Bad Days Happen

There's no worse sight in cycling than watching a group of riders leave you behind on a long climb. When it happens, either because you ran out of fuel or just couldn't hold the pace, there's nothing you can do about it. It's like a slow and painful death. You see and know exactly what's happening and what the end result is going to be, and all you really want is for it to be over. It's hard to stay focused on the competition; you just want to get to the finish line so you don't have to pedal anymore. But if you're racing the Tour de France you have to get up and do it all again tomorrow, and for Floyd Landis, that means putting today behind him and focusing on the opportunities ahead.If Landis needs an example of a rider who suffered through a bad day and then rebounded to have a pretty good race, he needs to look no further than Levi Leipheimer. The Gerolsteiner leader lost more than six minutes in the Stage 7 individual time trial, for no particular reason at all. He just had a bad day. When the race hit the mountains, however, there was Leipheimer in the front group on the climbs, even challenging for the stage win atop Pla-de-Beret in Stage 11. Today, in Stage 16, he made a bid to regain even more of the time he lost by launching a solo attack on the Col de la Croix de Fer. His chances for wearing the yellow jersey may have evaporated more than a week ago, but that doesn't mean you stop racing.Landis's body will recover from today, whether he ran out of energy or just had bad legs. It's his head that he needs to watch out for. On the climbs to Pla-de-Beret and Alp d'Huez, there was an unmistakable confidence in his riding. He wasn't too concerned that he was isolated from his teammates while T-Mobile, Rabobank, and others had more than one rider in the lead group. He calmly accelerated to close gaps while others were visibly struggling to do the same. He was in control. When you lose that control and that confidence, it can be difficult to get back.The key, for any rider who has an unexpected bad day in competition, is to remember that you're the same rider who performed so well so many times before. A bad day needs to be seen as an isolated incident. You need to examine it and try to figure out how and why it happened, learn from it, and then put it behind you. Elite athletes are able to do this, and it's part of what separates champions from pack fodder. Single bad events don't impact a champion's confidence in his ability to win or at least perform at the top of his game.Relieved of the pressure of carrying the yellow jersey, and perhaps even the expectation of being a podium contender, Floyd Landis might well be reborn tomorrow during Stage 17. He's still a strong rider who has shown himself capable of climbing away from everyone in this year's race. Given a night to eat, drink, rest, and reflect, he can recover from today's bad day and have a great ride to Morzine tomorrow.
"Chris Carmichael"