tour de france

my squeeze has been watching the tour de france. now, i'm going to claim that i know anything at all about it but i'm learning a little and frankly i'm AMAZED. these people race lengths like 200+kms per day for three weeks. can you imagine how hard that would be? people have to train professionally -not just in the sense that they might get some financial reimbursement but they literally dont have any other time outside of training to earn a living - i would consume their entire lives. whoa! it is the/one of the hardest races in the world to compete in and people take it very seriously. there is this one guy that has a fracture in his spine and is STILL racing.
this is an interesting website. purely for the fact that it shows some of the competitors vitals (pulse, speed, cadence etc) live as it happens. you can see it on the telly, and it's happening on the internet too. (kinda like bigbrother)
it seems that despite how seriously these people are taking it all, there is still some sense of etiquette to do with what's appropriate and what's not. for example during the drink pick up section - noone will try to "make a break" and get ahead, it's just NOT done. the squeeze was also describing a situation where a whole paleton (pack of riders) all pulled over to take a piss. i dared ask "what do they do normally?" and he took some time to decide whether they would be pissing over the front handle bars or down between their legs. ewww!! what about all the licra?? that's totally gross.
and i'll leave you with that very pleasant thought.