armstrong and Bugno has been allowed, perhaps encouraged, by management … hence the revolving door of talent on US Postal, which can’t have been good for long-term team morale.)

When I was at UC Santa Barbara, our TTT was a perfect case study in selflessness. We were all completely devoted to the team’s success, despite the fact that our two best riders really didn’t get along. This didn’t affect how they rode—they unfailingly set their grievances aside and worked together flawlessly in races. Our reward for perfect teamwork was a TTT victory at the collegiate National Championships.

The next year, I’d transferred to UC Berkeley, and though on paper we had a more talented overall roster, we never got such good results. The reason, as all but one of our riders would happily explain to you passionately and at length, was our team leader. He was headstrong, self-absorbed, and a terrible team time trialist. The way he started his pulls, you’d think he was deliberately trying to saw his teammates off the back, like this event was about him showing us how dominant he was. Spiritually, a good team time trialist is almost like a Girl Scout den mother; this guy was more like Ahab—and every other living human was Moby Dick to him. (For a more complete case study of this strong, successful, but flawed individual, click here and do a page search for “Ace.”)

Okay, so how does this relate to the corporate world? Beyond being an obvious object lesson in the downside of selfishness, I think it points to the need for wider awareness than your personal ambition will give you. A TTT isn’t about you being fast; it’s about your team being fast, which requires a whole lot more than your own strong pedaling. In my experience of the workplace, revenue and earnings are the measure of victory, and maximizing them is extraordinarily complicated. Creating the right products and services, building them right, marketing and selling them effectively, and providing good support cannot be achieved by the smartest guy in the room performing brilliantly.

Yes, you need smart—but also patient, careful, and generous—people in countless rooms working together. Those who rise in the ranks by “promoting their personal brand” and striving to stand out may naturally have a hard time leading their teams toward the results that matter. A company will only thrive if it promotes those with a sensitivity to how well everyone is rowing together. A sales director at my company once joked to me, “I’m good at this stuff because I’m pretty stupid, so it’s impossible for me to overcomplicate things for my reps.” His humility, and his focus on collective results, have apparently served him well.

In all my years of bike racing, I was never the team leader. This isn’t because there’s anything wrong with me, some fundamental lack of ambition or fear of success. It’s that I’ve been lucky enough to be on teams with better riders than myself, and selflessly supporting them was the obvious and correct thing to do. Bringing my support (aka domestique’s) perspective to the TTT was a natural fit, and nice insurance against instinctively trying to show dominance and messing up the flow. Steeped in the art of looking after my team leader, I was a natural at looking after my team as we fought the wind together.

Similarly, in my work life I’ve never been the alpha dog, and my humble approach—i.e., helping others in the background vs. showing off—has worked out well. I sincerely believe it hasn’t held me back; if anything, I’ve been given all the responsibility and growth opportunities I can handle. Even if my approach isn’t the ticket to rising through the ranks at work, it does seem to help with career longevity. Maybe I’ve missed out on some promotions and the income growth that can bring, but I’ve also avoided the pitfalls of the kind of self-serving behavior that hampers the results an employer cares about. I believe there are certain risks in clawing one’s way up the corporate ladder too swiftly; whether or not I’m right, I can say that I’ve never been unemployed. For the last 26 years I’ve had continuous income, and that adds up.

I chalk all this up to my TTT mindset. Recently I had my annual review and my boss told me I “need more swagger.” I took this as a compliment.

To be continued

Dang, this has taken me more words than I expected. Tune in next week for three more (shorter) lessons gleaned from the tarmac crucible of team time trialing.

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From the Archives - National Championships Team Time Trial

Introduction

I just finished watching the Tour de France team time trial. What an awesome event. As a tribute to this underrated cycling discipline, I offer this story from my archives.

(I originally wrote this back in 2003 for dailypeloton.com, which has evidently gone under. I did a dozen or so stories for that magazine and over time I’ll post them all to albertnet. The first such story I rescued is here.)

In 1990, I helped represent the UC Santa Barbara team at the NCCA Collegiate National Cycling Championships at Stanford. We went in as favorites for the team time trial, having dominated in this discipline all season long. Here is the full story of our Nationals attempt.

Collegiate Nationals Team Time Trial – September 30, 2003 (race was on May 19, 1990)

My story begins earlier in the season. I stacked hard descending Refugio Road, north of campus off US 101. I was pretty banged up and missed the next week or so of training before the Conference Championships.

At Conferences, I had terrible form and dropped out of all three races: the road race, the criterium, and even the team time trial (fortunately, the team still managed to win). Despite this piss-poor performance, I had an automatic spot on the Nationals team, along with our team captain, Trevor Thorpe; the Conference road race champion, Eric Cech; and John Pelster, another of our most solid TTT riders. We had four other riders vying for the final spot; we’d make our selection based on how fast they went in training over the next week. Naturally, I was an emotional wreck after Conferences, but Trevor snapped me out of it, saying, “You are not allowed to freak out about this!” I still had two weeks before Nationals to get my act together.

Three teams in particular we worried about. The California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) team from San Luis Obispo had won the TTT at Nationals the previous year, in Colorado. The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) team were the reigning overall champions. But I was especially worried by the UC Berkeley team, because they’d lost to us by only two seconds at the Conference TTT—and they wouldn’t let us forget it. The way they went on about our paltry two seconds, you’d think they won the race.

One advantage we had over everybody was our fleet of “funny bikes,” designed especially for TTTs. Oddly, it wasn’t until the night before that we finally equipped them with the “clip-on” aero bars. (At Conferences, their maiden voyage, we’d ridden on the cow-horns.) We installed the clip-ons the day before the race and tried them out for the first time that night, riding through downtown Palo Alto after dark.

Back at the hotel, our fifth rider, Dan Wolnick, had bad news: he’d come down with a virus. But he’d have to race anyway; our alternate rider was so bitter about not making the team, he’d decided to stay home.

The next day we had the road race in the morning and the TTT in the evening. The road race was a mixed bag. My fork broke and I had to withdraw, as I couldn’t get a spare bike from neutral support. (I was still riding toe-clips and they only had bikes with clipless.) Eric had back problems so he DNF’d too. Dan was too sick to finish. But Trevor—though he’d been dropped by the breakaway early in the race—managed to claw his way back, reconnect in the final kilometer, and solo to victory. He now had the opportunity to win two national titles in one day—but of course he wouldn’t have much left in the tank. The rest of us would have to have the race of our lives.

I was feeling some pretty serious pressure. After all, I’d finished exactly zero of my last four races. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about the taunting from the Berkeley riders—“two seconds!”

More than anything, I didn’t want to let the team down. A good TTT team is much more than a bunch of strong riders in a paceline; it’s a highly temperamental thing. If a rider accelerates even slightly when he takes the lead, he makes it really hard for the previous leader to latch on to the back, and any disruption to the pace costs the group time. Every rider must be acutely aware of how every other rider is doing and fine-tune the line (e.g., leaving a tired rider on the back for a rotation, or switching up who is drafting whom). If a rider senses he’s feeling better than the others, he should take a longer turn at the front.

It was a strange feeling lining up with these guys. To say I respected them would be an absurd understatement. In fact, I was almost in awe. I knew full well just how blazingly fast each one of them was, and just how hard each was going to go. In fact, awe doesn’t even cover it: I was almost afraid of them. Afraid of just how much I myself would suffer in matching up to the example I knew they were going to set with every pull.

The TTT is arguably a shame-based event. Say you ride poorly in an individual time trial: okay, you cost yourself some time, placed poorly, scored fewer points for the team. But if you screw up in a TTT, you just ruined everybody else’s race too. Your teammates could be on fire, it could be the best race of their lives, and you could ruin the whole thing. The race organizers ought to provide seppuku knives at the finish line.

We set off, and fell right into formation. From the start, we were just flying. If Trevor was blown from his road race victory, he didn’t show it. Eric seemed his normal animal self. Dan didn’t ride like a sick man. JP was laying down a brilliant pace. And I felt unbelievably strong. It didn’t even feel like my body; it felt like a much better one on loan from a born athlete. With all of my setbacks behind me, I found an incredible focus. Oh, it hurt, I was suffering hard, but in just the right way. It was like riding right out of all of life’s frustrations.

The bike felt amazing. While in the draft, I felt like I was being sucked along. Generally, you ride the cow-horns while drafting, and switch to the clip-ons only when you’re breaking the wind, but soon we felt comfortable enough to stay on the clip-ons the whole time. JP was riding behind me, which meant his pull began just as I latched onto the back. Seeing him churn away up there, I could tell he was having the ride of his life.

My main strength in cycling is recovery, which is why the TTT was always my best event. After a long pull at the front, I would be on the verge of blowing up, legs burning, almost anaerobic, but a short rest in the line brought me right back into a comfortable zone. Today I felt so good, so fresh, that I practically wanted to yell at the front rider, “Okay, that’s enough, get out of the way!”

At the first of three turnarounds, Dan burned up in the atmosphere. Every one of his pulls had been perfect, but he could only keep his illness at bay for so long. Dropping out was appropriate: far better to drive well for only three miles than to screw up the team’s rhythm for the next 10+. Still, this didn’t bode well. It’s like losing twenty percent of your engine.

During the second leg of the race, as we flew along in our reduced formation, I become aware of this faint ringing sound. There’s not much noise in a TTT—just the light whir of gears and the whump-whump-whump of the disks—and once I heard the ringing, I couldn’t ignore it. I realized it was the sound of a bike part doing something it’s not supposed to do. But where? I slowly took my eye off of Trevor’s rear wheel and looked down at my bike. Nothing wrong there. I shifted my attention to Trevor’s bike, and eventually spotted the problem: the lock-ring had come completely off of the adjustable cup of his bottom bracket. Without it in place, the cup could rattle loose, then looser, until his cranks would begin to rock back and forth and eventually his bike would be unrideable. All I could hope for was that Trevor didn’t use much grease when he installed the BB, and that the threads weren’t “chased” properly—that is, that there was brazing debris in there making the cup not want to turn. As precise as our riding was, this possible sloppiness might carry the day.

At our second turnaround, JP and I didn’t switch positions like we normally do. We didn’t discuss this—we just instinctively maintained our original lineup. JP and I were still taking the monster pulls, and Eric and Trevor still seemed plenty strong, so I was stunned when, early in the third leg of the race, Trevor yelled out that he was gapped. I held back for just a few seconds before he latched back on and everybody yelled to go. Now I was thoroughly rattled.

A harrowing aspect of TTTs is that you don’t have any relative sense of how you’re doing. If you’re in a breakaway in a criterium or circuit race, you can get your splits, and you know your teammates in the peloton are working to shut down the chase, and you have the sense of being ahead. This really fires the adrenaline, fortifying your efforts. In a TTT, you may sense that you’re going fast, but anything that goes wrong can shake your faith in your team’s ability to win. We’d lost Dan, and now we’d lost precious seconds regrouping. But I wasn’t deterred. After all, a rider like Trevor wouldn’t have lost contact if we weren’t absolutely flying. This thing was still winnable.

At the end of the third leg, before the final turnaround, was a small hill. Trevor was in the lead, and Eric was on the back—and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. And he wasn’t calling out—he was either in denial, or felt tempted to cash it in. I was frozen, and then Trevor yelled, all the way from the front, “COME ON, ERIC, GET BACK HERE!” It was shockingly emphatic, and seemed to put the fear of God into Eric. He fought his way back to JP’s wheel, and we were together again. But how much had it cost? It seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than five or six seconds. Of course, such handfuls are the difference between winning and losing.

After the turnaround, we were on the home stretch—but it was a long home stretch. The pinging of Trevor’s bike’s lock-ring was like the ticking of a bomb. It looked like our race could go in almost any direction, and only one of them good. I was ready for this thing to be over. And about two miles from the end, I really hit the wall. I had never suffered so badly in my life. I was merely miserable while in the draft, but once at the front I was in full crisis mode. Our group was like a prison cell: there was nowhere to go for respite, no early parole, no escape until I’d served my full sentence. I stared at the bike computer, making sure the speed didn’t drop, willing the number to stay frozen, forcing my body to keep up the necessary effort. I kept promising myself that after five more seconds, I’d pull off and go to the back, but then—reminding myself that my teammates weren’t feeling any better—I’d renege on my promise and commit to another five seconds. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and it felt like my legs were going to shear off from the effort, I’d finally pull off.

But going to the back didn’t give immediate relief. This is because slowing down, even the minimum amount necessary to drift back, means you have to speed back up to latch on. That little acceleration was almost more than I could do. This is why people fall off the back of TTTs. Every latching on felt like a sprint. In fact, after a while I had to switch to the cow-horns and actually get out of the saddle to catch Trevor’s wheel. Every time, it felt like falling off a cliff and trying to catch myself by grabbing a clump of grass as it flew by.

JP noted this and the next time he dropped back, he eased in between Trevor and me, changing the lineup to give me the benefit of his larger draft. An added benefit: whenever I was latching on the back, Eric was beginning his pull, and (given the bad day he was having) he was the rider least likely to accidentally speed up. The final benefit was that JP, who had more juice left than the rest of us, started taking incredibly long and fast pulls, which inspired me to fight harder when it was my turn at the front. He really kept the group together.

With the lineup change my sprits improved. Sure, I was maxed out, but nobody ever won anything without paying the price. But I yearned to improve my efficiency in the transitions. Because I had to stand up to sprint onto JP’s wheel, I had to switch to the cow-horns every time I dropped back. I could feel the difference this made in wind drag. So I tried something new: getting out of the saddle while still on the clip-ons. Mistake. To my horror, I completely lost control and swerved so hard that the saddle clubbed me in the butt, almost knocking me off the bike. Then I overcorrected and swerved in the other direction. I was going down. Our Nationals dream was over.

But then, somehow, I regained control, and—with a fresh jolt of adrenaline—was able to get JP’s wheel. Now I was good and pissed off. No more screw-ups. Nothing was going to stop me. No crash, no self-doubt, no despair. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to quit. It’s hard to describe how this resolution worked. Every so often you hear some fool saying, “I’m a great athlete because I can just turn off pain.” That’s a load of crap. A great athlete turns on the pain, and leaves it on. I kept forcing the pedals around to increase the agony, to punish my body for wanting to falter. And gradually the finish line came into view.

The last two hundred meters of the race were completely unreal. Time slowed down. We slowed down. It was a slight uphill, and into the wind, and we were just human, after all. There was no way to keep up the speed anymore. It was like riding underwater. The finish line seemed to be receding. I felt like a toddler hanging on the edge of the swimming pool watching his beach ball slowly float away. We were all out of the saddle in a full sprint, but minus the speed.

Finally we oozed over the line and fell completely apart.

You’ve never seen such a sorry-looking bunch. We were moaning, whimpering, all our legs had seized up. We were weaving like drunks. Somebody caught me or I would have gone right over. But in a sense our race wasn’t finished yet. We had to know: was it all in vain? What exactly had we done out there, anyway?

My brother Geoff, the team mechanic for Cal Poly, ran over and said we’d taken six seconds out of them. This was disconcerting: though Poly had won the Nationals TTT the previous year, we’d beaten them all season by a larger margin than this. We could see the Berkeley team in the distance in their final approach, and they were going faster than we had, but it didn’t look like they would make it. We crowded around the big digital clock, and when our time was reached, they were still out on the course. We’d beaten them—and by the time they got in, we’d taken over half a minute out of them. They could see us jumping up and down and cheering, and they looked like they were about to cry, having to eat their words. Of course, we hadn’t won yet: CU was still out there. Again, the suspense was agonizing, but unnecessarily so. They lost by around forty seconds, and we became national champions.

We were celebrating before most teams even knew we’d won. But the full impact of what we’d accomplished was hard to grasp all at once. It dawned on us gradually and wonderfully all evening.

During the criterium the next day, fate returned to its normal bastard self. The bottom bracket in my loaner bike fell out, as if carrying out the threat that Trevor’s bike had made in the TTT, and my races-finished record went to 1-and-5. Eric abandoned due to some random mechanical. JP got stuck in the back, and with no support Trevor was out-gunned, losing what should have been a certain victory in the Omnium. And yet our spirits were high at the awards ceremony that night, as we donned our stars-and-stripes jerseys and gold medals. You can’t win them all, but we had won a very big one indeed.

A final note

This version of my story isn’t exactly what appeared in dailypeloton.com. The original version ran almost 7,000 words so I trimmed it down. I also revised the ending, where we waited for the final teams to finish, because my original version was inaccurate. I based it on the recollections of three of my teammates, all of which matched one another but were nevertheless wrong. For an examination of this unintentional fiction (and my original account of the finish), click here and scroll down to “Gauchos win national TTT championship.”

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2015 Tour de France Stage 9 TTT

Introduction

What do you suppose goes through the minds of race announcers, that they’re not allowed to say? Maybe things like, “That guy’s obviously coked to the gills,” or “So-and-o looks like a damn clown.”  Sure, announcers hint at stuff:  “Froome has injected some, uh, life into this race,” or “Not the most elegant rider, surely, but he gets the job done.”  And why can’t they be perfectly candid?  Because they’re professionals.  I, on the other hand, am not.  So I’ll say it how it is, or at least how it looks to me.  And if I’m a little on the cynical side, can you blame me?

I know you think team time trials are boring, so I’m going to work really hard as I go along to make this as entertaining as possible.  And you should read anyway, because this is an important Tour stage.  The Tour hasn’t had so little time trialing since 1933, and this year’s only individual TT already happened, without breaking up the GC all that much.

I’m missing a Mount Diablo ride with my pals for this, BTW.  One of them really egged me on, e-mailing me last night to say, “Dana, thanks for writing the TTT preview!  Now that you fulfilled your blogging obligations to your mom, you can meet us....”  He has an impressively firm grip on how elite my blog readership is.  Today you can see how I did with the predictions I made, about the outcome of this race and its affect on the GC battle....

2015 Tour de France Stage 9:  Vannes – Plumelec TTT

As I join the action, FDJ is hammering along and the Eurosport announcer (I never learn their names, as it’s too sad when they leave, which at least they tend to do before getting too old to think straight) has just said, “So-and-so is out with a broken neck.  It’s actually broken in two places, and he’s lucky to have escaped serious injury.”  WTF??!! Is this guy joking?  Who jokes about a broken neck?  Or does he somehow consider this minor?

And just like that, we’re on to some ads.  I’m joining the action late here, so I hope I haven’t missed any important teams.  I had a bit of a glitch this morning because my Internet connection is down.  Fortunately, all bloggers have dueling Internet connections.  It’s just part of the value we bring you readers, for free.

Here’s my favorite current ad.  ANNOUNCER:  “Marcel Kittel, do you use this shampoo because Alpecin is your new team sponsor now?” KITTEL:  “No not at all, I just like the feeling of thick hair.”  I’ve seen this ad several times this week and I still can’t believe I’m hearing it right. I mean, I’ll grant that it’s theoretically possible to absorb caffeine through your scalp.  Dumb idea, but okay, possible.  But “the feeling of thick hair”?  Look, nameless ad agency, hair doesn’t have nerves, and if it did, it’d be one nerve ending per shaft ... how could you sense thickness? 

The Lotto Soudal team has started their TTT.  As I mentioned in my preview yesterday, these Lotto guys are (by bike racer standards) simply huge, with the highest numbers I saw for height, weight, and body mass index.  If this TTT were, say, 3K in length, I’d pick them as favorites.

Sean Kelly, the evergreen Eurosport announcer, says that these teams warm up for 40 km before a race like this.  Man, that’s a lot.

IAM Cycling is on the line.  I don’t know what product or service IAM produces, so I just consider this the “dog food team.”  I could look it up, but I’m too busy.

Lotto Soudal looks pretty cohesive.  All their guys have great position on the bike, which is more than I can say about some GC contenders (okay, one GC contender, and I won’t bag on him by giving his name, though his initials are CF and he’s on Sky).

Poor Orica GreenEdge.  They won the last long Tour TTT, two years ago, but they have only six riders left in this crash-ridden Tour, and they obviously went in to this one with the sole goal of making the time cut (kind of like choosing a class in junior high because you heard it was an easy “C”).  Orica GreenEdge look like they’re on a training ride.  Check it out, one guy didn’t even fasten his helmet strap!

Weird.  I’ve restored my better Internet connection and refreshed, and now the announcer is a woman!  I’ve never encountered that before.   Maybe she watched “In A World...” and got inspired.  She’s interviewing some dude with an Irish accent, Brian Smith.  I can’t tell his role because my video is too grainy.

Ah, we’re back to the main announcers.  I guess they had a special guest star asking the questions (since all that requires is a script and a good voice, and she had both, and I miss her already).

Lampre Merida finish their ride, in around 33 minutes.  I was slurping coffee and missed exactly what Kelly mumbled about their result, but I think these guys are now leading.

Another ad!  There’s this highlights reel of all the sports that Eurosport carries, and the announcers just about pissing themselves with excitement (e.g., “He didn’t just break his world record, he absolutely SHATTERED it!!!”) and then, incongruously, they show a snippet of same-sex diving, with the announcer totally quiet.  What?  You haven’t heard of same-sex diving?  Maybe that’s not the official name.  Synchronized diving?  Yeah, that’s probably it.

Bora-Aragon has launched their offensive.  Okay, I know that’s a bombastic way to say “started their TTT,” but there are a lot of teams here and I don’t want you to think this was a computer-generated sports story.  (That’s a thing now, believe it or not.)  I promise I won’t use the word “gallop” at any point during this blow-by-blow.

IAM Cycling is going really fast, getting the best intermediate split.  And now Trek Factory Racing is on the start ramp.  The camera pans across them and man, one of their dudes is really small.  It’s almost comical.  They should have arranged them in order from tallest to shortest like at a wedding, to look less jarring.  And lose the bridesmaid dresses, guys!  Poor Trek.  Earlier in the Tour they lost their best guy, Fabian Cancellara, who was the first of two race leaders to crash out this year.  Unlike Orica GreenEdge, these guys can’t afford to loaf, because they have a GC rider, Bauke Mollema, to support.

Team Europcar doesn’t look fast at all.  They’re bunched up like a peloton instead of strung out in a line.  Thomas Voeckler is attacking!  He just never learns.  Remember when everybody used to love him?  You can thank Lance Armstrong for that.  I know, Lance lied, he cheated, he was a dick, but at least he gave the French their underdog for awhile there.  Look for the silver linings, people.

Astana is on the road.  They had a great TTT in the Dauphiné.  They also looked unbelievably good in the Giro.  I really mean “unbelievably,” as in I don’t believe it.  They reminded me of US Postal.  On final climbs Astana would have like four guys in a lead group of ten or fewer.  Oddly, though, they kept attacking their GC rider, Fabian Aru.  Since we’re into another ad (which is also unbelievable) I’ll take a moment to describe Astana’s latest optimization efforts.  Their tactics were so sloppy in the Giro, not only confounding Aru but surely demoralizing him, they’ve decided to tweak their world-class doping program yet again.  You read that right:  doping for the mind.  Their directeur sportif, Giuseppe Martinelli, was apparently having trouble concentrating and is now on Adderall.  Not to be outdone, the team’s general manager, Alexandre Vinokourov, always an impulsive type (but hailing from the good old days when hunches and gut feelings hadn’t yet been totally obliterated by race radios), is testing a new drug, LogiContin.  And both of them are also experimenting with Alpecin-SC, a new caffeinated leave-in conditioner.

IAM Cycling has the best time at the second intermediate check, by a larger margin than before.  They look pretty awesome, if you can ignore the visors built into their helmets.  They’re not the kind of visor that sticks out to form an awning, but more like what welders use.  Is there a name for that?  Speaking of which, I was out riding up the Huis Categorie Mount Diablo with my teenage daughter last weekend, and there was a woman up there with one of these dorky TT helmets (and aero bars).  She instinctively started giving my daughter advice, as though her old man obviously couldn’t.  I like that about riding with my kid.  Nobody ever gives me advice.

Oh dear.  Astana’s mental doping is clearly not working!  Their TTT line has completely disintegrated!  They’ve lost like four guys on this first climb and are trying to regroup.  Only two riders have made it back up.  One of the two who can’t reconnect is gesticulating wildly to the guy behind him.  And now he swats himself on the butt!  It’s so sad ... I almost can’t bear to watch.

IAM Cycling now has the best time, ten seconds faster than Lampre-Merida.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

Team LottoNL-Jumbo is on the road, and so far so good.  The “J” in “Jumbo” is that special Dutch kind, so it’s pronounced “Gumbo.”  No it isn’t.  Just seeing if you’re awake.  Of course it’s actually “Yumbo.” 

Okay, I’m back.  Watching Astana’s troubles had a serious impact on me—as in, my bowels thought it was race day for me.  You might find this TTT boring, but that’s my fault.  This can be a very exciting event for anybody who’s had to suffer through a crucial TTT himself and can relate.  I think this is very likely the most painful event in cycling.  Why?  Well, first off, TTTs tend to be pretty short, so the effort is far more intense than with the patient pacing you need for a really long mountain stage.  Yes, the individual time trial is often of similar length, but if you loaf in an ITT, you don’t screw over your team.  In a TTT, you have to be awesome the whole time or you blatantly ruin everything for your comrades.  It’s kind of like ballet, where if a dancer breaks her ankle during a performance she has to keep right on dancing.  (If you think it’s silly to hold ballet dancers up as the ideal, think again:  they have the highest pain threshold ofanybody.)  I’ve always sucked at ITTs because I knew there was no real consequence of failing to ride hard enough.  I was lazy.  But in TTTs I was driven by the fear of shame, and dug deeper than in any other event. 

Think about it:  if you’re in a hill climb and get too miserable, you can back off and watch the others ride away from you and feel like you’re giving them a gift!  “I suck, so you get to win ... enjoy it.”  But imagine being in the collegiate national championship TTT as one of the favorites, and failing to deliver.  Forever after you wouldn’t be able to look at your teammates for fear they’re thinking, “We could have won if you didn’t screw it up!”  I found myself in that position in 1990, and was so miserable during that TTT, I seriously fantasized about killing myself.  I thought, if I ride full-speed into that post, will I die?  That would end the pain and I wouldn’t have to face my pals!  It was too risky, though ... what if I lived?  So I pushed on.  Yesterday I was boring my wife with this story, when suddenly she became interested. “Wow, you’re moved by this!” she said.  “Are you crying?”  I wasn’t, but I was very close.  And this was 25 years later.  TTTs are a bitch.

Oh my god.  Astana is down to five riders.  They’re in the final kilometer.  They really don’t look good.  They look really deflated, I mean physically.  Their fifth guy is so fried he’s on the wrong side of the road, not even getting a draft.  That’s surely the sign of mental collapse.  Sometimes that’s okay, though, as it means you left absolutely everything on the road.  If you finish too fast, that can mean you didn’t exhaust yourself properly. 

And how about that!  Astana has managed somehow to take the lead.  Of course, the best teams are still to come, but still, I guess they couldn’t have gone that slowly.  Poor Nibali.  His Tour isn’t going well, and I’m sure he hoped to validate his victory last year so people wouldn’t just say, “Yeah, you won, but Contador, Quintana, and Froome weren’t there.”

AG2R La Mondiale is on the road.  They look kind of climber-y to me.  Not so good for TTTs.

Eurosport is interviewing Michele Scarpone, who has so little hair left, he could make a bottle of Alpecin last for like a year.  He should use their special Espresso version.  He says nothing of any interest, predictably enough.  I’d quote him if he said something like, “Yes, I visited Dr. Ferrari, but not for drugs, or even for training advice.  You see, we’re lovers.”  Actually, let’s pretend he did say that.

Tinkoff-Saxo is down the start ramp and hammering along.  This is one of the really important teams, because a) their GC guy, Alberto Contador, is obviously a favorite, and b) if they have an outstanding ride today, they could put Peter Sagan in the yellow jersey, which would be amazing because he’d then be holding the green, white, and yellow jerseys simultaneously. 

Movistar is having a good ride and some have tapped them as favorites for this TTT.  Naturally their motivation is super high, with GC favorite Nairo Quintana in their ranks.  They look pretty good out there, if you can get past their boring uniforms.

Oh dear!  The Movistar line has broken!  You know, I’m going to blame the radios for this.  After all, the directeur sportif can’t give a continuous patter about whether everybody is together, and so many riders have forgotten how to use their spidey-sense to know what’s going on.

BMC are on the start ramp!  No pressure, guys.  Man, I hope they light it up out there.  An American in yellow, without all the asterisks of doping, would be fricking awesome.  I wouldn’t expect him to hold it for too long, if he got it, but how awesome would it be to bring home a stuffed lion for your kid?

Movistar has the fastest intermediate split, notwithstanding their troubles a bit ago.  But they’ve taken the lead over from a team with only five guys left ... their placing may yet tumble.

Now Eurosport is interviewing Juan Antonio Flecha about the weather.  “The wind is blowing, as wind often does, and though it was blowing also earlier today, it may not be blowing is much as it was, though it could be blowing harder now, and there was wind when Astana was riding, like there is now, and wind can be a factor in a TTT when a team can be slowed by wind, unless it’s a tailwind, which would tend to blow you forward and actually speed you along.  Also, I myself am a windbag, and I’ve been breaking wind this entire time, by which I mean I have been releasing gas from my anus.”  Flecha’s chatter is the verbal equivalent of a college kid using a really big font and wide margins to make the five-page minimum with his essay.  Might I recommend a Bora kitchen ventilation system for this fellow?  I’m reminded repeatedly during this coverage of how well Bora handles “vapors that smell bad.”  They’re insulting your cooking!  Great ad copy, that.

Okay, they’re showing Sky now, and Froome with his ugly helmet.  The commentator is going on about how Froome’s handlebars were created using a 3D printer.  I know, this dude’s just making shit up, right?  Froomie’s helmet is of a piece with the rest of his ghastly gaunt ungainly look.  It completes the insect look.

BMC has the fastest intermediate split, but only by two seconds over Movistar.  I’m not sure that heralds an awesome ride but of course it’s hard to predict these things.

Saxo-Tinkoff isn’t looking all that tight.

But then neither is BMC, actually.  Couple gaps there between riders.  I guess you can’t tell from this photo, but one rider is sitting on the back, unable to move up through the line.  At least he’s communicating well to the others about it.

See that thingy sticking out from the last dude’s saddle?  That’s a GPS device, to make all the split times more precise.  Every racer has one for every stage, just to further remove guesswork from the armchair generals’ over-precise operations.  It’s also how they can put up that little speedometer graphic you see in the photo there.  I’d like to see the big data from Stage 4, when Tony Martin overcame a mechanical problem and soloed to victory on his teammate’s bike.

Team BMC has the fastest split now with Sky through the first intermediate check, but it’s by a fraction of a second! 

Weird ... Tinkoff-Saxo has only seven guys in their group.  I thought they had nine going in ... maybe not, or maybe they accidently shelled a couple dudes.

I have to say, Sky looks pretty good.  All nicely lined out, no gaps, and totally aero.

BMC is at the second intermediate point and now leads Movistar by 3 seconds.  That’s not a ton, considering Movistar isn’t the team they’re most worried about.  I’m thinking mainly about a yellow jersey for Tejay, of course; even a 30-second deficit wouldn’t hurt Sky too much since Froomie, when he’s properly lubed (i.e., on any day of the season), can take that kind of time in just a few kilometers on the right mountain ... and there are so many brutal mountains ahead.

Tinkoff-Saxo are looking okay, other than their uniforms, which are so bizarre ... they’re made to look like they’re spattered with mud, evidently.  I just don’t get that.

Uh oh ... BMC is somehow down to six riders.  Maybe it’s according to plan; maybe they’ve figured out that certain guys will slow them down on the climbs or something.

Sky are through the second intermediate check, and they’ve got the virtual lead by one second over BMC!

Tinkoff-Saxo are over the line and have lost about 25 seconds for Contador.  Not great, but not a complete disaster.  The bigger issue for Contador is if he tired himself out too much in the Giro.  I’m surprised he even raced it, frankly.

BMC has gapped their sixth rider!  Okay, he’s back up ... they’re going so fast, the slipstream must be really long.  They’re on the penultimate climb and riding cohesively.  But what’s this?  They’re actually down to five guys, and Sky down to six.  I think it’s because we’re 8 days into this race that teams are breaking up so much.  A TTT earlier in the Tour probably wouldn’t feature so many breakdowns.

BMC are now on the finishing climb and they’re clearly suffering.  Out of the saddle now, going for the line!  They’re trembling all over, so the camera can’t properly focus on them.  (No they aren’t.)

They’ve got the fastest provisional time, but I have a feeling Sky could win this.  No yellow for Tejay in any case, as I pessimistically predicted.  You never know, though ... maybe Sky will fall apart, like they did in the Dauphiné.

Sky has 1 km to go.  They’ve got two minutes to get to the finish, which might be tricky only because of the finishing climb.  Geraint Thomas is hammering on the front and has been for a fair bit now.  Now Froome takes it up.  Nicolas Roche is dying on the back of the line.  They’re having to regroup a bit here and Roche is back on.  Froome is out of the saddle, looking like Ichabod Crane.

Check it out!  BMC has managed to win this thing!  Sky got second, by one second!  Both teams beat Tinkoff-Saxo, also as I predicted.  Also, Tejay has moved from third into second on the GC, also as I predicted.  As it turns out, all of my predictions were spot-on.  How do you like that, Mom?