The Friday Thing #706

Thanks for all the feedback on colour coding of calendars last week.

The Friday Thing #706 has been a while in the making as it’s a topic I have wanted to write about for some time but have been debating with myself what angle to take. The topic is the Tour De France and the debate has been whether I simply write about this bicycle race as a fan – or try to draw some analogies from it that can be applied to life and work. I’m going to attempt both.

I will start by saying that I believe Le Tour (as it’s often shortened to) is the toughest physical endeavour in professional sport. For those unfamiliar with this bicycle race around France, it began in 1903 and was founded by a sports newspaper. It takes place in July and is the most watched annual sports event in the world with more than half a million spectators watching the race on the roadside every day ((pre Covid) and a daily average of 166 million watching on TV. Why is it the toughest? Well, imagine riding a bicycle around 200km per day – sometimes up gigantic mountain passes, other times at perilously high speeds against the clock. And then imagine doing that for 21 days with only 2 rest days in between. The riders cover 3500km and the overall winner is the one with the shortest cumulative time. It’s brutally hard work, set against breathtaking scenery, and very big hills such as the ones shown below. In this example of a stage (as each day is known) from the upcoming Tour riders complete 161km and conclude with a further 16.3km climb on a road with an 8.6% gradient. Ouch. 

What I find most amazing about the Tour is the speed at which the top rider ascend (and descend) these climbs. As an example, the road outside my house has a gradient of approximately 7% and is at most ? of a km. I am a very average bike rider and on a good day, can ride up that road at 11kmh. By the top, I am breathing very hard and my heart rate is >160 bpm. By comparison, Alpe d’Huez, one of the most famous climbs in the Tour, contains 21 turns and 4000ft of elevation over 13.4km – with an average gradient of 7.9%. In 2018, Geraint Thomas, took 41 minutes to ascend that climb at a staggering average speed of 19.4kmh. Bear in mind that this was the final climb on a day that had already taken lasted 4 ? hours across 160km and over 13,000ft of elevation. He basically raced up Alpe d’Huez.

The next day, he got back on his bicycle and did something similar. And then again for 9 more days. He rode in to finish line at Paris that year in the yellow jersey (Maillot Jaune) as the winner of the Tour. He is who I will be cheering on to win again this year, I hope. 

So why am I writing about Le Tour this week? Well, the 2021 edition of the race starts this weekend so it’s on my mind – but it’s more than just a bicycle race to me. I appreciate it for the riders and the teams and also love the romanticism and storytelling of the race.

I admire the dedication of the riders as it takes extraordinary dedication, physical strength and mental strength to start this race – let alone finish. It was telling to listen to the Geraint Thomas podcast this week where he talked with 7-time Grand Tour winner and four time Tour De France winner, Chris Froome. Froome is a remarkable athlete yet when asked what he admired most about his fellow Tour winner, Geraint didn’t talk about that physical capability – he said it was the mental toughness of Froome that was his strongest asset. When asked the same question, Froome responded that he admired the tenacity of Thomas – who is well known for his endurance. He rode in support of Froome to help him win the Tour in 2013 – despite suffering with a fractured pelvis from a crash on the opening stage. Both basically said that to be a Tour winner requires the capability to manage mind even more than body. That’s quite a statement given the physical toll. 

An aspect of the Tour that is easily overlooked by the casual observer is that it can seem like an individual endeavour. It’s quite the opposite as Thomas showed with his support of Froome in 2013. This race is a huge team effort with some riders foregoing their own potential to win a Tour simply to support their team leader – literally riding in front of their leader all day to spare them from wind and danger to allow them to launch final attacks to win race of extend the time difference over their rivals. The self-sacrifice is remarkable from these riders known so ‘domestiques’ or ‘super domestiques’.

The team is way more than just the riders on the road too. The role of the soigneur is the one I admire the most here – a French term that translates to English as ‘carer’. Soigneurs are known more colloquially as ‘swannies’ and their roles span everything from housekeeping, masseur, confidant, car washer, bidon filler and more. Their dedication is impressive and although we don’t use the terms soigneurs or super domestique in the business world, they’re all around us. The unsung heroes. I admire them too. 

I love a bit of science in my sport and one thing that fascinates me about the Tour is the physics of drafting. Wired has a reasonably scientific explanation of this but even more illuminating to me was a study from Eindhoven University of Technology who ran wind-tunnel tests on a 3D-printed mini-peloton of 121 terracotta cyclists. The group of riders in a race is called the peloton and this research showed that placement in the peloton can reduce wind drag (hence power required to push against that drag) by over 70%. That basically means if you’re riding on front of the peloton, you’re using ~70% more energy than those in the pack. Over the course of a day (or 3 weeks) that’s the difference between winning and losing….and to do that, all requires very precise teamwork. We all get to draft behind people at times to conserve our energy – it’s good to notice when this is happening. (as an aside, I also appreciate how Eindhoven used conditional formatting in Excel to tell this story with data). 

Okay….this has gone on longer already than I had planned so I’ll close with some of the romanticism of the race – or really the language and storytelling.

I love that the leaders jersey is yellow because the organizing newspaper, L’Auto, was originally printed on yellow newspaper – that’s just a great story. I laugh at the term “sticky bidon” which refers to the water bottle a rider has on their bike. Occasionally, they will ride next to their team car and collect a “sticky bidon” which basically means they’re getting a sneaky tow from the car while being handed the water bottle. I like the term “broom wagon” that is used to describe the last vehicle on the road that picks up riders who have abandoned the race, and also follows the last rider on the road – a sometimes lonely place to be I expect. “Lantern Rouge” is the ‘taillight’ of the tour – that last rider. Such great language, lore and history.

That’s why I love the Tour, because for me it’s so much more than a bicycle race – it’s dedication, teamwork, science, language, symbols, heritage. It’s a 3-week story that begins tomorrow that I always learn a ton from. Learning’s that I can apply to my cycling, to my work, and to life. I hope you get the chance to see some of it and get similarly inspired.

I’m off to ride up some hills this afternoon….slowly.

Happy Friday

-Steve