Tour Spoilers Present

OK. The title's fair warning. If you're in the U.S. and you're waiting on the primetime coverage of Le Tour, this post has spoilers and you might want to wait until tomorrow to read it. If you can't wait (I know my readers are so rabid.) then I've put the Tour section in RED.

So, I'm going to have to quit talking about the Tour. After the ups and downs this week, I'm glad it's about over cause my heart can't take it. After falling 8 minutes on one stage, regaining 7.5 the next day, and then a transition stage, the whole Tour for Landis came down to this morning's time trial. Everything clicked for him today, as he finished a solid third, took a 1 minute lead over Pereiro and is positioned to cruise into Paris. I was watching while trying to get some work done this morning, but didn't get a lot done because once Landis went through the first time check 1s down on Honchar (who won the time trial earlier in the tour) but only 10s ahead of Periero, the tension level was too high. Although Landis slowed over the course relative to Honchar, Pereiro slowed more. You could tell the relief in the post-race interview. The bonk aside, he just out-raced the field. Do you think that the rest of the world is getting pissed about Americans winning the Tour?

OK, I've been in the office waaayyy too much in the past few weeks. We went to a firm-wide happy hour on Wednesday. One of the partners says to me, "So have you done any cool summer stuff . . . oh, I mean . . . nevermind, you've been at the office too late for that." Then, at the weekly associate's meeting, our liason to the Partner's Committee is asking about assignments, going around the room, "what do you have going on?" Like that. He gets to me, and says, "OK. I know you're really busy. Moving on." However, as good news, I finished up a project on Friday. This means I'm only now being pulled in 4 directions at once instead of 5! No rest for the wicked. Last night, I left early . . . 8:30 p.m.

I did 4 miles today in McCarren Park. These are always weird runs for me, because on the one hand, they should be easy. The route's pancake flat and 2/3 of it's dirt, as I make four 2/3 mile loops around the park. On the other hand, because there are no hills, at my normal effort I run it at about a 7 minute pace (Compared with the 7:45 I run for 5 miles when the Williamsburg Bridge is part of the route.) But, the route's so much easier, that it's not really a tempo run. It's strange how huge a role terrain plays in time. Hopefully, 40s/mile faster on no more effort is a good sign, since the Marine Corp Marathon is pancake flat.

I'm not going to give the detail on the last week's runs that I missed posting because of work, other than to say that my 10 miler on Thursday involved a new route because the police had the Manhattan Bridge blocked off. I'm calling it the B.S. Run because it's a loop of Lower Manhattan that passes, among other sites such as the AMEX, the NYSE and the N.Y. Stocking Exchange, the Wall Street Bull. A nice "flat" route that only involves about 3 miles of climbing because of only one bridge, it's significantly easier than the BMW Run that I'd planned. At 7:49/mile (with really "dead" quads), again, it's amazing what a big difference a change of terrain makes.



Thursday 10.33, 80:48 (7:49/mile)
Saturday 4.0, 28:07 (7:02/mile)