Lance, Exit. Bravo!

A fabulous time trial today, a beautiful one. Tomorrow's parade through the Arc at Champs-Elysees will be the last time Lance will race. It's been amazing watching him race, actually, especially through this last tour. The man is a legend and a damn good rider.

The tour itself, I think, is amazing to me. The living, breathing peloton which gracefully floats through winding roads, growing and changing as tiny specks of color shift themselves within the body and pieces pull off to accept their fate or gain their advantage hypnotizes me for three weeks in July. It's not really for the leaders that I watch the tour, even though I admire Lance and the disco boys, I watch for the liveliness of the peloton, the struggle of the individual riders who are dropped and for the spectacular moments of sprinting which punctuate the long ribbon that is the tour.

And yes, winning seven in a row gives you plenty of panache.