Tour Begins

Time for my favorite sport of summer, the Tour de France.  It dominates July for me!  And it is laced with tradition.  Megan and I eat strawberry pancakes at the Grand Départ, the first stage of the race.  This year it begins in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday, July 6.

176 riders will begin this grueling 21-day race.  Likely about 40 of these riders will crash out, get sick, or fall short of making a time restriction to continue.  This sporting event is like none other.  I told a friend recently that I appreciate a professional golfer who must have nerves of steel to sink a put on 18.  Tour riders must be tough as nails.  The last week of the race, their bodies are so depleted that they begin to consume themselves.  These riders are able to take pain and put it in a little box way outside themselves!

I have written about this before, but the Tour is also a race in which you must have a team.  There are eight riders on a team.  Eight of those riders spend themselves to help the one rider win!  Literally impossible to do it without the support of the team.

I love the Tour so much that I run a little fantasy league.  Check it out here.

Vive le Tour!