How Watching the Tour de France Might Make You Faster

Every year I train really, really hard, but for some unknown reason when I send in my application for the Tour de France, I just miss the deadline by a few days. It seems to happen every year, regardless of how hard I try. I never get a race packet. My lifelong dream of riding the Tour is starting to fade.

Of course, I am just joking. You can't just enter the Tour de France. It is the biggest and toughest cycling race in the world and only the best professionals get the opportunity to ride it. But, even if I can't ride the Tour, watching it can still help improve my riding.

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We all need some sort of motivation to ride our bikes. That motivation might be something altruistic like doing the AIDS ride for a fallen friend. It might be trying to prove that you can complete a ride that only a few years ago you thought was impossible. Or it might be just to stay in shape so you feel better and stay active.

Watching the Tour de France, whether in person or by the side of the road, can also provide motivation. Seeing the riders go by, the noise and flash of the peloton and the wind they generate is an incredible experience. Having the opportunity to ride the same climbs as the Tour participants is a huge thrill, especially if you are feeling good and just seem to be floating skyward.

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However, most of us won't get a chance to ride the big climbs of the Tour. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I have ridden the iconic climb of Alpe d'Huez nine times, but a trip to the Tour de France is only a dream vacation for the majority of cyclists.

That means that the best option we have is to watch the Tour de France on TV. Luckily for us, in the past ten years the TV coverage of the Tour has become better and better. Thanks mostly to Lance Armstrong, the Tour now comes into our homes live, every morning. If you want to sit on the couch and watch an entire mountain stage live, you can! And not so long ago, this wasn't the case.

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OK, OK, I can hear people saying, 'but they are all on drugs. Why should I care?' That's a good point. There is nothing in the most recent past to indicate that the sport is any cleaner this year than in year's past. We all hope that the sport is cleaning itself up, but without any hard data, it is a bit of a leap of faith.

So, why should we care? I think Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist of all time, said it best many years ago. When asked why the Tour de France was so great, his simple reply was "there is only one, you know."

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Of course, that means different things to different people, but watching the peloton snaking through the beautiful French countryside or a dwindling group of riders attacking a monster climb in the snow-capped Alps is a sight to behold. Regardless of the drug question, these are the best riders in the world trying to win the biggest bike race in the world. It just wouldn't be the same if it were a bunch of amateurs in, say, Ohio.

Even though I have been to the Tour eleven times as a journalist, I still enjoy watching the race on TV. And years when I find myself at home, sometimes it turns out to not be a bad thing! I get up early and watch the day's stage live. At the conclusion of the stage, I am out the door on my own ride. For some reason, my legs feel a bit better; the pedals a bit lighter to push.

With the drug question still a work in progress, I am not asking you to turn a blind eye, but the history and pageantry of the Tour de France, especially as we celebrate the 100th edition of the race, is still something that can encourage people to take up the sport of cycling and motivate existing cyclists to push harder and train more. It's a great race.

Don't miss it.

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