Impressed with Wiebes in this post race interview. I would be probably be hiding somewhere 
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La Flèche looks damn miserable
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Why are you watching now? You have hours before the final climb of the Mur de Huy. 
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Treadmill pre work, no better entertainment than listening to Christian and Bob and watching guys ride in hail, apparently
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It’s not that kind of Flèche… Maybe it will be by the end but there’s barely a peleton left.
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Our home is near the top of a fairly steep 1/2 mile hill. Fairly popular with cyclists.
I keep thinking it would be entertaining to go out one night with white paint and a stencil and put “Huy” every 10 meters.
Holy hell…
That’s funny. But I’m betting 90% of them wouldn’t know what that is.
2% body fat + riding your bike in near-freezing rain and wind while wearing spandex = a pretty bad idea
scary stuff! 
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Many years ago ('93), I did the Mt. Evans race…mind you, it was July.
Race started at Idaho Springs and it was ~50*. I am wearing shorts, jersey, sleeveless baselayer, arm warmers. knit gloves (the kind with the dots on them) and have a vest in my pocket.
We get to Carter lake and it is starting to rain lightly and it is getting cold. We get to the tree line and it turns to sleet and the wind is picking up. Stop to put my vest on. Before Summit Lake, it turns to snow and the it is a gale force wind. I am frozen…hands are so cold I can’t shift. Honestly, I would have quit, but if I tried to descend, I would have missed a turn and died because I could not operate the brakes. Only way I was getting off the mountain was to get to the top.
Get to the final bit (last 5 miles, I think?) and it gets steeper, rougher and the wind is just brutal now. Take a switchback into the wind and you are almost standing still…take another switchback and you are sitting up as high as possible to catch as much of the wind as you can to make it easier. At one point, the wind knocks me off rhythm coming out of a switchback and I have to unclip. There was literally no way I could get started in that wind…luckily, an official on a moto came at that exact moment and stopped to provide a wind break long enough for me to get clipped in and then he sped off.
I got to the top and I was borderline hypothermic, if not actually hypothermic. Someone grabbed my bike and threw me in a van. To this day, I have no idea how my bike got down the mountain. It took me about 10 minutes to warm up enough for to start shivering…and lord, when it hit, it HIT. Full body shakes.
And as bad as I was, I’d gladly take that over how Skelimose looked in that video!
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Steve William’s face said it all https://youtu.be/5zIKKwBCwIk?si=SRowm5SVCwFlejgR&t=508
The Tour of the Alps yesterday wasn’t much better 
I have no idea how those guys can be riding in those conditions with just shorts, let alone short-fingered gloves…my hands would be blocks of ice.
Heck, I put on long-fingered gloves almost before any other piece of cooler weather kit…it is between those and arm warmers as to which goes on first (and depends on the day / weather conditions)
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Its long fingers all year round for me, even during my trips to Calpe and Tenerife 
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Apparently in Flèche it was warm and sunny early on so everyone shed layers, then a storm blew in and temps dropped to near freezing with rain. A lot of guys tried to just keep going and/or were not able to get to cars to get jackets, plus the circuit went right by the team busses (temping!) so the race finished with like 40 riders. I think 3-4 teams had zero finishers.
My fave stat is that the only team where everyone finished was the Norwegians from Uno-X. Presumably this was just a normal day at the office for them.
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Oh. My. God. That was exciting.
(Hint: not Pog. Love him, but that race was not the exciting one.)
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This was the most exciting race of the season so far in my opinion. I can only watch so many long-range solo attacks… 
Super fun-looking course!
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Can confirm. Especially if you live on the west coast. If you don’t ride in wind, rain, cold or any combination of the three, you don’t ride much at all.
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Thought this was a great piece of content on Vizma’s classics season.
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Looking at the first stage of the Giro I can see Pog attacking on the Colle Madalena. It’s 22km from the finish, 6.2km long, avg 7.4% max 12%. Long and steep enough for an attack, gaining a minute on his rivals. I hope I’m wrong because it could make the race very boring.
I haven’t been active in this thread in a while because I haven’t had much interest in watching every race be 1 dominant person do a long solo attack off the front for the last hour or more.
I’ve never been less excited about a grand tour than this giro for the fear of it being the 3 week version of the pattern this year. The suspense being between whether Pog takes the overall by 8 minutes vs 10 minutes is not my cup of tea.
I know there can be some daily action and I’ll probably catch the highlights, but I don’t have high hopes.
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