Stage 8

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Stage 8

Day 8 Pforzheim - Gerardmer 235 km

Commentary

This morning, while waiting for the stage to finish, I cruised the Bicycling site and got some good information for a great but short lesson I want to do first. I like to read what others are saying so I know where their heads are at and read Carmichael's training item on speed intervals. As those of you who have been on this site for 5.5 years know, Chris has obviously read my site and e-book and is using a modified version of my program for Lance and has been doing so since Chris overtrained Lance a few years ago and almost cost him the Tour. But, amazingly, he still hasn't learned to coach anyone but Lance. I couldn't believe what he wrote.

In summary, he started out by setting you up with three increasing intensity sprints with 30 seconds rests between them (where have we seen that before?). But he gave you exact gears for the workout and then told you at what speed you should be riding the workout, especially the rest cycles.

First, you use the gears for your workout based on your fitness level. Even the same rider at different fitness levels should not use the same gears. As you progress in fitness, your gears should change with your fitness level. For a beginner to try and use the gears of a pro, the beginner can do knee damage (especially on hills), pull and tear muscles, and do tendon damage. That is like me telling some kid who is just starting weight lifting to do bench presses with 300 pounds because my top athlete does. What, does Chris think you cat 4's and 5's ride the same gears up the Alps that Lance does? Get a clue, Chris.

Second, he stated that, for the 30 second rests, you should ride at 20 mph!!! (ROFL in tears with sides hurting.) For those beginning riders out there who race at 18 to 20 mph, good luck doing that workout!!! Even for cat 3's who are racing at between 24 and 28 mph, 20 mph won't be resting for sprint work. Your resting speed is based on your fitness level. One man's resting speed is another man's racing speed. Don't believe it? You beginning racers should try to stay with any top Euro pro during warm up and see how fast they dust you.

When I was racing almost 40 years ago, I went out with a beginner one day and, after about five miles, my legs were warmed up enough that I wanted to start getting on the gears a little as the next part of my warm-up but thought I should be courteous and asked the beginner if he was warmed up yet. Then I looked at him and he was already dead meat. He was ready for warm down and a hot shower. Any coach who doesn't understand the difference in fitness between beginners and pro's, should go back to school or sue the school for not doing a good job.

Chris needs to read my e-book again and pay very close attention to the parts where I explain how you do the workouts so that they fit your fitness level. You can't coach a cat 4 the way you coach Lance. Get a clue, Chris.

I feel sorry for you guys out there who are taking advice from coaches who can't coach anything but pro's. Read my book, it teaches you how to set up and manage your training program based on your fitness level.

I really should read Chris' writings more often, I can use the laughs right now. You poor riders, you get so much trash you have to read through and it is no wonder you get hurt from training as much as you do. I feel sorry for you.

BTW, Bicycling Magazine, when Chris writes articles that are that blatantly bad and riders get hurt training because of bad advice, you are partly liable. I learned a long time ago to be able to defend everything I write about training and racing in a court of law against any Exercise Physiologist to cover my butt. I strongly suggest you remove that article before some beginner does what Chris told him to do, blows out his knees, and sues your butt. Think about it.

Analysis

Wow, this was supposed to be just a good, fun KOM and break winning stage. There was supposed to be some significant sorting of riders on GC but not really drastic. Some where on the course, things went really crazy.

As expected, there was a lot of attacking by riders wanting the KOM Jersey and, in spite of team efforts to keep the breaks in, a KOM break got up the road while riders were getting blown out the back. Wegmann, Dekker and others tried to make the break but failed. Boonen was dropped on cat 3 climbs which means that Hushovd and McEwen (climbing like an angel-for a sprint) have the advantage for winning the Points Jersey in this Tour because of the course.

The KOM break included Rassmussen, Kashechkin, Casar, and, surprisingly, Viogt and Hincapie. The two later forced T-Mobil to do the chasing permitting Discovery and CSC to rest in the peloton. Even Phonak was forced to chase a while. It was surprising and exciting to see George go up the road in a break for KOM and stay and a great move by both Discovery and CSC.

Having ridden hard yesterday and missing today's break, Wegmann slid out the back to rest for tomorrow's mountain stage. Good move.

Then brains began to freeze up. Immediately after the fourth KOM prime with over 100 km to go before the last cat 2 climb, the break sat up, except for one rider who wanted to win the stage. Surprisingly, Hincapie and Voigt also sat up permitting the peloton to catch them and forcing Discovery to resume the chasing. They have already been towing the peloton since the fifth stage, so why not one more stage? No big deal, everyone knows that pro's can pedal on the front of a peloton forever without getting tired. Or can they? Hincapie and Voigt should have stayed off front with the remaining rider to keep T-Mobile chasing.

Coming to Discovery's rescue, a number of other riders went up the road on break for the stage win but along came a great move by Hushovd to pick up the road primes in the flat middle section of today's stage. It worked and Hushovd moved six points closer to Boonen who was struggling to hang on the back of the pack. Davitamon took over the chasing from Discovery until they had caught Hushovd and permitted another break to go up the road to eat up the points for the last road prime. Good move.

So, by now, there had been two good breaks brought back in for various reasons. This third break stayed off long enough to pick up the last of the road prime points when it started the last climb and shattered. All but Weening got caught and dropped by the peloton. Good effort by Weening who won the stage.

Surprisingly, Galdeano spent the day playing door monitor for the back door. That is the trouble with not seeing any of the riders race to win before the Tour, you just can't begin to guess what shape they are in.

Then Illes Balears charge up the mountain forcing the pace hard until they blew Discovery out the back and all of Discovery finished at least 1'25" down except for Lance. Out of the first 34 riders and only riders who finished with or ahead of Lance, Lance was the only rider from Discovery. They should have had at least three riders in the first group up the mountain. To put it bluntly, the Discovery Team broke two days before the second most significant mountain stage in the Tour on a cat 2 climb. They got their butts handed to them.

If Discovery has already broken from all the towing they have been doing, Lance is in huge trouble because he still has all the mountain stages and a total of two weeks racing left to defend the Yellow Jersey without a team. Oooo, great move Bruyneel!

As soon as the Discovery team went backwards, the other teams went forwards attacking Lance all over the place. I noticed that Lance only covered Vino and Ullrich while letting other riders like Kloden go because they were too far down on GC to be an immediate threat to Lance. Smart riders learn who to chase and who not to chase to conserve energy.

Lance may be the only intelligent person on the pro circuit and he is very intelligent. I believe that he has won the last six Tours and may win this Tour not because of Carmichael and Bruyneel but in spite of them. Carmichael and Bruyneel have tried to hand at least three or four of the last six Tours to their competition by either breaking the team or breaking Lance but the other teams were too stupid to take the wins and Lance just refused to lose. It may be the case this time also.

The attacking started, Lance covered the moves by Vino and Ullrich while the other teams covered attacks against Lance by each other. Duh??? For example, Kloden went up the road to gain time back from Lance, caught Weening, and got second in the stage moving up to only 1'50" down on Lance. Did Lance have to chase to defend his lead? Of course not, CSC was there to chase Kloden for Lance and they did a great job of it. Stupid move!!!

At this point, I must remind you that the fundamental principles of team racing are to 1) break the legs of your competition's domestiques so you can 2) get at their team leader, force him to chase to defend his lead, and break his legs. Well, the teams keep showing they can do the first part of that but they still have not figured out how to do the second part of that. They brilliantly break Lance's team but keep doing all of Lance's chasing for him and wonder why they can't beat Lance. Hmmm, maybe those performance enhancing drugs are causing severe brain damage?

If you race to defend a placing, the best you can get is the placing. To win, you have to race to win and, obvious, these coaches don't know how to win. I am trying to figure out whether they are having a stupid contest in pro racing and Lance is losing or if Lance is the only person on the planet who wants the Yellow Jersey.

Kloden's move was a good move but CSC's move was brain dead and should be shot and buried. CSC should have bridged one of their top riders like Voigt or Julich to the break with Kloden forcing Lance to chase and tire his legs a little while the other teams sat on his wheel. I have said this for years and will say it one more time; the only way you can beat Lance is to break his team, send riders up the road, and force Lance to chase those riders until his legs break. You cannot beat Lance by chasing his competitors down for him. Get a clue.

Over the next few days, there are two questions we will get answered: 1) Did Discovery already break? and 2) are the other coaches brain dead?

As I told you, there was a significant sorting of the GC. Discovery suffered big time for such an insignificant stage. They have Lance in first, Hincapie in 8th, and Popovych in 12th. CSC did the best moving four riders into the top ten with Voigt in 2nd, Julich in 4th, Basso in 5th, and Sastre in 7th. Will they know what to do with it? T-Mobile did next best putting three riders in the top ten with Vino in 3rd, Ullrich in 6th, and Kloden in 9th. If you do the math, that only leaves one rider in the top ten who is not on one of those three teams, Landis, in 10th with Phonak. That means that CSC and T-Mobile have 7 of the top 8 riders behind Lance on GC and Lance is in trouble, especially if his team has already been broken.

Basically, if CSC and T-Mobile refrain from racing against each other until Lance is beat, they have a good chance of beating Lance. If they don't, Lance has a fair to good chance of beating them.

On KOM, the battle seems to be forming between Rasmussen, Weening, Botero, and Wegmann. Since Wegmann wasn't on break today, watch for him to attempt to regain the lead tomorrow with a long break.

For the White Jersey, Karpets has taken the lead from Popovych with Valverde moving into third. Watch for Illes Balears to focus on winning the White Jersey since their nearest rider on GC is Karpets in 11th. You can bet they are racing for Karpets. No brainer!

Liberty better start racing for KOM and stage wins because their best placed rider is Beloki in 16th at 2'43". In good form, Beloki can make that up but I am not getting the feeling he is in good form. Though, I must admit that Beloki is smart enough that, if CSC and T-Mobile blow their chance of beaing Lance by racing against each other before they put Lance away, Beloki can sneak in and take it all. It would be really tough because he did lose a lot of time in the first time trial.

What a stage! What a race!

Lance, you have to be the smartest person in pro bike racing!!! I respect you a lot.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day before the second most significant mountain stage in this Tour. Tomorrow's stage will be short at only 171 km but has the Tour's first cat one climb with a total of six rated climbs. It also finishes with a 50 to 60 km descent which should help packs regroup a little.

I expect the attacking to start early and hard for the KOM primes in the stage. Riders will get dropped, riders will continue to quit, and the stage has a good chance of being won by a break. Watch for Wegmann to try to get the KOM Jersey back after a day of resting behind the peloton.

Boonen and many others will get dropped. Will Hushovd or McEwen take advantage of this to pick up some more points on him? This is important because, of all the remaining stages, only two don't have at least a cat 3 climb and only three don't have at least a cat 2 climb. That gives Hushovd and McEwen a sigificant advantage over Boonen and could put a climber in the Green Jersey for the first time in years. With the new format, this title race will be interesting to watch. Will the sprinters lose it to the climbers?

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