Sunday, July 09, 2006
Note to triathletes
Today's stage of the Tour de France was 181.0 kilometers. Which equals 112.5 miles, almost exactly the distance of the bike leg of an Ironman triathlon. The leading rider covered the distance in 4 hours, 13 minutes, and 18 seconds. The average speed was 42.874 kph, or 26.62 miles per hour.It was a relatively easy day for those that rode in the peleton.
Faris Al-Sultan's winning ride at the Kona, Hawaii Ironman World Championships of 112 miles took 4:25:24, for an average speed of 25.3 miles per hour.
It was a pretty tough day for him.
Before you say, awwwww, but Faris didn't get to draft off the whole peleton - the fastest individual time trial yesterday was at a speed of 55.5 kph or 31.4 miles per hour. If someone could keep that up for a whole 112 miles, that would be a bike leg time of 3:34.
Heck, the very slowest time trial of the day had a 27.0 mph average speed.
Of course, Tour riders don't have to swim 2.4 miles beforehand, nor run a marathon afterwards. But I sure wish Lance would head over to Kona for the fall of 2007, after he gets done running the New York City Marathon this fall.
Or even the Lanterne Rouge.
