Le Tour: Two hours of Waiting and Thirty Seconds of Guys on Bikes

So Le Tour de France swung by my house yesterday midday. I had looked on the site the day prior, and saw that the riders should come within about 50 feet of my house during the "prerace" or "warmup" period. Not knowing much about what this meant, I figured it would be easier to walk down to the boulevards where the riders would come by, than to get into my car, drive to a place along the route, wait for the riders, be stuck there until everyone had passed, etc. It seemed fairly easy to walk out my front door and watch these athletes go by.

So, I get down there, not knowing much about how the whole thing takes place. I had read on Letour.com that the "caravane" was set to leave the "Stage 9 Pre-Start" at 11:30. I kind of thought that this meant the riders would leave at this point. So I leave at about 11:29 and go down to wait for the riders to come by. For a few minutes there was very little action. A few people were sitting around in lawnchairs and chatting with the cops guarding the route, but there was no action. Then, the first rider came by:

Now, I knew that the tour was in rough shape after a bunch of the top-tier riders got bumped after doping allegations, but I didn't know that they were so desperate that they had to get Lance Armstrong's mother to ride!!! (thanks Jeff).

Anyway, in all truthfulness, there was a lot of waiting involved. After waiting for a long time, all of the sudden there was movement on the horizon! Something's coming! Riders...Ah no, in fact the "caravane" is 45 minutes of "official suppliers and official sponsors" blaring annoying euro-trash music and throwing things at you. On the plus side, I got a lot of tour-related swag. I have a cool Credit Lyonnais bag in awesome YELLOW! I have two Champion hats in that lovely red-on-white polka-dot pattern for the best climber. And a bunch of other stuff that was thrown my way: Fortunately, I was the only person standing on my patch of sidewalk, so I got everything!

Once these 45 minutes had passed a bunch of people who were on the sidewalk with me started to walk away. I started to become afraid at this point...was that it? were the riders actually going to go directly to the real start and skip the prerace part? I was a bit consoled by the fact that lots and lots of team cars kept coming by without bikes on them, so I figured the bikes must be at the pre-start point. Anyway, as it turns out the racers left the prerace start at 1:15 pm. A few minutes prior, the vehicle activity picked up with lots of race officials and cops and reporters and whatnot coming by. Then the "Tour Information" car came by blaring information about the riders and telling us to clear the street! Ok, great, the anticipation is now building and finally I see the yellow jersey:




My god, I knew that EPO and other performance enhancing products were a problem in bike racing, but I didn't know that human growth hormone was used!!!!









Ok, in all honesty, finally after waiting for 1:45, the riders finally came. But (and here's where I learned what "pre-race" or "warmup" means) they all came at once. 171 racers passed me in one group that took a grand total of 30 seconds! They weren't "racing" more than just cruising along. I've seen 70-year-old men going harder on 50 year old 10 speeds than these guys. They were just taking their time to slowly warm up before they got to the actual start! A friend of mine told me last year when I was lamenting the fact that I was going to miss the tour, "watch it on TV, you see much more and it's much more interesting." He is right. I am glad that I saw these guys, 'cause now I have done it, but it's nothing very spectacular. That's why you always see the masses of fans watching on the climbs - it's must be more interesting than watching them on the flat.
In any case, I have seen the tour de france live now. Maybe in the future I will try to go somewhere more interesting to watch them race (climbs, descents), but I'll probably avoid the warmup period in the future (unless of course they are coming within 50 feet of my house and I can make the time to go see them).