It's that time of the year again

When I first saw the Tour, I was at a friend's house in Utah and he was flipping channels. "Look, there's Armstrong in yellow". This was in 2003, Armstrong's fifth year of contention. I remember looking up and saw this mass moving around a corner, vibrant colored and shaped like an arrow. Deciphering the color yellow was impossible, and it looked like all they do is ride all day.

And now, July will find me glued to the Tour. I've watched live it the last three years, watched the DVDs for the years before (the Armstrong years since '99) and know that I will be watching it next year as well.

The Tour is a three week story that moves through about 20 stages or so, with a couple of rest days. Each stage is a single-day race on its own. So you race a 100km race one day, go to sleep, get up in the morning and do it all over again for 20 days. The beginning of the race is all flat, and there's plenty of hard-core-big-motored fast riders who go at it. A week and a half later, they hit the Pyrenees mountains at which point the only thought is crossing the finish line.

There are stage winners, who win on a particular day and then there's the overall Tour leader, the maillot jaune, the guy who wears the yellow jersey. This guy is the leader of what is called the General Classification. Besides this, there's the Green Jersey for the sprinters, the Polka Dot Jersey which is for the mountain climbers, and the White jersey for the best young rider.

There are 22 teams this year, and each team has a leader that is targeting one of these jerseys. There are two or three lieutenants under this leader and then there are domestiques, whose sole job is to listen to team orders, protect the main guys from a crash and do the horse-work.

You can save up to 60% of your energy by riding behind another rider. So all the domestiques ride up front, letting the leader save his energy until the very end. Since each stage is a race, there are no shortage of guys who want the glory of being a stage winner. When the race starts, the whole group (called the peloton) start together, until a few brave fellows set off on their own. This is called the breakaway. The peloton then tries to catch up this breakaway, through a steady slow increase in pace. Teams get together, make the decision and then start leading the peloton, which explains the arrow shape. The peloton becomes this self-organizing thing moving steadily and with intent. You have to time the breakaway just right. Set off too early, you got a long-day's work riding alone. Set off too late - the peloton will catch up cuz the pace was alreader high. Then, they don't really treat you too kindly for making them work unnecessarily by sending you to the back.

Everything is a mixture of strategy, talent, endurance, road technicalities combined with luck.

And no prizes for guessing whom am supporting this year.