{"id":12001,"date":"2014-07-08T23:13:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T04:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/?p=12001"},"modified":"2014-07-26T10:41:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T15:41:45","slug":"tour-de-france-the-cobblestones-of-stage-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/?p=12001","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France, the Cobblestones of Stage 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yep, summer is here and so is<strong> le Tour de France!<\/strong>\u00a0I must admit, I got a late start watching le TDF this year and it took me a little while before I started to get totally involved in it. Well, I can say that I am totally into it again this year and I would encourage all you riders out there to tune in whenever you get a chance to see what this year&#8217;s Tour is all about.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/ProformTDFZoomedIn.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12006 alignright\" alt=\"Proform Tour de France logo\" src=\"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/ProformTDFZoomedIn.jpg\" width=\"186\" height=\"151\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Before I get into the details and my own take on the race so far this year, you can find the latest new, updates and winners on the 2014 TDF on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.letour.com\/le-tour\/2014\/us\/\" target=\"_blank\">official TDF website here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Le Tour is broadcast on the NBC Sports channel here in the US (in Chicago anyway) but keep in mind that the broadcasts are delayed after each day&#8217;s race has taken place so if you don&#8217;t want to know ahead of time who wins what, do\u00a0not check out the website news until after you get a chance to see the current days&#8217;s broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>So, very briefly, the 1st 3 stages were in England and the most recent stage (today) was in France. As of the end of stage 4 today,\u00a0<strong>Vincenzo Nibali wears the Yellow Jersey<\/strong> (<em>the rider with the lowest cumulative overall time for all stages completed<\/em>), \u00a0<strong>Peter Sagan wears the Green Jersey<\/strong> <em>(the rider with the most points which are earned by winning various events within each stage<\/em>),<strong>\u00a0Cyril Lemoine wears the Polka Dot Jersey<\/strong> (<em>the king of the mountain or the best climber<\/em>) and \u00a0<strong>Romain Bardet gets the White Jersey<\/strong> <em>(the best rated young rider<\/em>). Of course, this will all be <strong>out of date tomorrow<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>What I really wanted to get to with this particular TDF post is that tomorrow&#8217;s stage (<em>stage 5<\/em>) is going to be very interesting with all these expensive race bikes, with their <strong>skinny tires, on the cobblestone roads of France<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like I can relate to this since I have often ridden some pretty rough roads (<em>even some cobblestone roads, I believe<\/em>) with my skinny tired road bike. Of course, I am not usually riding at 30-40mph, or more, like the TDF riders!<\/p>\n<p>They say that this is a very dangerous and unpredictable stage. It is probably not as scenic as the high mountain stages but it does sound like it is going to be very interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I hope that you get a chance to watch at least some of this historic cycling event this year!<\/p>\n<p>BTW: The photo that I included above is a close up of the TDF logo on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.about-bicycles.com\/exercise-bike-reviews\/proform-tour-de-france.html\">Proform TDF Indoor Cycle (here)<\/a> that is shown in some pretty cool commercials during the TDF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yep, summer is here and so is le Tour de France!\u00a0I must admit, I got a late start watching le TDF this year and it took me a little while before I started to get totally involved in it. Well, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/?p=12001\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,654],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12001"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12001"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12012,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12001\/revisions\/12012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}