In honor of the first mountain stage of the tour de france I decided to go ride my bike up a bunch of mountains. Just kidding. While I do love riding a bike of any variety, I couldn’t bring myself to spend the 3.5 hours this morning riding when I could spend it running over a few peaks. I wish I had time to be bike and run a few hours a day…but alas, I have to choose at this point. I still love watching the Tour de France though. More this year than ever before since I just visited France and rode on many of the routes and mountains they are riding this year. Today, being the first stage of that variety actually. They climbed the tourmalet today, which we also climbed in May. So I was pretty eager to watch the stage today. The crowds were slightly bigger for them than when we were there. Here we are standing at the top of the climb after riding it. It was very similar conditions as the tour stage today with clouds at the top, but the clouds parted for us. As you can see, there weren’t many people cheering us on at the top, as compared to today when the summit had thousands of people lined up all over the place.  Nan, Me, Matt and Ashley (my sis. and bro-in-law)
Within minutes of getting to the top, Jurgen Van Den Broeck showed up. He couldn’t quite hold our pace as it turned out, so we beat him to the top. But here he is pictured, in one of his training rides on the TDF route. We chatted with him and his manager briefly. 
On the stage today it was cool to see Frank Schleck attack the leaders today looking strong. I like watching Frank and Andy. Bummer about Radioshack all being pretty much beat down and crashed out of this years tour at this point. It would be a total miracle if Levi or Kloden made it back to the podium at this point…not happening. Anyway, as for my morning run, I got in 3 summits up the aforementioned peaks, about 5000 feet of vert. and about 16 miles on the route that I ran. Tons of fun. Took it pretty easy and was out for about 3.5 hours leaving at 5:45. There’s a lot to love and enjoy about July. But two things high on the list are long mountain runs in 65-70 degree sunshine and the Tour de France. Its slightly harder to get started working each day I have noticed though. Oh well…work can wait until August. Here are some pics from this am.  1.5 miles from home at the trailhead
 Green Mountain summit marker
Green Mountain/boulder view from Bear peak  S. Boulder peak from Bear
| 