Life Lessons from Le Tour de France

The 2009 Tour de France starts July 4th.


I'm really not much into spectator sports. I'm normally bored by watching some game on TV; I'd much rather be out doing something instead! However, in the last few years, as I've become interested in the sport of cycling, I've made a point to keep up with some of the Tour de France each year. Of course, I can't catch all of it; it's 3 weeks long! Despite my disinclination to enjoy watching a sport, I have truly been fascinated by the complexity of this race.

The Tour lasts 3 weeks and consists of 21 individual daily races. It is considered a great career achievement for a professional cyclist to win even one individual stage. So, many riders are in the race with no hopes of winning the overall event, but might possibly pull out a stage win. The overall leader of the race wears a yellow jersey, and (should he wear it to the finish line in Paris) is the winner in the general classification (or g.c. for short). This is decided by taking each rider's individual race finish time every day and adding them up as the race progresses; at the end of the event, the rider with the lowest cumulative time wins. Also, there are various other winning classifications within the race that riders can vie for.

The other major categories are the green sprinter's jersey (based on a point system for finishing well in the mass finishes as well as at intermediate sprint points along the route), the red-and-white polka dot "King of the Mountains" jersey for the best performance over the mountain stages, and the white best young rider jersey for the best performing rider under the age of 25. To make it even more confusing, there are 3 different types of races involved: the standard mass-start stages where all participants begin together, the individual time trials, where the participants depart in one-minute intervals and each rider races alone on the road against the clock, and the team time trials which are similar to the individual TTs except that whole teams work together to ride the fastest they can along the day's course. For more detailed information, read Wikipedia's Tour entry here.

A pro cycling stage race is an endurance event that is unparalleled in all of sports. And the Tour is the granddaddy of all stage races. Wikipedia quotes the July 16, 2006 edition of the New York Times as saying "The Tour de France is arguably the most physiologically demanding of athletic events. The distance and time of the Tour is comparable to running a marathon several days a week for nearly three weeks. The vertical distance climbed traversing the Alps and Pyrenees is equivalent to climbing three Everests. Participants consume and burn as much as 10,000 calories per day."

It has occurred to me that we could learn a lot from the perseverance, teamwork, strategy, and sheer determination needed simply to finish this event, much less be a contender to win a single stage, a category, or the whole event! Here are some of my thoughts and observations inspired by the sport of cycling and Le Tour de France:



1. You can't just go it alone.

Until I learned more about cycling, I had no idea that it was a team sport, every bit as much as basketball or baseball. A team of cyclists can ride the same course in a much faster time than an individual cyclist attempting it alone. Having ridden both alone and in groups of riders, I can attest that when you are out there by yourself--just you, the bike, and the wind--it is much harder. Having someone else in front of you doing the hard work fighting the wind resistance makes your job much easier. In fact, sports scientists have calculated that by proper drafting, a cyclist conserves as much as 25% of his energy. That means he can go 25% faster or 25% further with help than he could by himself! Of course, if the same person takes the lead by himself for too long, he won't be able to set much of a pace for the riders behind him. A cycling team rides in a rotating formation called a paceline, taking turns in the lead, so that no individual rider takes the brunt of the wind for too long. The optimum draft occurs when your front tire is within just 2 inches back from the rear tire of the rider in front of you, so you have to stay very close to your leader. All of the team members have to keep an eye out for each other to avoid collisions when they are riding so close together. One second of inattention could cause you and everyone behind you to crash. The guy in the front is constantly scanning the road for any obstacles, and everyone else is following his lead, since they can't see around him. You have to trust your leaders.


2. Sometimes you have to lead, and sometimes you have to serve.



The unique thing about this sport is that the majority of the team is racing in a support role. Each team of nine members has one leader and eight domestiques. The job of the domestiques, literally "servants", is to take care of the lead rider. When the leader is racing close to the front of the peloton, the main pack of riders, one of the domestiques may be called on to fall back to behind the pack to where the team cars are in order to get water bottles to re-supply the leader and the rest of the team. Then he will have to virtually sprint in order to catch back up to his team to deliver the needed water. This extra effort expended makes it nearly impossible for this rider to be a contender to actually win the day for himself; he uses his energy to support others so that they will have the strength to sprint for the finish line when the time comes. Other riders serve as lead-out men in the final sprint over the last mile or so of a day's racing. They will wear themselves out setting the pace for the strongest rider, who rides in their draft, conserving his own energy, sometimes until the final few seconds, when the team leader gives it his all and pushes for the finish line with everything he's got, leaving the riders who did much of the work to get him there to finish several back in the ranking. But the Tour is a tough race; one never knows when a lead rider may have to drop out due to injury, illness, or exhaustion. So the support riders do their best to help out the strongest rider, but they could be called upon to take on the leadership role themselves if something happens to the original team leader. You've got to do your best to accomplish the goal regardless of your personal position.


3. Cooperation is key.

While it is a team sport, with the extremely long distances and arduous mountain climbs of this event, inevitably the strongest riders sometimes find themselves separated from their teammates. Sometimes this is by design, when a particular rider sees an opportunity to break away from the group and put some time between himself and his rivals on other teams, and sometimes it is simply a result of most of the weaker riders falling behind as the race gets tough, leaving only the very strongest in the lead. Now, the dynamic of teamwork changes. You may have 5 or 6 riders together, all from different teams, all hoping to win the day for themselves. I have seen a breakaway group like this with an advantage of several minutes over the peloton many times. Most of the time, however, these groups are eventually caught by the crowd and their extra effort to break away is for naught. To be successful, these multi-team breakaway groups have to forge a temporary alliance and work together in order to make it to the sprint ahead of the pack. (Then it's every man for himself.)


4. Always try to hang with the leaders.


The safest place to be in the peloton is with the leaders in the front. It's also the easiest place to ride, assuming you intend to finish with the pack. The rules of professional cycling stipulate that everyone who finishes with a group of riders receives the time of the first rider in the group to cross the finish line, so if there is a massive pack of 85 or 90 riders that roars across the finish line together, the guy in the last position earns the same time as the one whose tire crosses the paint first. (This reduces agressive and potentially dangerous maneuvering within the peloton. The only way to gain time on the pack is to succeed in a breakaway.) So you would think it wouldn't really matter where in the pack you are riding. However, the guys in the front expend much less energy than the tail of the peloton. If you can visualize a large group of bicycles maneuvering through an intersection, you will understand why. The first few have an unobstructed path to choose the most efficient line around the corner, shaving off a bit of distance. They are able to maintain most of their speed through the turn and accelerate smoothly back to their cruising speed once they are back in a straitaway. The guys in the middle and back of the group, however, are forced to slow down and to take less than ideal routes through the intersection. As the pack moves into a turn, there is an "accordion effect" where the group bunches up as they slow down through the turn, then extends out again after the turn is complete. Those who weren't in the front end up having to work much harder to maintain their position. That precious energy expended is then unavailable if needed later on should the pace pick up. Add to this disadvantage the fact that there are that many more people ahead of you that could potentially crash, taking down many of the riders in their wake, and you quickly see that cruising along in the back of a group is not the best position to be in. In order to stay in the lead, you should hang with the leaders.


5. Even when you fall down, you just gotta get up!



One of the salient features of the Tour is the crash. With flesh, bone, titanium, and rubber vying for position in the peloton and trying to remain poised above the pavement while careening down a mountainside at over 60 miles per hour, bad stuff is bound to happen. Many have suffered broken bones and bruised egos, and a few riders have even lost their lives over the years. At times a rider in the middle of the peloton goes down and dozens more pile on top of him like so many dominoes, limbs and tires flailing dizzyingly in the air. The truly amazing thing about this event is not that some have to drop out due to injury, but just how many actually make it to the end of the race! You'll never win the race by lying on the ground. If the crash was bad enough and you are too injured to continue for the day, focus on your recovery and get ready to start training for the next race as soon as you are able. A rider sometimes suffers a nasty-looking fall, but the true contenders don't allow themselves the luxury of wallowing in pain and pity on the pavement. I have seen riders jump up from the ground after a terrible fall, thrust the mangled metal of their bike aside, get a replacement bike from their coach and start cranking the pedals immediately to re-join the racers down the road. So, when you fall down, check to make sure nothing is broken, dust yourself off, and get back on the bike! The race goes to the one who endures!

Thoughts on Discipline

From time to time, I fill in teaching the teen Sunday School class for my friends Stewart and Galadriel, who are the regular teachers. Such was the case last week and I felt to teach about discipline. This is something that God has been dealing with me about for several months, since before the beginning of the year.

As I was thinking about the concept of discipline, it occurred to me how close the word is to "disciple". If we are His disciples, we must live lives of discipline. A disciple is a follower. Paul says in 1 Cor. 11:1 "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ." We must find leaders who are following Christ and be disciplined in following them. If you look up the word disciple, you find that the root means "student" or "pupil". We must be disciplined to learn from the Great Teacher. How can He teach us if we don't take time to listen?

To help me be more disciplined in my life, I sat down at my computer last Saturday and wrote myself a tentative daily schedule. If I follow it, I will get in all of the important stuff that I ought to be doing and won't burn up so much time with the meaningless time wasters that so easily distract us from what truly matters. This brings to mind an axiom that I've heard that, unfortunately, has often applied to my life:

"Too often we major in the urgent and minor in the important."

I don't want to be guilty of this. There will always be urgent stuff that comes up in my life, but if I am a disciplined person, I will make time for the things that matter, like daily prayer time and Bible study. What could be more important than spending time with the Lord?

I was doing these things before, but not as much, and not with the same regularity. Daniel prayed with his windows open toward Jerusalem three times a day. It seems that we benefit from regularly taking time out to acknowledge our Creator and focus on Him for a few minutes. It recenters us and reminds us of Who is truly important (and it's not us!). We have to take the focus off of ourselves and put it on Him.

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't feel like doing these things will somehow help me to obtain God's grace. I feel like I am called to do these things in response to God's grace. Nothing I can do will obligate God to do anything for me, but He has already done so much for me, it obligates me to do more for Him.

Well, during my first week of striving for greater discipline, I have not stuck to my schedule 100%, but I have done pretty well. I have spent a few minutes every morning in prayer right after waking up, and it just makes such a difference in my outlook every day. I have been reading His word more, and meditating on it more throughout the day. Twice this week I have awakened in the morning from a dream in which I felt the Holy Spirit greatly. This is not something that happens to me often. I am responding to God's grace and He is giving me more, obligating me even further. God's grace truly is amazing.