Yeah.

Yesterday, on Paris-Tours, the case showed a few similarities but was a bit different, in that the favourites did not appear to have understood that it was a race for tough guys, which means said tough guys must at some point take the matter in their own hands (as in a spring Belgian race) and not wait for their drained and unique surviving domestique to do the job in their place.

This profile is from stage 7 of the Vuelta… 2015!

Today is flat, flat, flat…

You’ve converted the absolute value, not the delta.

The quickest in your head conversion of a delta °C --> delta °F is to simply multiply by 2. +4°C --> +8°F

To be accurate, remove 1/10^th of the °C value before the multiplication. +4°C --> (4 - 0.4) = 3.6 —> +7.2 °F

For absolute values, I personally do, for a quick ‘in your head’ approximation the other way round (°F --> °C) :

1. remove 32 °F (78°F --> 46)
2. divide by 2 (46 --> 23°C; I may stop there for a very rough approximation)
3. add 1°C per decade (if you got 23°C, add 2°C --> 25°C; I usually stop there)
4. add 0.1°C per unit (25 --> 25.5°C; it’s not the exact result but not too far)

Lenny Martinez get the Red Jersey. With a 2:30 lead over the big favourites, I could see him keeping it quite late in the race.

It is possible, but there are other contenders closer than the favourites, and they may try something earlier. However the closest 2 are super-domestiques and they may not be given the liberty from their team to try anything, and the 3^rd one is already pretty far.

It certainly sets him up really well for a good overall result.

It is possible too, but so far he has shown some growing difficulties after some point when efforts accumulate day after day.

Evenepoel held it together well after being dropped

It is often like this with him: it feels like he’s badly cracking, but after a while he stops the loss (strangely often around 30 seconds in my admittedly faulty memory) and sometimes comes back a little or completely.

A bit like Almeida, even though Almeida doesn’t give so much the feeling of cracking but more of letting go; and then finishes more frantically, catching up with the best.