Massive respect not just to "Wiggo", but to all of the tour riders. To spend over 87 hours in the saddle covering nearly 3500km really does beggar belief.
To give you some idea of how good these guys are, a mate of mine who is a serious cyclist went for a ride last week and covered 55 miles around cricklade, south Cerney, Brinkworth and back to Swindon at an average of speed of about 18kph. On the mountain stages, the top tour boys were averaging over 22kph, uphill all the way. Fucking mental.
It makes a surprisingly big difference riding in a group, if I ride alone locally on a lumpy Lancashire route I can normally average about 13mph, but same in a group it can be up to 16/17mph.
Nothing like their speed like though, there are certain climbs round here that I toil up - there was a magazine article which took some Pro-Conti riders (so not even World Tour level) round and they were big ringing (fnar) that climb - insane!
