Stage 11, Thursday July 15, 2010, Sisteron - Bourg-les-Valence, 184.5km

July 15, Stage 11: Sisteron - Bourg-les-Valence 184.5km

1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team HTC - Columbia 4:42:29

2 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Lampre-Farnese Vini

3 Tyler Farrar (USA) Garmin - Transitions

4 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne

136 Chris Anker Sorensen (Den) Team Saxo Bank 0:04:41

72% at Active Recovery pace today!

A day at the front for Chris. He rode another team time trial today albeit a much slower one than yesterday and I hope he saved something for tomorrow, as there are 5 categorized climbs on the books.

He really didn't have to ride that hard today, but he did have to ride at the front a bunch and that will take it out of you no matter what.

After the Col De Cabre, he got to sit in a bit and you can see that he took advantage of that with 2hours 15 minutes at an average normalized power of 167 and average power of 122. That will probably be some key rest for him in hopes of a good day tomorrow.

Near the end of the stage Chris had to ride harder and harder at the front and ultimately rode for 12 minutes right at his FTP before he got dropped. This was a seriously hard effort, no different than we saw Chris do two days ago when helping Andy Schleck on the mountains. Once he was dropped, that was it and he rode it in easy.

The entire ride was 5 hours with a TSS of only 163 points and intensity factor of .575, which means that over 72% of todays' ride was done at Active recovery pace. That's a new record for a stage in the Tour that I have seen! Normalized power of 224 watts withhis average heart Rate only at 115bpm.

Get ready for the mountains!

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