Credit: Team Sky

The French newspaper Dauphiné Libéré, has leaked the broad outline of this year’s Criterium Du Dauphiné, a month before organisers would normally announce the parcours. 

Here are the key points:

• For the first time, the Grand Depart will be in Switzerland (Champéry). The race begins on Sunday June 3rd.
• The Monday and Tuesday stages will be designed for the sprinters
• Individual Time Trial on Wednesday, around 30 km in length
• On Thursday the race heads to the first of two new mountain top finishes: the ski station of Valmorel. It is 14.6 km with an average gradient of 6.4 per cent
• One for the breakaway on Friday, the route could possibly take in either the Chartreuse mountains, the Madeleine or the Balcons de Belledonne
• Saturday gets the second new mountain top finish at Super-Devoluy in the southern Alps. The report claims the stage could take in the brute climbs of Côte de Laffrey and Col du Noyer
• Sunday sees a final mountain stage between Sisteron to Risoul.

So far, we can only guess at which big names will be riding, although the newspaper put forward a strong list: Cadel Evans (BMC), Chris Froome (Sky), Alberto Contator (SaxoBank-Tinkoff). It’s unlikely we’ll see Wiggins there as he’ll probably be resting his legs after the Giro d’Italia.

Credit: http://www.simplyrecipes.com

Today’s recipe is a simple take on the traditional potato salad. I know you can often buy it pre-made at the supermarket, but there is nothing like the homemade version – not only does it taste much better, it is a lot healthier too. This recipe has been adapted to make it easy for you to prepare in your motorhome using the minimum of ingredients while still making sure it has maximum taste.

Ingredients

• 3 pounds waxy potatoes (such as Yukon gold or new), washed and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1/3 cup white-wine vinegar or pre-made french or italian salad dressing (whatever you have on hand)
• 3/4 cup light mayonnaise (or sour-cream/plain yoghurt)
• Salt and pepper

Nice to have ingredients

• 4 spring onions, white part minced, green part thinly sliced
  
• 4 rashes bacon, diced
• Handful of mint, chives or dill

Step 1

Place potatoes in a pot of cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for 15 to 25 minutes or until tender.

Step 2

Once cooked, drain potatoes and while still hot drizzle vinegar or salad dressing over the potatoes and stir to cover. This helps the flavours infuse and develop. Cool to room temperature, tossing occasionally, about 1 hour.

Step 3

While potatoes are cooling, if adding bacon, fry until crispy and then set aside to cool.

1. You want to aim to get close to your chosen viewing spot either the day before or at least by 10am the day of the stage. Keep this in mind when you’re deciding which campsites to book.
2. The Tour de France website releases stage data before the race, here they outline every road taken, the elevation, distance and the time the riders are expected to come through. This is extremely helpful in planning where to view the race.
3. When watching a mountain stage, if you want to be close to the summit and you’re in a motorhome, you’ll (realistically) need to get there before midday the day before the stage.
4. We recommend you spending on average two nights in one location. By doing this you can often view a stage finish and then a stage start without rushing too much to get back on the road. There are plenty of options to make up time by cutting corners and meeting up with the tour again at a later stage. The route will make many of these decisions for you. Sometimes, they’re clustered together in a region (such as Britanny or in the Alpes of Pyrenees). Other times, you simply have to cover too many miles to get to some stages.
5. Buy a GPS. They’re not that expensive and they will be worth every penny.
6. Buy a paper map of France; it’s good to have a fallback when the GPS fails you. We often used ours to work out which back roads to park our motorhome on to view stages.
7. It’s also a good idea to print out Google Map directions that show you how to get to from one campsite to the next. Yes this does sound a bit over-the-top, but GPS’s are known to fail (ours did, several times), so having a hard copy back up can save you a lot of anguish.

So that’s our short list of suggestions. If you’ve got any more you think we should add to this list, let us know in the comments section below.

Credit: Team Saxo Tinkoff

Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff Bank) has told press ahead of the Tour de San Luis that his race program for 2013 may include both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France.

But more than just a matter of scheduling, when asked about whether Contador would race both to win them, he replied: ‘That’s the most possible option because the Giro isn’t as difficult as it has been for the last few years. It’s possible to do the Giro and then go the Tour and try and win both.’

‘I’ve always prepared differently for the Tour when I wanted to win it, but they [the 2013 Giro and Tour] are compatible. We must take into account several factors. The first are the courses. This year’s Giro is less demanding than in 2011, when there were stages of more than 6000 meters uphill. The second is the team. If you have a strong team that doesn’t require your efforts every day it’s easier.’

‘The third is to know that you are going to the Tour from the beginning. In 2011 I didn’t know until fifteen days before, when the team asked me to go, but without a good preparation. I was also influenced by several adverse circumstances, such as the crash that made me lose more than a minute at the very beginning. That forced me to attack in the first week, when normally you take it calmly. Then I had two crashes, one of them really hard on my knee. I almost abandoned, but eventually continued. Without all these adverse factors, I would have been very close.’

Like most cyclists in the pro peloton this week, Contador was also asked for comment on Armstrong’s confession. The pair raced together in the 2009 Tour de France and there was constant reports that the two had a difficult relationship.

‘People have already talked a lot about that interview, but nobody was surprised with what he said,’ he said. ‘It’s hard for the image of cycling, but I look at what can be good about it.  Maybe we can close this chapter of that decade and focus on the present and the future of this beautiful sport.

After the Tour de San Luis, Contador will do the Tour of Oman, Tirreno Adriatico, the Criterium International and the Vuelta al Pais Vasco.

Credit: Harpo Studios / Washington Post

For those who needed to hear it from the man himself, Lance Armstrong has finally admitted to using performance enhancing drugs throughout his career.

In a bizarre interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong also admitted to lying, bullying and perpetuating a myth of cycling invincibility. He admitted that he could not have won his seven Tour de France without  his cocktail of cortisone, EPO, human growth hormones, blood transfusions and testosterone.

Yet Armstrong’s confession rang hollow. His responses to Winfrey’s questions were most persuasive when he simply answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

‘Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performances?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was one of those banned substances EPO?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes or No: In all seven of your Tour de France victories, did you ever take banned substances or blood dope?’

‘Yes.’

But when asked about his association with the dodgy Italian doctor, Michele Ferrari, Armstrong would only say that he was a ‘good guy’. And when given an opportunity to apologise to Tyler Hamilton, Betsy Andreu, Floyd Landis, David Walsh or Paul Kimmage, he sidestepped it. The most charitable thing he could say about his character assassination of Emma O’Reilly was that she got ‘run over’ by obnoxious ways.

The interview re-inforced two truths about Lance Armstrong. First, he clearly suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. The career-long trail of bullying and manipulation fits with a man who constructed an ‘idealised false self’, likely as a reaction to his father’s abandonment of the family when Armstrong was only very young . What’s narcissistic personality disorder, you say? One psychologist puts it like this:

‘People afflicted with unbearable shame often construct a persona to deny it, an idealized false self to cover over the sense of inner defect. They devote large amounts of psychic energy to preserving and protecting that image. Though notoriously sensitive to criticism, they know on some level that the image they present to the world is a lie. Marshaling resources to bolster that lie consumes them.’

So what would a narcissist do once he’s lost everything? Would he seek redemption? Would he truly confess to his sins and take meaningful steps to re-build a sport he helped to discredit? In short, would he be motivated by genuine remorse?

No. A narcissist would not be motivated by genuine remorse because that would involve shifting the referent away from himself. Narcissists are inherently selfish. They consider actions through their own self-gain.

Armstrong’s ‘confession’ should be seen in this light. It was the most expedient course of action he could have taken. Winfrey was chosen because of her audience pulling power. Also because she would be a soft interviewer – she’s probably learnt more about cycling in the last few weeks preparing for the interview than she was ever likely to know.

Armstrong’s confession was far more likely to have been motivated by his desire to compete again. Armstrong told Winfrey that competition was very important to him. But for a narcissist with an inherently low self-esteem, sporting victory was an important part of his self-worth. Bullying was the other way Armstrong made himself feel good about himself.

The second truth about the interview follows from the first: Armstrong’s confession lacked remorse. Here’s what he told Winfrey whether he felt bad about cheating:

‘Did it feel wrong?’

‘At the time? No… It’s scary.’

‘Did you feel bad about it?’

‘No, even scarier.’

‘Did you feel in any way that you were cheating?’

‘No, the scariest. I looked up the definition of cheat, and it is to gain an advantage over a rival or foe, and I didn’t view it that way, I viewed it as a level playing field.’

When Winfrey played back tapes of his SCA deposition in which he lied under oath, he begun referring to himself in the third person. Same when he spoke about the way he bullied past teammates and the media. He disassociated himself from the person on the monitor. And it’s suggests that when Armstrong watches his confession to Oprah, he’ll disassociate himself from that too.

So, without genuine remorse, what is Armstrong’s confession worth? Not much. There will be some fans who will be ready to forgive and forget because of this confession. But they shouldn’t kid themselves: Armstrong isn’t sorry he cheated, lied or bullied. He’s just sorry he got caught.

ARMSTRONG CONFESSES TO USING PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS

BETSY ANDREU TALKS TO CNN ANCHOR, ANDERSON COOPER

PHIL LIGGETT AND STUART O’GRADY REACT TO THE ARMSTRONG CONFESSION

Where you cannot park or camp in France:

• On the side of a public road – this however, is not the case for mountain stages. Camping is permitted on the side of the road roughly two days prior and proceeding the stage. Note that your vehicle or tent cannot impinge on the road boundaries or inhibit any road access points.
• On the shores of the sea
• In sites listed or registered (signs should be displayed)
• In protection zones: including historical monuments, architectural and urban heritage sites and natural monuments and sites.
• In nature reserves
• In perimeter protection points for the collection of drinking water
• Areas established as ‘no parking’ zones made by the Mayors or on behalf of the municipality or the state. These areas must display affixed regulatory signs at access points to the restricted areas.

Credit: http://www.taste.com.au

Omelettes are very versatile – you can eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner and you can add virtually any ingredient you have on hand to bulk it up and add flavour.

Here is a recipe for a basic omelette. Depending on what else you would like to add, for example, ham, mushrooms, vegetables, you will either need to give them a quick fry before adding the eggs, or if you are adding ingredients such as cheese or spinach, add these after putting the eggs in the pan.

Must have ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 20g unsalted butter or olive oil
• 2 tbs water or milk

Suggestions for additional ingredients

• 1 tbs chopped chives
• 1/3 cup cheese (of your choice)
• 1/3 cup chopped ham
• 1/3 cup chopped mushrooms
• Handful of spinach leaves
• salt and pepper

METHOD

Step 1

Lightly beat eggs with a small whisk or fork to just combine. Season. Stir in chives, or any other herbs.

Step 2

Heat butter or oil in a 20cm non-stick frypan over medium-high heat. When it starts to foam, add any ingredient that requires sautéing prior to adding eggs and fry until soft. Add egg and shake pan to distribute, gently stirring with the underside of a fork. As egg begins to cook at the edges, use the fork to draw cooked egg in towards the centre (without breaking up), allowing the uncooked egg to run out towards the edge.

Credit: http://www.taste.com.au

I know that you cannot make a quiche in a motorhome (campervan). But one of the best things you can buy at any French bakery is the classic, quiche Lorraine. It is a fantastic quick, easy and delicious meal to have while travelling in a motorhome and is best served with a green salad.

However, if you would like to make quiche Lorraine yourself, here is a great recipe (adapted from http://www.taste.com.au).

Pastry (alternatively you can buy pre-made short crust pastry)

• 
1 2/3 cups (250g) plain flour
• 
125g unsalted butter, chilled, cut into small pieces
• 
1 egg, separated

METHOD

Step 1

To make the pastry, place the flour and butter in a food processor and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg yolk and 2 tablespoons of chilled water, and process again until the mixture comes together in a smooth ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Step 2

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

Step 3

Roll pastry out on a lightly floured work surface, then use to line a 26cm loose-bottomed tart pan. Roll the rolling pin over the edges of pan to cut any excess pastry from the edges. Chill for 30 minutes.

Step 4


Place the tart pan on a large baking tray. Line the pastry with baking paper and fill with pastry weights or uncooked rice. Blind bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove paper and weights. Brush the pastry base with the eggwhite and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes or until dry. Remove and set aside.

Step 5

For the filling, heat the oil in a large frypan, add the onion and cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes or until softened. Add the bacon and cook for a further 5 minutes or until bacon is crispy. Set aside to cool. Once cool, sprinkle the bacon mixture over the pastry base, followed by the grated cheese.

Step 6


Place the eggs in a large bowl and lightly whisk, add the cream and milk, and continue whisking until well combined. Season with salt and pepper, then carefully pour the egg mixture over the bacon. Return the quiche to the oven for 25 minutes or until golden and set.

Credit: http://www.actualitati.net

The 2013 Tour de France will be like none other. The organisers of the 100th Anniversary have gone all out and included new locations and some hefty challenges for the riders.

Totally French – Starting with Corsica… then nothing but the French mainland

For the first time since 2003, the Tour de France will be raced entirely within France and will not visit any foreign countries. Beginning in Corsica, a beautiful island off the southeast coast of France, the tour will include starts in the departments (regions) of Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse on the island, the only two departments in France that have never before hosted the Tour.

This video is is French, but it shows the stunning route the riders will take through Corsica.

Individual and team time-trials

Not only will individual time-trials be contested twice during the 2013 Tour, but the team time-trial will be making a return on the 4th stage in Nice across 25km. The first individual time-trial will be on stage 11, covering 33 km between Avranches and Mont-Saint-Michel with the second on stage 17, 32 km between Embrun and Chorges.

Alpe-d’Huez 1 and 2

The riders will face their biggest challenge when they tackle the infamous Alpe-d’Huez, not just once, but twice in a single stage. Considered the highlight of this 100th anniversary tour, the Alpe-d’Huez will be climbed twice on the 18th stage. The first passage at the top of Alpe-d’Huez 1 will take place 50 kilometres before the finish at Alpe-d’Huez 2. Three further summit finishes are planned: Ax 3 Domaines, Mont Ventoux and Annecy-Semnoz, a new venue on the Tour map.

Credit: http://www.teamsky.com

If you want to be a part of it, it is time to start planning your Tour de France vacation.

Running from Saturday June 29^th to Sunday July 21^th 2013, the 100^th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,360 kilometres.

This year, the tour will include:

• 7 flat stages
• 5 hilly stages
• 6 mountain stages with 4 summit finishes
• 2 individual time trial stages
• 1 team time trial stage
• 2 rest days

To help with your vacation planning, move through the tips and tricks in our website to help plan your cyclosportive holiday.

Stages