What Extreme Heat And Wildfires Change In Cycling
A Tour de France stage can feel like a summer joyride on TV, until you hear the numbers and realize it was basically a moving furnace. Day three brings 195.9 km of racing, an average temperature around 90°F, and the first real mountain exam as the route crosses into the French Pyrenees. We break down what that heat means for pacing, hydration, and team control, and why a fast average speed on a day like this is its own kind of warning sign.
The race finally gives the general classification contenders a clean place to measure each other: big climbing, an uphill finish, and no hiding when the accelerations start. We talk through the breakaway’s impact, the fight for mountain points that sets up the polka dot jersey, and the moment UAE Team Emirates takes command before Tadej Pogacar launches the move that decides the stage. Jonas Vingegaard fights to respond, the gaps stay tight, and we discuss what “close on time” still reveals about form and momentum.
Then the Tour gets surreal. Wildfire conditions and smoke near the finish change the atmosphere so much that the mountaintop feels like a ghost town compared to the usual wall of fans. We also swap a couple of cycling nerd facts, from old-school newspaper tricks on descents to modern tire logistics, including how many tires a Tour rider might actually go through and what teams pack to survive three weeks.
If you’re following the Tour de France, love cycling strategy, or just want the daily story without the fluff, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a cycling friend, leave a review, and tell us: did Stage 3 make you think this Tour will stay close?
Adam and Michael’s friendship has grown through years of shared miles, challenges, and laughter on the bike. Their passion for cycling has carried them through life’s twists and turns, creating a bond full of stories, jokes, and unforgettable rides. In their podcast, they bring that same spirit to the mic—sharing adventures, trading banter, and welcoming listeners into their cycling community. Whether tackling steep climbs or cruising open roads, their conversations capture the fun, friendship, and freedom that cycling brings. Tune in for stories that celebrate the ride and the camaraderie that makes it unforgettable.
and Remember,
It's a Great Day for a Bike Ride!
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1 SPEAKER_00: All right.
That's right.
It's time for day three of the Cycling Men of Leisure's Leisure
Breakaway.
And that's our little mini podcast to uh give you an update
on what happened on day three of the Tour de France.
I am Michael, and with me, as always, is Adam.
Hello.
SPEAKER_01: And today, if you could see us, you'll see that I
have True Americana for a golf polo today.
SPEAKER_00: A little red, white, and blue.
And I'm wearing a uh cycling hat here, and it almost matches your
shirt.
We did not do that deliberately.
It is the same color as blue and the same colors of red.
Um yeah, advertising a French company, but that's you know,
that's beside the point.
SPEAKER_01: So this is my uh annual golf polo I usually wear
at this time.
And just as we were going to record, I said, Oh, I want to
wear something, and because I wore this golfing over the 4th
of July, I thought today was good.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you washed it.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that's where it was.
That's where it was hanging up in the clean section.
So I'm just grabbing it real quick.
SPEAKER_00: As long as it's been cleaned.
Not that I care, I'm, you know, hundreds of miles away.
So 12-hour car ride away, but who's counting?
Yeah, who's counting?
Anyway, hey, uh, great day at the tour today.
Let me just tell you.
Give you a little rundown.
Today was day three.
They rode 195.9 kilometers to our American friends.
That's 121.7 miles.
Started at Grand uh Grand Oyeers, uh, finished at uh Les
Angeles.
Um here's something that's just incredible.
The average temperature today, you have any idea?
SPEAKER_01: Um 90.
There, not not at your place.
There.
Well, I'm being serious.
I know they're going through some record highs over there.
I'm gonna say 95 uh Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_00: The average temperature, and it fluctuates
because they're going 120 some miles, uh, 32 degrees Celsius,
that's 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Um, it actually exceeded 95 degrees early in the stage, but
it averaged out to be 90.
That is one long hot day.
SPEAKER_01: We've been paying attention to European weather.
We're going there in September.
Not that it's gonna be, I hope it's not anyway, but uh, but
we've definitely been watching the record high.
So it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
Uh the average speed.
Today's average speed was 41.216 kilometers, which is 25.6 miles
per hour.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I do that downhill all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Downhill.
Well, let me tell you, today the stage three marked the uh tours'
first significant mountain test as the race cross from Spain
over into the French Pyrenees.
Uh the day featured nearly 4,000 feet, uh, excuse me, 4,000
meters of climb and concluded with an uphill finish, uh,
making it the first real opportunity for the general
classification tender contenders to test one another.
A strong breakaway.
It was awesome today.
The breakaway was incredible.
Um that was pretty much uh animated by Alex Bowden, who uh
collected enough points, mountain points, that is, to
secure the polka dot jersey for tomorrow.
So he'll be king of the mountain.
Um I gotta say, the final climb, uh, UAE Team Emirates uh really
just took complete control of the field.
Um Del Toro was there, the winner of yesterday's stage.
He really delivered a great, a great leadout uh for his
teammate uh Toddy Pagaccia, which is exactly what he is
supposed to do.
Um Toddy just launched out at this great massive acceleration
towards the end.
Um Vinnegard tried, I'll give him I'll give him points.
Um tried to uh to respond, but man, Teddy just exploded,
couldn't keep up.
Um basically it it shook up that that Toddy did take the the uh
the win today.
Uh Vinegard uh is now two seconds behind, followed by
Richard Carapaz, uh, or at least not overall, but for today.
Um Paul Cesas uh is two seconds behind.
And then Tobias Johansson uh is four seconds behind.
So the top five were only like four seconds um away from each
other, but uh it was a great, great day.
Now, a couple crazy things.
You mentioned the weather.
Yes, sir.
There is they're going through a major drought in France, uh,
lots of forest fires and things like that.
Well, the ending was there was a fire that was several miles
away, but close enough that the smoke and that type of stuff was
creating a hazard.
Um, they actually did not let anyone within like 30 miles of
the finish line.
And anytime you're watching like mountain um mountain segments of
it, you just see tons of people alongside the roads screaming
and yelling.
Some of them cycled up, some hiked up, some take those big
camper vans.
Well, today it was like ghost town because no one was allowed
up there.
So it was really a bizarre uh mountaintop finish that you'd no
one could probably ever remember watching the Tour de France.
It was just just insane.
Um excuse me.
So that's where we're at um for today's race.
Do you have anything you want to add?
SPEAKER_01: I did.
Um today I have two interesting pieces of information.
So I want to first I would like to thank a community member.
Um happens to be my family member, but that's not the
point.
He's a community member.
Um my cousin Mark, who gave me an interesting fact about
history, and he says that um back in the day that they would
uh he said in early days of writing, riders would grab a
newspaper at the mountaintop and shove it in their jersey to
compensate for temperature.
But also, back in the uh when they were accused of cheating,
it would also legitimate their ride.
And so I thought that was kind of interesting that they would
grab a paper at the top of the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: So um use use it as insulation, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: And then oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: No, um, the only thing is as far as as the
cheating, and we'll we will talk, I'm sure, about this at
some point.
Cheating was very rampant back in in the early days.
Um, but couldn't you just have somebody get the paper for you
at the top and meet you somewhere along the road and
say, here, take this, even though you didn't go over.
SPEAKER_01: I want to prove to you, because we did not talk
about this ahead of time.
I want to prove to you that I actually listen to you.
I am sure through one of these next 17 shows, 18 shows maybe,
um you told me about trains at the top and the riders cheating
with trains.
So we'll get into that in one of the next ones, but I do have
another interesting piece of information.
So how many tires, if you had to guess on average, how many tires
does a Tour de France rider go through uh throughout the 21
stages on average?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
Um you know that's interesting because I know if I compare like
you and I to tire usage, it's it's there's a great there's a
there's a big difference in how many tires you go through in a
week versus me on average.
Um but I know they have a lot of flat tires.
So well, I I wasn't gonna say, I was just leaving it at we have a
big discrepancy between the number of tires you go through.
I wasn't I wasn't gonna go down the road either way.
I'm gonna say they have a lot of flats, putting a lot of miles on
those tires.
I'm gonna say the average cyclist on a tour de France for
the entire three-week period probably goes, I'm gonna say,
through 38 sets of tires.
SPEAKER_01: Well, according to this, according to bike radar,
uh the source is bike radar, Trudor France, Tire Tech,
Continental Press Release.
Um, on average, roughly six to twelve tires per rider over the
three weeks is the average, depending on how you want to
count it.
The math I was waiting.
The team mechanics replace tires every 500 to 1,000 kilometers as
preventative maintenance as the tour runs, which is 3,300
kilometers.
So riders wear through about four to seven tires, two to
three sets per mileage alone.
And then if you add punctures, cuts, and special setups, um,
gravel and time trial stages get different tires, then the real
number lands around 10 plus continental says that the seven
teams that supplies will burn through a thousand plus tires on
the tour, roughly eighteen per rider.
Once you include the spare tires and backup wheels, teams
typically pack 100 spare tires for eight riders.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
See, I was I was thinking when you asked that, I started
thinking maybe they're just gonna preventively replace the
tires every single day.
So that's how I came up with 38.
SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
You would think that they would, except for if they got you know
a flat or something.
But uh yeah, I I uh I was kind of interested in that.
And so uh I have a few other pieces, but I can't let them all
out on the on this third show.
So I'll I'll be I'll be uh adding some uh interesting
pieces along the way.
SPEAKER_00: So well, cool.
We look forward to uh to those interesting tidbits that you're
gonna add.
SPEAKER_01: So do you have anything else, sir?
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a great day.
I'm a little concerned uh about once every, I don't know, four
or five years, you have one rider who bust out and by like
day six or seven of the ride has pretty much cemented that he's
gonna win.
And it occasionally happens this way, and I hope this year is not
that way.
I I mean, nothing wrong.
I have no problems with Toddy.
Um, but I like to see it a true race because a lot of times it's
like by week two, it's like, well, this person's gonna win.
The only way he's not gonna win is if there's some catastrophic,
horrible thing that happens.
Uh, you know, he falls off the side of a mountain or something,
you know, something terrible like that.
So I'm really hoping that you know they're able to keep this
close because it makes for much better, much better uh watching.
But tomorrow, stage four, give you a brief overview on that.
They're starting uh at uh Cacasin, France, and they'll be
finishing at Fauxwa, France.
That is a distance of 113 miles or 181.9 kilometers.
It's gonna be a hilly stage, and uh it should be good.
I and if you watch it on part of the the coolness of watching the
Tour de France, in my opinion, is they show you a lot of the
old churches and castles, and then they give you, you know,
Phil and and uh and the other guy.
Can't think of his name right at the moment.
Um, Phil Liggett, the main guy, will sit there and give you um
like an update.
It's like, oh, this you know, castle here was built by
whomever in whatever years, and that's always cool.
Well, um, the opening town that they start out in is a medieval
city.
Um, so I think there's gonna be a lot of really, really
beautiful churches and and castles and things that you're
gonna be able to see along the way.
Um, the other thing I'm looking forward to, and that's not gonna
happen in the mountain stages, but when we get out to the
farmland, then you get into the farm art, where like farmers
like decorate their fields with real intricate and interesting
uh things.
But uh the name I was looking for is Bob Roll.
Feel like Bob Roll do the do the you know commentary.
But um, it should be very interesting tomorrow.
Um, there's a chance that some other like uh Joanna uh uh Juan
Flip, um Vanderpool, Van Art.
Um, there's some chances that they can uh they can get in
there and potentially win, but they're still looking for you
know extreme heat, that type of stuff.
So um tomorrow could be a good stage.
So that's all I can.
SPEAKER_01: Well, all right.
Well, I love it.
I love it.
Uh I'll look forward to tomorrow.
Uh and until then.
SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the show breakup.