The Tour de France starts today! Not that there is any way to watch it on TV here, but there are still some online sources to follow the race. This year promises to be a much more exciting race, with no 1 clear dominant favourite (eg, Lance Armstrong). Hopefully no more doping issues will mar the racing.

Here are some interesting figures taken from www.cyclingnews.com
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As one of the world's largest sporting events, the Tour de France boasts a huge impact and infrastructure. Here is a look at the numbers behind Le Grande Boucle:

4,500: accredited people (organization, teams, media, publicity caravan, service)
2,400: vehicles (including 200 vehicles in-race and 135 trucks in TV technical area at finish line)725: staff in Tour race organization
1,300: hotel beds reserved each night for Tour race organization and teams
189: professional riders in the Tour Peloton (21 teams of nine riders)
280: team staff members45: motorcycle patrolmen of the Garde Républicaine
10: policemen of the Tour permanent task force
23,000: police officers along the Tour roadside for traffic control
1700: accredited journalists, photographers, TV cameramen, consultants and producers
185: countries with TV coverage of the Tour
51: countries with live TV coverage of the Tour
4,500,000,000: people will view the Tour de France worldwide on TV
3,200: hours of total TV coverage
12,000,000: roadside spectators (81% French / 19% other)
15,000,000: free gifts handed out during the Tour de France
34: stage cities
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Had a good AHM training run today. It was overall a positive experience. We did a supposed 14km time trial, but really it was more of a 13km time trial. Carpark B1 (our meeting place) to F2 and back. Timing was 57 min. I was happy to be able to sustain a heartrate of 86%, which is a good sign as compared to before where I was really quite fatigued from anything above 70%. Well, the thing that made it interesting was the heavy rain on the return leg. Plus strong winds. I think I lose out yet again to those small frame runners as I faced more resistance. But then again I wasn't blown away like some of them felt they were. The real problem came when the water started getting into my eyes, and my contacts just ceased functioning! I think they started adhereing to the underside of my eyelids, both of them! Yup, so I was back to my blind self, left eye 550 degrees, right eye 800 degrees, and with rain pelting at my eyes. Even blinking / rubbing my eyes didn't help as there was like a constant supply of water coming back into my eyes. My shades didn't help. Yup, so I ran back as a blind man, running straight into probably all the gigantic puddles infront of me. Good thing I didn't run head on into anyone else, and luck lamp posts are black and not grey... and the path is grey, not green like the grass.... Yeah, I was that blind.