"He had to do it!" That was the great commentator of the Tour de France Phil Ligget referring to Armstrong winning one of the mountain stages in the 2004 Tour de France. He ended up winning 5 stages that year. It was defnitely my favorite Tour of all time because Armstrong was clearly going after stage wins, not just the yellow jersey / overall classification.

Many people say that 2003 was the best because it wasn't clear that Armstrong would win. That tour was spectacular - Armstrong had the yellow jersey by 15 seconds for a couple of stages and only ended up winning by just over a minute. In fact, his amazing stage win that more or less cemented winning the tour was preceded by a very hard crash when a fan's bag cought his handlebars. It really looked like Lance wasn't going to recover from that one for a minute or two, but Ulrich waited for him up the hill, showing great sportsmanship. Lance's favor from 2001 - when he waited for Jan after a crash - was reciprocated. Of course, one cannot forget the crash that Lance almost had but miracously avoided the same year while speeding down a hill when he just barely avoided the fallen cyclist in front of him by cutting across a field and rejoining the race further down. "That was unbelievable!", co-commentator Paul Sherwin yelled in his microphone.

Great moments indeed from the Tour with Lance there. I'll surely miss him next year (I don't believe the recent stories that he might be coming back).

Back to the workout ;-). I had to do it - that is, I had to go for my regular ~15 mile bike ride this afternoon. It cleared up and it was too nice not to go even though my legs were a bit sore from a pretty active week. I'm having trouble extrapolating the GPS data into a visual, so the satellite image will come later.

[Edit 09/18/2005: Here's an image from the Garmin Logbook software instead of a satellite image]



Total: 14.1 mi Bike; 527 calories; 142 lb.