Musings of a runner: The fight for the Malliot Jaune

Intro

This blog as might be apparent from the title has to do with running, biking and basically other outdoor individualistic sports, sometimes extreme, such as rock climbing . But don't be surprised if you find articles on work, personal life, music and even philosophy, this blog is an exception in this aspect in the blogosphere of running blogs and I am trying to revamp the blog to make it more runner friendly. You might want to look at the sidebar titled 'categorised', which as is obvious, categorizes my posts into different areas of interest.
The other thing that might interest many people is a section on 'running videos' and 'general videos' on the side bar, which I keep updating now and then.
I plan to bring in more posts on running and biking, with some added colour, so as to make them 'complete'. That's about it for now.
As a post-note, I have run a half-marathon, but I am yet to attempt a marathon, which through some concerted effort and time should happen in the future, but that ofcourse is not the culmination of this blog, it would on the contrary be something to jumpstart this blog onto new vistas.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The fight for the Malliot Jaune

"I am here to win the Tour de France" was the reply given when he was asked to comment on his remarkable comeback in today's stage of the tour de france at the podium. At the start of the last mountain stage, the favourites for the yellow jersey were, the incumbent holder Perreiro, Menchov, Sastre, Dressel and a few others. But Floyd Landis was no where in the picture.
The reason for this was that at yesterdays mountain stage, he had lost 10 minutes to Perreiro coming to an overall loss of 8 minutes.
Coming into the last mountain stage today, no one expected Landis to contend for the top 5 fnish leave alone the yellow jersey, but after todays remarkable breakaway from the peloton, Landis managed to pile on a 7 minute lead which he held on till the finish of the 200.5 km mountain stage with steep ascents amounting to upto 10 degrees incline in the final 20kms. This stage saw none of the contenders in the main field attempting to close down the huge gap that Landis managed to create.
Evidently, everyone was tired after yesterday's mountain stage which saw Rasmussen take the lead in the King of the mountains classification, having lead the race from the start to finish.
Today's stage was an epic showdown by Landis, who had been written off by the Frech Press sometime back, when he held the yellow jersey, as some one who wasnt really worthy of it. Indeed, Landis hadn't won any stage so far. Coming into todays stage, Landis seemed like a man possessed. He didn't know what went wrong yesterday having cracked in the final 20 kms losing a huge 10 minutes. He made no excuses and today he was the man to reckon. Sinkewitz, who was sent to keep an eye on Landis when he brokeaway just trailed him and Landis wasn't bothered about Sinkewitz not doing any pacing as he wasnt in contention. Sinkewitz cracked in the final climb of the day as Landis surged ahead to keep the lead till the end.
At the podium, Landis was very laconic and impressed on the questioner that though he was happy about today's comeback he was here to win. As of today Perreiro leads in the overall classification, with Sastre 12 seconds behind and Landis 30 seconds back. So who's it going to be? Saturday's time trial should be the decider and my money's on Landis.