The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Descents, Periods, and Power: Tour de France Femmes Stage 8 Podcast
Welcome to the Tour de France Femmes Podcast, from the producers of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast"
CTS publishes daily Tour de France Femmes podcasts with Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman. They recap the stages, but the unique aspect of these podcasts will be coaching insights about how athletes prepare for the demands showcased in that day's stage.
STAGE 8 PODCAST OVERVIEW
Stage 8 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was the Queen Stage, meaning the hardest of them all. There was a big shakeup on the leaderboard, which Coaches Renee Eastman and Adam Pulford discuss. They also talk about coaching athletes on descending skills and the impact of a woman's menstrual cycle on performance and perception of effort.
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Co-Host: Renee Eastman
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Renee Eastman bio: https://trainright.com/coaches/renee-eastman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee.eastman/
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Welcome back Time Crunch fans, tdff fans and welcome back to my co-host, Coach Rene Eastman.
Speaker 2:Adam, great to see you. Good morning everybody. We got a great stage to talk about.
Speaker 1:We do. Indeed, I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and yeah, as you know, this whole week we're talking Tour de France from AVEC Zwift, where Rene is our specialist on recapping everything about the stage. Then we talk about specific coaching elements that we kind of determine are important throughout the stage, whether it's climbing, descending, women's physiology, fueling or something like that. So here we are at stage eight, Renee, let's just get right into the recap. What did you see today? What did you write down? What stood out to you the most?
Speaker 2:A lot. This was the Queen stage, as you remember. That means it's the big showdown, the hardest mountain stage. It was 111 kilometers with 3,500 meters of climbing. In American, that is 11,000 feet of climbing over 70 miles. Adam, I've done some hard rides before. Plenty of 10,000 feet climbing days, but not over that in 70 miles. So tough, tough day when to watch Alert, if you guys just want to kind of get to the best part, watch the last climb. The cold little metal land starts with 18 kilometers to go. It's about an hour of the race. It's uh, but that's when all the action happens. Um, another little tip or hint on today. If you're watching Peacock, you're going to be like it sounds different today.
Speaker 2:We had Phil Liggett and Megan Garnier on the commentary today and if you guys are wondering like who is that lady? Well, she's an American retired badass bike racer. She won the Giro back in 2016. So she knows what she's talking about. Let's get on with it, because we have a lot to talk about with today's stage. We might go on and on, because it was really dramatic and lots of interesting stuff happened. The stage kicked off on a climb, a 13-kilometer climb, and that's when the break formed. It was another big break about 15 riders. We hadise shabby up there chasing after the polka dots, uh. Mavis squibbin, uh, out there again, uh. And ruth edwards too. Both of those guys didn't have enough yesterday in the break. Um, about halfway through the stage, kim la courte crashed on a descent. I think she was just tired or something. I mean, it wasn't like something bad happened, she just kind of took a bad line there.
Speaker 2:She was leading the peloton yeah, it took a little bit of a chase to catch back on, but she did make it back on well before the big climb of the day started, with 18 kilometers to go, the cold of Manila, and by that point the break still had a gap of a couple of minutes and the field was whittled down to about 14 riders, including all the GC favorites was whittled down to about 14 riders, including all the GC favorites. So once we were on the climb, things started to happen. Surprising to me, anna Vander Breggen dropped early. She was the first GC hopeful to get dropped about 14 kilometers to go. Kind of surprising because Esty Works was doing a lot of work today. Then, with 11 kilometers to go, my pick of the day, sarah Gigante, starts going for it. It was clear to me that the AG insurance plan of the day was for Sarah. I saw Kim LaCourte doing a little bit of work, a little bit of pulling, early in the race and then, once I got on the climb, kim was doing a lot of pacing to set up Sarah. So it was never her intention to hold on to yellow today. And when Kim LaCourte got tired, pulled off, that's when Sarah went and that's when it all started going and Pauline Perron-Perot, pfp. She bridged up to Sarah and the two of them left Demi and Cassia behind. It was a small group by then. It was Demi and Cassia. Pollyanna Rutgers Cabal was up there and the Polish writer from UAE, dominika. I am not even going to try to say her last name, nika. I am not even going to try to say her last name. Those Polish names are too hard for my American tongue.
Speaker 2:We had a lot of satellite riders up in the break today. We talked about that yesterday, putting a rider up ahead to help out, and we saw a lot of that on the climb. Justine DeGagara from AG Insurance was up there to help Sarah. Yara Kasterlein was up there to help Roy Arkers. I don't think they ever connected, though. Marion Brunel was up there. She paced Pauline for a little bit. Fdj had Vita Music up in the break and she was pacing Demi for a little while. Music up in the break and she was pacing Demi for a little while. And actually Squibben was up there helping her teammate from UAE. So we saw a lot of that teamwork today.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, bfp, she drops Sarah Gigante with about eight and a half kilometers to go. She didn't attack, she just rode her off her wheel, which I'm blown by that, just blown away by the climbing performance. I knew she was going to be climbing well this race. I didn't expect what I saw because, spoiler alert Paulina Ferran Farro won the stage, took the jersey, but but you know, as she was going with eight and a half k to go, there were still a couple of breakaway riders up there knee fisher black and your casterline. She caught them with 6k to go. She dropped fisher black with about 5k to go and just went on to solo win. Um, I said that it was going to be minutes today and it was PFP wins.
Speaker 2:Sergio Gonti was second, 145 back, the group behind, with Demi and Cassia. They had a little bit of a shakeup in the last kilometer. They had a little bit of a shakeup in the last kilometer. Demi accelerated away from them to gain a few seconds on Cassia, can't forget knee fissure plaque held on for third. Demi was actually fourth, 3.03 behind PFP, and she was. Yara Kasperlein was in fifth. She was actually, you know, from the break, and right behind Demi and Yara Kasperlein were Kerbal and the UAE rider and Cassia right behind them. Those three were about 320 down. So GC is totally blown up. Now let's see PFP in yellow Sarah Gigante in second 237. Back Follering in third 318. Nia Adoma in fourth 340. Kerr Ball up in fifth.340. Kerbal up in 5th great ride by her at 4.11.
Speaker 2:I know that you have a real attachment for invested in that EF Oatley rider, kerbal AJ's teammate. I'm sure there will be some celebration tonight because if she stays in 5th that's a huge accomplishment for the team.
Speaker 1:Yeah big accomplishment. Yes, like kind of a satellite uh person attached to the team, but also for me personally, pfp, seeing her in yellow, uh, at this point, uh, personally I'm very excited for that. She's been a hero of of mine for the yellow jersey. We don't need to get super into it. I did a podcast a few weeks ago talking about how, when that happened in the men's race and some of the unwritten rules, the culture and everything around that. But I'll just say this like anybody who races bikes knows that crashing is a thing and we're going to get into descending in how, being on the limit mentally and physically, what that means, how that can happen. But anytime you crash, hopefully you don't pull anybody down with you. Her crash was like kind of like minor, sure A mistake, but like I've crashed similar in that way. She got up and got going, but on the broadcast and also I'd say watch. I don't know. Do you know when that happened, renee?
Speaker 2:It was halfway through. We're at 60K to go, yeah.
Speaker 1:So listen to the commentary. I think they did a really good job of explaining why they didn't wait for the yellow jersey, how a crash like that can can happen. But I'm sure this is going to blow up on social media, um in some form or fashion. But it's also kind of a launch point to talk about some of the descending once. Once we do um and we can talk about that now, renee. Or we can talk about my girl, pfp, and how good she is of setting a goal at some point and then achieving it either next year or years down the road, because it's, it's incredible she.
Speaker 2:She is a master at that, adam. She's got 13 world championships. Uh, she's won the olympics. She is very, very good at showing up on time, in form and completely ready for her goal. And Caroline Manet Coach Caroline Manet, french cyclocross superstar, our coach and friend, she knows Pauline, she's French, raced against her Just said that she has such respect for Pauline, for what she can do, um to show you how committed she was to getting ready for this tour.
Speaker 1:She bought a house in andorra this year and she said that it was specifically so she could go train at altitude on long climbs, and I have never seen her climb like this no uh, amazing I mean like this style of riding where she's just so freaking strong and she rides away from fields she's been able to do that for a while, but, like mountain bike, terrain different than this and I'd say uh, agree with you.
Speaker 1:Like she rode away in the uh. Well, a couple times in a world championship, but also in the olympics, where it was just like no super hard attack, but just like and and, just riding away from the group. That's what she did today, but like in a massive way on a huge climb, and I was just, I mean, I was like whoa yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:That kind of climbing is completely different than mountain bike climbing. Uh, an hour long at FTP versus how long her mountain bike climbs on cross-country courses.
Speaker 1:Five minutes is long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's her training in a very specific way. We won't go into all that detail today. I think a subject that has certainly been talked about and I'm sure it's going to be talked about more. You know it's clear that she's lost some weight from the spring, you know. And to climb in the big mountains, you know. You see it in the men's race as well. Ladies and men they get as lean as possible to perform their best in the mountains, especially when they're GC riders. But she's got a team behind her.
Speaker 2:She has been a professional for a long time. I've seen her show up to other performances. You know, lean and mean and ready to go. She doesn't stay that way all year and I think that's something for maybe the amateur rider looking at the pros at their very best and she looks very, very small now. But that it's not healthy that she stays that way all year round, that she's doing it through diet. She's fueling her training appropriately. If she was just losing weight and not eating enough, she wouldn't be so strong now. So I just wanted to touch on that a little bit because I know some people end up talking about it, noticing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's really important to bring up is that this is not like historically looking back on it. She doesn't stay that way. She compartmentalizes well in terms of having a goal, sticking to it, doing whatever it takes to do that, and then kind of balancing out over time. And I think even with riders that I coach if I know that they can handle that there is functional weight loss or weight gain, depending on what the goal of the competition is anaerobic versus aerobic, versus gc versus climbing, all this kind of stuff and we'll put on or take off weight in order to do that, so long as you can handle it in the long run and keep it in balance.
Speaker 2:So well, the uh kind of famously the one of the stars of the men's race of the last couple years epperpper Hampson, I think, is his name he notably gained reportedly 20 kilos that he was trying to get super, super skinny climber and he wasn't riding well. And then he puts on 20 kilos and he's winning stages and crushing it at the tour. So it's riders finding their best performance weight. You don't have to look a certain way to perform well, exactly, and that's a really good example.
Speaker 1:And he was just saying like I didn't ride well when I was that low right and Jonas put on weight I think it was something like five or six pounds and he looked strong. He looked better. I think Todd is just head over heels right now with um his development, but you know I'm still second. So anyway, um, yeah, it's very good to mention Um, but don't give yourself an eating disorder to uh, go in big races. That's our main talking point.
Speaker 2:Uh, I know we want to talk downhills today. We've been talking about downhills all week Like, oh, these amazing descenders, and we get super psyched because it's kind of exciting. You know, super psyched. You know I can't descend like that, so I admire those who can. And in the women's race I think it's a little bit more highlighted because there's a little more disparity in the field that you have Kerbal, kasia and some others who are just wicked dissenters, very, very skilled, and then you have people like Sarah Gigante struggles a little bit more. So you, tactically they use dissents a little bit more. Then in the men's race, in the men's race you see a little bit more level playing field on the skill side of things.
Speaker 2:And we talked yesterday about Sarah Gigante working on her descending. You mentioned people hiring coaches. You know to work on descending, which is part of the game. If you want to be competitive at this level, it's part of the game. If you want to be competitive at this level, it's part of the game if you want to be competitive on your local group ride.
Speaker 2:I've gotten dropped on plenty of downhills on the group ride. I want to circle back to yesterday too, because I rewatched some of the coverage and Justine Gagera, sarah Gigante's teammate, was really helping her on that one descent, and Gagarin, Sarah Gigante's teammate, was really helping her on that one descent. And when I was rewatching the coverage it was so funny because at times Justine was behind her yelling at her like get off the brakes. And Sarah had an interview after the race that she thanked Justine, but she was talking about how Justine was shouting at her. And then other times Justine would go front to lead her and I was just kind of curious Adam, how do you coach people to get better at descending when you're live?
Speaker 1:in person. It's a great question and I think, Renee, let's put in the show notes that Instagram reel that you sent me, because the way that they did that, they interviewed Sarah Gigante and then her teammate to show what was happening and how her teammate was coaching her out there on the road.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I lost some time at the end, but thanks to my teammate Justine. Again, like yesterday, she was like an absolute superstar, oh.
Speaker 4:I was the whole downhill screaming to her and coaching come on, don't break, pull back yeah, I didn't drop for quite a while, but I could hear her always yelling at me like, come on, don't break, don't break, pedal, pedal, pedal doing well, come on Sarah, come on Sarah. Like I was going flat out, she was just chatting away. So, yeah, that was really motivating, and then anytime a gap did open, she was able to close it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, coaching her, coaching her. But yeah, in the last part.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I regret taking the left on the second roundabout. I knew I had to go right, but in the moment I just chose the wrong way. And yeah, I got gapped, but it could have been minutes. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with that descent. And so good, kim was able to get back to the group and finish again in yellow. So, yeah, an amazing day for the team really they.
Speaker 3:She lost a bit of time, but I went all out and I hope she didn't lose too much today. Now, tomorrow we go Madelon summit finish, finish. It's a big one. You prefer the road finishing up there rather than down. It suits you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we'll see what happens. We've still got Kim and Yellow, but maybe the teams will regret not dropping me yesterday when they could have, hopefully.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole of Australia sees you as a hero now. So thank you, thanks, no, no, no, but it's because we so believe in Sarah for the weekend and, yeah, we really believe she can do something special this weekend, and so we needed to reduce the time as much as possible. So it was my job, and with a pleasure If there is something big to come.
Speaker 4:Again, justine, and they pay again.
Speaker 1:Being able to coach somebody on the bike from the back to, you know, cue them in certain aspects of a descent or corner or whatever. I mean that's how it looks when you're at speed, trying to refine at the very top end. However, when I'm coaching anybody on descending and cornering, you take it down to the basics first, right, slow. You look at the corners, all this kind of stuff, but once you're on the bike, yeah, you got to cue them and you have to cue them in the moment. And it's the cue of the reminder of, hopefully you started with the basics and built up from there.
Speaker 1:But even at that highest level and I have, I've coached, um, I mean former us national champions and and, uh, mountain bike champions and and I've coached them on the road for descending in that way, because they've they've had to work on it and really my end goal is always like be smooth, because smooth will be fast over time and that's where I really want to uh get a rider. Usually they have at that level. Anyway, they have the basics fairly well done. They just need confidence to kind of like build up from there and then find that line. But uh, yeah, I think tactically we're going to see this in the women's field more and more, because the disparity is is there. You can see people ripping and making gaps and the GC riders will need to shore that up.
Speaker 2:And back on Kim LaCourte's crash today. We know she is a very good descender. She brought back a 30 second gap yesterday. She's a former mountain biker. She was taking risks yesterday, yesterday. A quote from her yesterday I tried to kill myself on a few of those hairpins was in her crash. Today she wasn't like, it was just you know, the the pack going along and it was a whoops. Yeah, it was a whoops. I I wonder if it's just like fatigue. Maybe you know that you know lapse of attention a little bit. She got up, you know didn't look hurt. I don't think it's why she got dropped early. I don't think she was really going to be up there today.
Speaker 1:No, and just to touch on that real quick, because in my older years now, I now appreciate descending as much as I used to appreciate climbing.
Speaker 1:And so to be on the limit, to take a local, you know KOM on the downhill, or or to intentionally in a race, try to, like you know, blow something apart on the downhill. Like you know, blow something apart on the downhill, physically there's a, physically it's very hard, but mentally it's very taxing. And I would say, just like on a day where you're going to take a QOM or a KOM, where you're all in on something, when you're taking that on the downhill, or even you're at the Tour de France, fama, but Zwift and you're trying to do that, I mean physically and mentally and they mentioned this on the broadcast too is just like you come up, you know you're racing full tilt over a climb, you have to ground yourself before you hit that descent, breathing, relaxing, that kind of stuff. And it's easy to make a mistake in that way and we'll see it. I'm not going to put you know words in Kim's mouth, we'll see it in some of the interviews, but like that's an honest mistake, I've done it before.
Speaker 1:It never feels good but, like I said, hopefully if you crash you don't take anyone else out with you.
Speaker 2:Um, I've really enjoyed getting to be a little bit more familiar with Kim LaCourte. This week.
Speaker 2:Um, she's only been in the pro tour a couple of years, so you know, first, last, first time I really noticed her was last year, but in her interviews and everything, I just she's a straight shooter. Yeah, and in one of her interviews post-race interviews this week, I believe it was the stage five that she won and took the jersey back a little bit. Oh, not a little bit. She took it back. That she won and took the jersey back a little bit oh, not a little bit. She took it back. Um, she said just straight up I didn't feel good. Today I'm on my period, you know, and I think it's great that writers like her and demi's another one who are just like, yeah, it's a thing, sometimes I feel bad people get on their periods and it changes moods and physical states than others.
Speaker 2:You know, most often it's the second half of the cycle, as you're getting to the you know, week ahead of when you have your period, the luteal phase, you know, athletes are like lower energy, maybe bloated, not sleeping, great you know. And then, once the hormones change, and you know, post uh period, in the follicular phase, you know, that's usually when women, if they have a trend or crushing it, they feel great, feel like a champ. I'm one of those day after my period starts like like Hulk, smash them Strava KOMs. And just because somebody feels bad doesn't mean that they're going to perform bad. I think there's a little bit of psychology behind it too, especially for ladies. If you let it get in your head oh, I'm bad today. I feel bad.
Speaker 2:Kim felt bad. She won the stage, one of the very few races I won here in colorado. I remember I felt so bad. I was on my period. I was like cramping and uh, the race was slow and I was just focused on like how I was feeling and so I just attacked. I like went off the front. I figured if I'm suffering this bad, I might as well just be off the front suffering and kind of. You know. By that point I forgot about my cramps. I was like my legs were hurting and my lungs were hurting. I did win the waist, though, so nice.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean to that point. I mean this is something I've never experienced myself. So I mean, take it for what it's worth. But coaching athletes like this I've learned that over the years is like feeling does not equal performance. Right, and that's where when someone is on their period, it's like, okay, well, let's just push today, maybe we have intervals or whatever. Let's just push today and see what happens. And sometimes we see, oh yeah, the performance doesn't change. I feel bad, but the performance doesn't. Other times I've had riders where it's like let's just try the intervals today and it's like they get into number one halfway through and they're like, nope, I'm out, go back home.
Speaker 2:So in understanding how you respond on those general ways is for you, ladies, is really important. I encourage my athletes and I do it myself, you know to track and you know you could track with your wearable I've got my Garmin watch or just tracking training peaks. There are apps out there that you could track, but I'd like to keep my stuff all in one place in training peaks. It's just easier all in one place. So, understanding how you perform and maybe if you are that person who has those fluctuations and feel it more severely, that's something that you can try to work around. Not plan your hardest workouts, uh. Or you know, uh, give yourself a little bit more grace, uh.
Speaker 1:You know, changing your fueling a little bit, uh, during your period, um, uh, per the per the tracking I I have some athletes, um, that do a great job with this uh, not only communicating, only communicating when they start their period, but also communicating when they think they're going to start the period, and so we can either move training around for that or kind of work the pre-race routine accordingly for that. But I think the just the planning aspect of it is really helpful, at least on the coaching end of things and the communication side of things with the athlete. So I think that's really good. So if anybody hasn't done that and just using training peaks with notes and metrics to do that, that's great. And then over time we have data points of when the period started relative to the performance metrics that we have, and then we can kind of see trends over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's not a ton of information out there starting to become talked about a little bit more. There was actually a great episode of the Real Science of Sports podcast last week that did a whole like hour and a half on the menstrual cycle and athletic performance. That's a good, oh cool. It's a good nerdy exercise fizz sport podcast anyway. Uh, we should put a link in the show notes, uh and send it to me, coach renee, please.
Speaker 1:I'd like to I sure will.
Speaker 2:Um, when I was, when I was an athlete and you know in my youth I did struggle more I was affected pretty bad. I think I called in sick a few times, Adam, when I just felt terrible. And you know, some women use contraceptives as a method of, you know, controlling their cycle. In the olden days when I was racing, there was actually women who were sometimes using oral contraceptives to control when they had their cycles, so they'd skip their little placebo pills and not have their period in race day. But there's a little bit of evidence that the oral contraceptives can negatively impact performance and I'm not here to tell anyone what to do for their contraceptive choice. I'm just giving this as information. You've got to talk to your doctor about what's best for you.
Speaker 2:Stacey Sims is another big voice in talking about women's physiology, exercise physiology. She's got a great book out there called Roar. That's a really nice resource. A little background on Stacey Sims. She not only an exercise physiologist and nutrition expert, former racer she and I were racing at the same time. I was in a few races with her and she actually worked with cts for a while. I had a. I got to work with her on a project with us field hockey. We were doing some consulting, a lot of hydration stuff and a little bit of coaching on the physiology side. So anyway, that's pretty interesting. But she's a really smart lady and she knows her stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But one shout out to CTS one of the kind of coolest hires at the time because really she was a resident expert in kind of everything. But I remember just like lunchtime we would bring brown bag lunch and sit in the ESC or ECS, whatever down by the strengths and conditioning room at CTS and we would just have a topic and that would be once a week and we would learn, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check out her socials because she puts out a lot of good content on Instagram as well. Um, so you know the things I've learned, you know from from her information and others you know about how oral contraceptives could affect a performance is that they alter, you know, hormone fluctuations because they flatten out the estrogen and progesterone and it could impact things like metabolism and thermoregulation and maybe a little bit of recovery and muscle protein synthesis and potentially blunt the body's usual adaptations to training for some athletes. So Stacey recommends copper IUDs as a less impactful solution for some ladies. You know I use Mirena that has a low dose of progesterone, so it's not very significant and very, from my understanding, very little impact. You know, I think Stacey goes for the copper IUD just because it has no hormones at all, because you know, on the hormones, like I couldn't take the pill or I tried to take the pill and it I not. On the performance side of things, I don't think I was really racing at that point, it was just made me crazy, like moody.
Speaker 4:It made me moody.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I'm just saying that you have to talk to your doctor. You have to find out what works for you and what makes the most sense. I will say this Once I got the IUD, the Mirena game changer Monthly symptoms, almost nil. You don't usually get a period when you're on Mirena. That's a bonus, and it can stay in for five or seven years. If you didn't know about it which I'm sure a lot of you ladies did but it wasn't around when I was young. It didn't come out until like 2000. And it really didn't get popular in the US until 2010. So I didn't even know about it in my key racing era, or else I probably would have checked it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I would say a lot of my athletes, um, um are using that now. Uh, based on what I know, um seems to be working well, but again, uh, it's individual talk to your doctor. We are not medical experts, but those are my observations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I'd encourage ladies out there to talk to their coaches. Even I forget to ask sometimes. Last week I was with one of my athletes. She was just like having a bad week and you know I finally asked her like because I couldn't figure out why she was having such a bad week. And you know we talked about periods and things like that. So you know, even I forget to ask sometimes. So you know, I think the just the more we talk about it like it's a regular just you know I got a cold or I have my period you know that just makes it a lot less taboo. I don't think it's really taboo anymore, but you know it's still delicate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can be delicate, but I think it's taboo in our society. I hope it won't be into the future, but you know, having podcasts in conversations like this hopefully helps to get us there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Adam, we've got one more stage left tomorrow, one more.
Speaker 2:And the top of the podium is wrapped up. She's got almost three minutes on. Sarah Gigante. There is no mountaintop finish tomorrow. Sarah Gigante, there is no mountaintop finish tomorrow. It is 124 kilometers, about 77 miles. The big feature of the day is the Jouplan. It's 11 kilometer climb, 8% grade, but it comes in the middle of the stage, so the race is not over. We just talked a bunch about descending and Sarah Gigante is a little. She needs a little help on the descents. I could see teams like Demi's, like Cassia's, rip in the descent of that and putting Sarah into jeopardy. I mean like on GC, jeopardy, not danger. So I that's a real possibility. So you know you want to catch tomorrow's stage, you know. But Pauline, she's got it locked up. I think. And you know it's been 40 years since a French had a winner of the Tour de France.
Speaker 1:Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Bernard Hinault in 85. Well see, you wouldn't remember, because I don't even know if you were born yet. Then.
Speaker 1:This is true, but fun facts of cycling history is something I'd love to learn about, and I just learned something. So thank you, renee.
Speaker 2:Last pro tip for tomorrow Another day of full coverage coverage, but it starts later. 9, 15 eastern 9, 15.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, well, so who? Uh? So who are you identifying as your pick for tomorrow? Right?
Speaker 2:oh shoot, I forgot to make a pick. Yeah, um breakaway breakaway, rather your girl squibbing oh, she's. No, she's tired. My brain is fried. I got, I got no one. Capecky. Capecky was doing some teamwork today. Oh, and speaking of teamwork and jerseys and things like that and the race and stuff, it looks like Weebus has the green jersey locked up. Yeah, it looks like Shabby has the polka dots locked up. Ninkavika is still in white, but there's still plenty of good racing tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tons of good racing. And you know what? My pick is PFP, and I hope she does like a tate move. Yeah, because you're, you're like what? Like tate, with the men's race they basically neutralize it because the the rain and it got, uh. So basically they're like, okay, all the jerseys are now safe. And tate was like screw it, let's go bike racing. And he just went for it and part of me wants pauline to do that, just to just be like. You know what?
Speaker 3:girls.
Speaker 2:Boss would be a great candidate for tomorrow.
Speaker 1:You think so? Huh, Not too medium-y, mountain-y for her.
Speaker 2:It depends on how hard they ride it. I think they're going to ride the descent hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know they could just tempo up the climb because halfway through, but then to rip the descent well and then you know if they're ripping the descent in bosses up there.
Speaker 1:She, she's very good at that she is all right we shall see, and I look forward to watching some more awesome racing. So, uh, renee will leave it there for today. Hopefully a little shorter episode so people can go out, uh get away from us for a while, ride their bike on the weekend and and uh come back fresh for the final stage.
Speaker 2:Right on.
Speaker 1:See you tomorrow, thanks,
