Tour 101: Fresh Horses

All day I've resisted sneaking a peak at today's stage results, and am now reaping the benefits as I watch the drama unfold on Versus as I write. This will probably be my last entry for a couple days, as I'm off to lands where a wireless connection can find no purchase. The commentary I've found interesting today is the talk of how crazy week one of the Tour is. All the riders are fresh, all the riders are strong. It's a free-for-all for the sprinters, the climbers, the time trialists- everyone wants to ride up front. There are also a lot of riders on the road. 180 riders have started this race, but not all of them will finish. With all those guys out there, a lot of chaos and (it follows) a lot of crashes occur. We saw some of that in yesterday's team time trial, and also several isolated crashes so far on today's ride.

Recap

So now I've got the results for today's Stage 5 from Le Cap d'Agne to Perpignan. Vive la France! Redemption for French team BBox after yesterday's horrific dirt crash came with Thomas Voeckler's stage win. He attacked early and managed to hang on through to the end. The always bold Mark Cavendish came in third and was a bit deflated.

Selected standings:

1. Fabian Cancellara
2. Lance Armstrong
3. Alberto Contador
4. Andreas Cloden
5. Levi Leipheimer
9. David Zabriskie

Today's Lesson: Echelon

If there is one thing I hate on a ride, it's wind. I can handle heat and rain to an extent, but wind makes any ride miserable. Not only must you work harder unless you have a tailwind (which I have yet to experience), but descending in strong winds is downright, death-grip scary.

I already talked about the benefits of pacelining, and with today's crosswinds, the same idea applies, though it's not a straight end-on-end line of cyclists. A cyclist in a crosswind will ride just back and to the side of the rider in front of him, forming a diagonal line or "echelon" (see far right image in above graphic). The echelon will pivot in response to the direction of the wind. When you can see an aerial view of the echelons in motion, it is a thing of beauty. But I'm fascinated by road racing, so that's just me.

Photo: (PASCAL PAVANI/AFP/Getty Images)