Hot and Steamy - My Least Favorite Time of the Year

The steam bath that sometimes is our July weather has arrived and it makes for difficult sleeping. Last night DH and I had the fans on, but he was still up playing bridge on his phone at 2:00 am, and I was tossing and turning (obviously) until my alarm went off at 3:15 am. We've had worse temps and days, but it's been such a glorious summer until now, and I was hoping against hope that we'd manage to escape the dual summer icks of heat and humidity. No such luck!

Today is another relatively flat stage as the riders aim their bikes south toward
the mountains of Sunday's stage. Marcel Kittel won the stage yesterday, let's see
if he can pull off his third win of this year's Tour with a win on this stage
as well. It's a long 213 km stage through France's wine country. 

Yesterday's temps on Le Tour were equally horrid with temps in the upper 90's and high humidity. It's just as well that the terrain was just rolling hills. Today could be equally scenic but basically flat as we turn south through the wine country of France, ending at a new terminal - Nuits-Saint-Georges. Chris Froome is still in the lead and wears the yellow and his teammate, Geraint Thomas, is still hanging on to second place in the standings. Well done Team Sky. Andrew Talansky from the USA is surrently in 19th, the highest placement for a US rider in the list. Of course, there are only three US riders in the field, so we are a small minority.

Taylor Phinney is all the way down at 155th place right now, but his daily video blogs have been wonderful. If he can make it through the entire 21 days of racing and keep posting those blogs, he'll have made a name for himself in the cycling world. You can catch some of the video blogs by doing a search on Google for "Taylor Phinney Video Blog". He's doing one each day at the request of NBC and they are extremely entertaining. He's such a Boulder, Colorado boy. That laid-back feeling comes through each and every video makes and always makes me smile. If you have a Twitter account, he's a good one to follow there during the race.

So, I'm off to the pool. I've been working on getting the form and integrating kick turns into my workout. I actually managed a couple of laps with kick turns yesterday, so I'm hoping I might be able to increase that number today. Have a wonderful Friday, enjoy your day, and I'll be back, gearing up for the outdoor pool, tomorrow. Yippee!