Tour De France 2009

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” --Mahatma Gandhi

St7 done. Long and pretty tough. Final climb was very windy so negated the attacks a bit until the end. AC attacked in the final k's and .....gained some time on the front group. He was going well. Then we had 25k down (by bike) 2 hotel. We get credit for 250kms on the bike?? Ha

Lance Armstrong says he or teammate Alberto Contador are in position to take the lead in the Tour de France today during the race’s first foray into the mountains.

Armstrong, who won the event a record seven straight times before retiring in 2005, and 2007 winner Contador are in “a comfortable position” after their Astana team’s performance so far. Astana dominated time trials and many contenders missed a crucial breakaway on July 6 that allowed Armstrong to gain 41 seconds.

“We’ve distanced some of our main rivals,” he said on a video posted on his charity Livestrong.com Web site. “We’re psyched. We’re in a good spot.”

Here is the data download from Danny Pate’s Garmin Edge 705 during stage 7 of the Tour de France.
Location: Barcelona to Andorre Arcalis, Spain
Time: 06:39:58
Avg Speed: 20.9 mph
Max Speed: 52.5 mph :bow:
Avg Power: 269 W
Max Power: 1,042 W
Distance: 139.10 mi
Min Elevation: 386 ft
Max Elevation: 1,271 ft
Elevation Gain: 15,403 ft
Elevation Loss: 7,210

The pendulum of power swung back in Alberto Contador's direction at Arcalis, as he wrested control of the Astana team from Lance Armstrong at the end of the first mountain stage of the Tour de France.

Attacking in the closing kilometres with the sort of power and pace that suggested he'd ridden the long road from Barcelona with all the tension of a coiled spring, Contador gained 21 seconds over the other favourites in the Tour de France.

The Spaniard appeared to be smiling to himself as he approached the finish line and although he missed taking the yellow jersey by just seven seconds, he will have been delighted to leapfrog Armstrong in the overall standings.

It worked out perfectly for Contador. Ag2r's Rinaldo Nocentini took the yellow jersey, sparing Astana the job of defending it, but Contador now leads Armstrong by two seconds.

That may be a very, very slender margin, but the decisive nature of his attack and the fact he is back in front of his team-mate and chief rival for the first time since Sunday, gives him the upper hand.

Whether Armstrong planned to attack, as some close to him suggested he would, will not now be known. But it must be assumed that the reason he did not attack was because he couldn't.

It was very unlike the Armstrong of old. Certainly this was not the show of defiant strength of Sestriere in 1999 or Hautacam in 2000, or any of the other times he stamped his authority all over his race.

HOW THE STAGE ALTERED THE OVERALL PICTURE

GAINING TIME ON ARMSTRONG
Rinaldo Nocentini (AG2R)
Not a serious contender for the Tour but a dangerous lurker who could not be in the top ten overall. Gained three minutes on Contador, 3-21 on the rest, and is a good enough climber to stay in yellow through the Pyrenees, despite his slender lead

Alberto Contador (Astana)
Gained 21 seconds over Armstrong

IN THE LANCE ARMSTRONG GROUP
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto)
Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank)
Bradley Wiggins (Garmin)
Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank)
Levi Leipheimer (Astana)
Tony Martin (Columbia)
Denis Menchov (Rabobank)
Carlos Sastre (Cervelo)
Vladimir Karpets (Katusha)
Christian Vande Velde (Garmin)

LOSING GROUND TO ARMSTRONG AND THE OTHER FAVOURITES
Lost 10 seconds
Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas)

Lost 23 seconds
Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas)
Andreas Klöden (Astana)

lost 44 seconds
Luis Leon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne)
Maxime Monfort (Columbia)

lost 52 seconds
Kim Kirchen (Columbia)

lost 1-01
Roman Kreuziger (Liquigas)
Linus Gerdemann (Milram)

lost 2-25
Oscar Pereiro (Caisse d'Epargne)

"That wasn't really to the plan, but I didn't expect him to go by the plan,''
Once Contador was away, Armstrong said it was his obligation to stay with a chase group that included worrisome riders like Australia's Cadel Evans, who tried a couple of mini-attacks without success, and Saxo Bank's Andy Schleck.

Headwinds and high speeds made for tough going, and Armstrong said he never got into a comfortable rhythm, but observed he "felt less knackered than [he] thought [he] would be."
"We'll have plenty of days at the end of the Tour where there'll only be a couple of guys together," he said.

Bruyneel sounded awfully laissez-faire about tactics Friday, saying he just wanted the team to conserve energy and ad-lib at the end.

"We weren't going to put the brakes on anyone," he told French-speaking reporters. "If you felt good and you knew you could distance the others, go ahead, but be sure to talk to each other."

"I wanted to try," he told reporters at the finish line, saying he felt good but knew he wouldn't be able to open up a big gap on anyone. "In the end, it was all for the good of the team. ... The body responded and that's a good sign that things are going well.

"Everyone would like to wear the yellow jersey, but it will make things a little more relaxed on the team if another [team] has the responsibility."

Wiggins has devoted himself to losing weight and honing his climbing technique in the year since the Beijing Olympics in order to support teammate Christian Vande Velde's bid to finish on the podium.

Those efforts paid off in a scintillating ride Friday, as Wiggins, now fifth overall, finished with Armstrong's group on one of the hardest climbs in the race and protected Vande Velde, who is riding into form after a traumatic crash in early May.

"I'm an endurance athlete,'' Wiggins said bluntly as he stripped off his soaking jersey at the finish. "I'm 29 and it's about time I got my ass in gear, to be honest. I've been doing the road for eight years now. I had to leave the track behind and give it a good shot -- you can't do both. I always knew I was capable of this."

Wiggins' contribution could be even more crucial than expected, since Garmin lost gifted young climber Dan Martin of Ireland to tendinitis on the eve of the race and replaced him with Dutch classics specialist Martijn Maaskant.

"I was hanging on there today, but it was good enough," Vande Velde said. "I'm beyond happy." The Chicago native is in eighth place, 1:18 shy of Contador's time, which is the barometer for every top rider now.

What is fatigue? It’s mental, it’s physical, it’s emotional, it’s stress. So when you think of the Tour de France, you think of being exhausted from the sheer number of kilometers or from climbing massive mountains, but what sets the Tour apart from other races is the stress

At this point everyone has the same ambitions and goals: stay upright and at the front, but the road is wide enough for only so many people. Fighting ensues, tension is raised and crashes occur. They are inevitable. I fell victim to one of the crashes today.

And speaking of embracing the day, Dave Millar rode the final 30 kilometers, or nearly 19 miles, by himself, racing through the wet streets of Barcelona to the cheers of millions of fans around the world.

It was a spectacular ride but he was caught in the final kilometer. His dreams of winning the sixth stage, possibly the most beautiful stage in the Tour this year, were washed away with the rain as the peloton caught and passed him with a kilometer to go. It’s a memory he will never forget, and tomorrow, as he suffers the consequences of today’s escape, he won’t regret it for a second.