Probably the best cycling rivalry since Armstrong and Ullrich. There’s no separating these two in the mountains and its great to watch.

Pretty tired so ill keep this one short(ish). Today was the first stage of the Pyrenees section of the Tour de France, ending with a Cat 1 climb up to Ax-3 Domaines. I drove out of the hotel at about 7:15am and arrived at Ax les Thermes which is the village at the bottom of the climb. Walked up the climb probably about 5km and found a nice hairpin corner. I was stuffed just walking up the climb let alone riding up it at full gas after already ridden 180km or so. The TV just doesn’t do these climbs justice, they are steep, DAMN steep.

Now I was taking photos of various things all morning and while waiting etc, the camera was fine. Then about two minutes before the first riders are to come past me, it stops working. WHAT THE FUCK. I am FREAKING out trying all sorts of things to try and fix it, swapping batteries etc, but no luck. I had to quickly swap over to my other camera which I luckily brought with me as a backup and use that instead. I wont get into the technical who-hah of the two cameras, but lets just say they are quite different and id much prefer to be using the now broken camera. I still got some great shots though, especially of Contador and Schleck. Its always nice being able to come away with good photos of the yellow jersey wearer. And of course the most awesomest dude on the planet, Lance Armstrong.

So yea then all the riders eventually passed, walked back down to my car and started the long drive back. Stopped off at a servo for some petrol and some food which im passing off as dinner. Ended up getting back to hotel at 10pm…long long day. Oh yeah and I *think* all that was wrong with my camera is that it overheated because it seems to be working ok now (maybe I should go and pray at the Grotto?). Goes to show how hot it was out there because ive had that camera in some pretty cold and hot conditions before with no probs at all.