The Tour de France continued today with the first real climbing test of the race, as stage 7 took the riders from the Spanish coast up to the 2240m Pyrénéan ski station at Arcalis. The boys at Garmin-Slipstream entered the stage with their two top riders, Bradley Wiggins and Christian Vande Velde, sitting in the 6th and 8th spots respectively on General Classification. Late in the today’s stage, with an early group of breakaway riders set to finish well up the road from the GC contenders, Astana was happy to set a hard tempo up much of the 10.6km climb.…

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Team Garmin-Slipstream gives us a behind-the-scenes taste of their life in Girona, Spain. They train. They race. They eat. A lot.

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After negotiating with airport officials to get 10 bags and equipment cases on the airplane (between 2 people), and after almost missing our flight for undisclos’able reasons, we boarded our 747-700 ‘puddle jumper’ - bound for the great nation of ‘Europe.’ Eventually, after struggling with ‘what to do with my feet’ for a cool 11 hours (I had a seat support smack dab in front of me, requiring one foot to be squeezed in on either side of the divide), our SFO born flight ultimately touched down in Frankfurt, Germany. So far so smooth. Well, except the bags, almost missing…

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Once upon a time (in April)…I got an email. Wait, there’s more. It was a short but oh-so-sweet two-liner from Matt Sharkey, our Sr. Sports Marketing Manager here at Clif. Subject line: “Is your passport current?” Copy body: “This is not a test.” EOM Of course I waited the obligatory 12 seconds (as not to appear too anxious) before whipping back a keyboard denting, “Boy is it!” Being that the email came out of the blue, I assumed Matt’s request had something to do with writing, video, or photography work; my three part role here in Clif Bar’s in-house…

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