…travel, police, and initial arrival in Girona behind us, I awoke my first morning to the booming sound of bells. Thank goodness there were actually bells this time, and not just the ones I sometimes hear when I don’t get enough sleep. Three sets of church and cathedral bells—all offset from one another by about 2 minutes—made for quite a symphony come the top of each hour—24 hours a day; adding a very rich layer to the experience. We were so close to the Girona Cathedral, in fact, that you could actually feel the ringing reverberate in your chest. Needless…

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With the race’s first rest day in the bag and two transitional stages approaching, Garmin-Slipstream finished up the first segment of the Tour de France in fine form. Bradley Wiggins and Christian Vande Velde remain in 5th and 8th place respectively, giving the team high hopes for a podium spot in Paris at the end of the three week race. What exactly does professional cycling team do on a rest day during le Tour? Well…they ride, eat, nap and mostly perform media interviews. And when you have two capable riders sitting high on GC in the world’s toughest race,…

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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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