There are three big tours in the cycling calendar. The best known is the Tour De France of course and at the end of the season there is the Vuelta de España. The Giro opens the season for the big tours. It started with a Team Time Trial which is unusual and equally it has given us an early leader that is unusual, Mark Cavendish. Cavendish, generally considered to be the fastest sprinter in the World, had the team helping him and the fact he was their first member to cross the line meant he took the Maglia Rosa.
Surprisingly enough he then lost to Petacchi in the next stage sprint and is now looking for revenge in one of the later sprint stages but Petacchi repeated the stage victory today and has taken the Pink Jersey. Why wasn’t Cavendish involved in the sprint today? A small consideration of a few nicely placed mountains took him out of the equation.
The Giro is a three week tour and like all tours each day has something different for various types of riders. The advent of the first minor mountain stage will take the jersey off Pettacchi’s back as total time taken is taken into account and he will lose time. There will be a couple of time trials for the specialists in that and the mountains will sort out the big winners although one of the favourites Van De Velde won’t be there as he fell and broke two ribs today.
As for Lance Armstrong, he twittered that he is feeling good yesterday after the first time trial but would it be too much to expect him to come back and start winning at his age?
You need to put in a lot of training to even hope to get close to these guys if you have ever imagined trying to do what they make look so easy. For those who have never tried cycling up these mountains it may be difficult to appreciate the dedication required, the pain and the difficulty involved in getting over them. In order to get the best out of yourself you could do worse than starting this programme **LINK**. If you want something a little more challenging then consider that these guys do hundreds of miles every day and try to do it yourself. For making sure that you know where you are, your speed, distance and so much more you should get one of these Garmin Monitors too