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// WELCOME TO THE TOUR DE FRANCE FEMMES PODCAST, from the producers of “The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast”
CTS publishes daily Tour de France Femmes podcasts with Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman. They’ll recap the stage, but the unique aspect of these podcasts will be coaching insights about how athletes prepare for the demands showcased in that day’s stage.
// STAGE 8 PODCAST OVERVIEW
Stage 8 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was the Queen Stage, meaning the hardest of them all. There was a big shakeup on the leaderboard, which Coaches Renee Eastman and Adam Pulford discuss. They also talk about coaching athletes on descending skills and the impact of a woman’s menstrual cycle on performance and perception of effort.
// CO-HOST
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master’s degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Renee Eastman bio: https://trainright.com/coaches/renee-eastman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee.eastman/
// HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 14 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He’s participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Welcome back, Timer Crunch fans, TDFF fans, and welcome back to my co-host, Coach Renee Eastston. Adam, great to see you. Good morning, everybody. We got a great stage to talk about. We do indeed. I’m your host, Coach Adam Pulford. And yeah, as you know, this whole week we’re talking to France from AX Swift, where Renee is our specialist on recapping everything about the stage. Then we talk about uh specific coaching elements that we kind of determine are are important throughout the stage, whether it’s climbing, descending, women’s physiology, fueling, or something like that. So, uh, here we are at stage eight. Renee, let’s just get right into the recap. What did you see today? What did you write down? What stood out to you the most? Um, a lot. Uh, this was the queen stage, as you remember. Queen. That means it’s the the big showdown, the hardest mountain stage. It was 111 kilometers with 3,500 meters of climbing in American. Uh that is 11,000 ft of climbing over 70 mi. Adam, I’ve done some hard rides before. Plenty of 10,000 ft climbing days, but not over that in 70 miles. So tough tough day. um when to watch alert. Uh if you guys just want to kind of get to the best part, watch the last climb, the cold metal end with starts with 18 kilometers to go. It’s about an hour of the race. It’s uh but that’s when all the action happens. Um another little tip or hint on today, if you’re watching Peacock, you’re going to be like, it sounds different today. Um, we had Phil Liot and Making Garnier on the commentary today. And if you guys were wondering like who is that lady, well, she’s an American uh retired uh badass bike racer. She won the Jiro back in 2016, so she knows what uh she’s talking about. Um, let’s get on with it because we have a lot to talk about uh with today’s stage. We might go on and on because it was uh really dramatic and lots of interesting stuff happened. The stage kicked off on a climb, a 13 kilometer climb and that’s when the break formed. It was another big break about 15 riders. We had Alise Shabby up there chasing after the polka dots. Uh Mavis Squibbon uh out there again uh and Ruth Edwards too. Both of those guys didn’t have enough yesterday in the break. Um, about halfway through the stage, Kim Laort crashed on a descent. Um, I think she was just tired or something. Uh, I mean, wasn’t like something bad happened. She just kind of took a bad line there. She was leading the the Pelaton. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it took a little bit of a chase to to catch back on. Um but she did make it back on uh well before the big climb of the day started with 18 kilometers to go. The cold men by that point the break still had a gap of a couple of minutes and the field was whittleled down to about 14 riders including all the GC favorites. So we once we are on the climb you know things started to happen. Um, surprising to me, Anna Vanderan dropped early. She was the first GC hopeful to get dropped about 14 kilometers to go. Uh, kind of surprising because SD works was doing a lot of work today. Um, then with uh 11 kilometers to go, my pick of the day, Sarah Jagante starts going for it. It was clear to me that the AG insurance uh plan of the day was for Sarah. Uh I saw Kim Leort doing a little bit of work, a little bit of pulling early in the race and then once they got on the climb, Kim was doing a lot of pacing to set up uh Sarah. So it was never her intention to hold on to yellow today. Um, and when once uh Kim Laort got tired, pulled off, that’s when Sarah went and that’s when it all started going uh and uh Pauline uh Pon Perau, PFP, she bridged up to Sarah and the two of them left Demi and Cassia behind. Um it was it was a small group by then. It was it was Demi and Cassia Paul and Rockers. Uh Kabal was Kerbal was up there. Um and the Polish writer from UAE I am Dominica. I am not even going to try to say her last name. Uh those Polish names uh are too hard for my American uh uh my American tongue. Uh we had a lot of satellite riders up in the break today. We s we talked about that yesterday, you know, putting a rider up ahead to help out and we saw a lot of that on the climb. Justine de Gaggera from AG Insurance was up there to help Sarah Yara Casterline was up there to help Royers. I don’t think they ever connected though. Uh Marian Brunell was up there. She paced Pauline uh for a little bit. Um FDJ had a VA music up in the break and she was pacing Demi for a little while. Um and actually Squibbon was up there helping her teammate from uh UAE. So we saw a lot of that uh teamwork today. Um ultimately BFP she drops Sarah Jagante with about 8 and a half kilometers to go. She didn’t attack. She just rode her off her wheel, which I’m blown by that. Uh just blown away by the climbing performance. I didn’t I knew she she was going to be climbing well this race. I didn’t expect uh what I saw because spoiler alert Paulina uh Feren Fero won the stage took the jersey but you know as she was going with 8 and a halfk to go there were still a couple of breakaway riders up there knee Fisher Black and Yar Casterline she caught them with 6K to go she dropped Fisher Black with about 5K to go and just went on to solo win. Um, I said that it was going to be minutes today and it was uh PFP wins. Sarah Giggante was uh second uh 145 back. The group behind with Demi and Cassia um they had a little bit of a shakeup in the last kilometer. Uh Demi uh accelerated away from them to gain a few seconds on Cassia. Um, can’t forget N Fisher Black uh held on for third. Demi was actually fourth. Uh, 303 behind uh PFP. Um, and she was uh Yarcastine uh was in fifth. She was actually, you know, from the break. And right behind Demi and Yarcastine was were Kerbal and the UAE rider and Cassie right behind them. Th those three were about 320 down. So GC is totally blown up now. Um let’s see. PFP in yellow. Sarah Jagante in second 237 back. Ballerin in third, 318. Nadoma in fourth, 340. Kerbal up in fifth. Right by her uh at 411. Um I know that uh you have a real attachment for invested interest in that uh EF Oatley rider uh Carval AJ’s teammate. I’m sure there will be some celebration tonight because if she stays in fifth that’s a huge accomplishment for the team. Yeah, big big accomplishment. Yes, like kind of a satellite uh person attached to the team, but also for me personally, PFP, seeing her in yellow uh at this point. Uh personally, I’m very excited for that. She’s been a hero of mine for for years and years. Um so overall, just very exciting stage, very exciting day. I want to say just a couple things, Renee, and this isn’t on um our outline for today, but just to get outside of like the social media shaming and I don’t know, people explaining about uh Kim crashing on that descent alone and also people not waiting for the yellow jersey. We don’t need to get super into it. I did a I did a podcast a few weeks ago talking about how when that happened in the men’s race and some of the unwritten rules, the culture and everything around that. But I’ll just say this, like anybody who races bikes knows that crashing is a thing. And we’re going to get into descending and how being on the limit mentally and physically, what that means, how that can happen. But anytime you crash, hopefully you don’t pull anybody down with you. Her crash was like kind of like minor. Um, sure a mistake, but like I’ve crashed similar in in that way. Um, she got up and and got going, but on the broadcast and also um I’d say watch uh I don’t know. Do you know when that happened, Rene? It was uh halfway through or decade ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, listen to the commentary. I think I think they did a really good job of explaining like why they didn’t wait for the yellow jersey, how a crash like that can happen. But I’m sure this is going to blow up on social media u in some form or fashion. But it’s also kind of a a launch point to talk about some of the descending once once we do. Um, and we can talk about that now, Renee, or we can talk about my girl PFP and how good she is of setting a goal at some point and then achieving it either next year or years down the road because it’s it’s incredible. She she is a master at that, Adam. She’s got 13 world championships. Uh, she’s won the Olympics. She is very very good at showing up on time in form and completely ready for her goal. And uh Caroline Manny who we coach Caroline Manny French uh cycle cross superstar our coach and friend she was uh she knows Pauline you know she’s French raced against her just said that she has such respect for Pauline for what she can do. Um to show you how committed she was to getting ready for this tour. She bought a house in Andor this year and she said that it was specifically so she could go train at altitude on long climbs and I have never seen her climb like this. No. Uh amazing. I mean like this style of riding where she’s just so freaking strong and she rides away from fields. She’s been able to do that for a while, but like mountain bike terrain different than this. And I say agree with you like she wrote away in the uh well a couple times in a world championship but also in the Olympics where it was just like no super hard attack but just like and and just riding away from the group. That’s what she did today but like in a massive way on a huge climb and I was just I mean I was like whoa. Yeah. That’s the that kind of climbing is completely different than mountain bike climbing. uh an hour long at FTP versus you know how long are mountain bike climbs on uh on cross country courses. Five minutes is long. Yeah. And that’s her training uh in a very specific way. We won’t go into uh all that detail today. Um I think a a subject that has certainly been talked about and I’m sure it’s going to be talked about more. you know, it’s clear that she’s uh lost some weight from the spring, you know, and to climb in the big mountains, you know, you see it in the men’s race as well. Ladies and men, they get as lean as possible to perform their best in the mountains, especially when they’re GC riders. But she’s got a team behind her. She has been a professional for a long time. I’ve seen her show up to other performances, you know, lean and mean and ready to go. She doesn’t stay that way all year. And I think that’s, you know, something to for, you know, maybe the amateur rider looking at the pros at their very best and she looks, you know, very, very small now, but that it’s not healthy that she stays that way all the year, all year round. That she’s doing it through diet. she’s fueling her training appropriately. If she was just losing weight and not eating enough, she wouldn’t be so strong now. Um, so I just wanted to touch on that a little bit because I know some people end up talking about it, noticing it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s really important to bring up is that this is not like historically looking back on it, she doesn’t stay that way. She compartment compartmentalizes well in terms of having a goal, sticking to it, doing whatever it takes to do that, and then kind of balancing out over time. And I think even with riders that I coach, if I know that they can handle that, there is functional weight loss or weight gain depending on what the goal of the competition is. Anorobic versus aerobic versus GC versus climbing, all this kind of stuff. And we’ll put on or take off weight in order to do that so long as you can handle it in the long run and keep it in balance. So, well, the uh kind of famously the one of the stars of the men’s race of the last couple years, Eper Hampson, I think is his name. He notably gained they reportedly 20 kilos that he was trying to get super super skinny climber and he wasn’t riding well and then he puts on 20 kilos and he’s winning stages and crushing it at the tour. So, it’s riders finding their best performance weight, you know, that you don’t have to look a certain way to Exactly. perform well. Exactly. And and that’s a really good example. And he was just saying like, I didn’t ride well when I was that low. Right. And Yonas put on weight. I think it was something like five or six pounds. Um, and he looked strong. He looked better than I think Todd is just heading head over heels right now with um his development, but you know, still second. So anyway, um yeah, it’s very good to mention um but don’t give yourself an eating disorder to uh go in big races. That’s our main no talking point on that. U I know we want to talk downhills today. We’ve been talking about downhills all week, like, “Oh, these amazing descenders.” And we get super psyched because it’s kind of exciting, you know, uh um you know, uh I can’t descend like that, so I admire those who can. Um and in the women’s race, I think it’s a little bit more highlighted because there’s a little more disparity in the field that you have uh Kerbal Casia and some others who are just wicked descenders, very very skilled and then you have people like Sarah Jagante struggles a little bit more. So you tactically they they use desense a little bit more than in the men’s race. In the men’s race, you see you see a little bit more level playing field on the skill side of things. And we talked yesterday about um Sarah Jagante uh working on her descending. Um you mentioned people hiring coaches, you know, uh to to work on descending. Um which is is part of the game if you want to be competitive at this level. It’s part of the game if you want to be competitive on your local group ride. I’ve gotten dropped on plenty of downhills on the group ride. Um I I want to circle back to yesterday too because I rewatched some of the coverage and um Justine Gera, Sarah Jagante’s teammate was really helping her on that one descent. And when I was re-watching the coverage, it was so funny because at times Justine was behind her yelling at her like, “Get off the brakes.” And Sarah had an interview after the the race that she think uh think Justine, but she was talking about how Justine was shouting at her. Um and then other times just go in front to uh lead her. Yeah. Um and I was just kind of curious, Adam, how do you coach people to get better at descending when you’re it live in person? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great It’s a great question and I think Renee, let’s put in the show notes that Instagram reel that you sent me because the way that they did that, they interviewed Sarah Tagante and then her teammate um to to show what was happening and how her teammate was coaching her out there on the road. Yeah, I lost some time at the end, but thanks to my teammate Justine again like yesterday, she was like an absolute superstar. I was the whole downhill screaming to her and coach said, “Come on, don’t break her. Come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah. I I didn’t drop for quite a while, but I could hear her always yelling at me like, “Come on, don’t break. Don’t break. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Doing well. Come on, Sarah. Come on, Sarah.” Like, I was going flat out, she was just chatting away. So, yeah, that was really motivating. And then anytime a gap did open, she was able to close it. Yeah, coaching her, coaching her. But yeah, in the last part uh and yeah, I regret taking the left on the second roundabout. I knew I had to go right, but in the moment I just chose the wrong way and yeah, I got gapped, but it could have been uh minutes. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with that descent and so good Kim was able to get back to the group and um finish again in yellow. So yeah, an amazing day for the team really. They she lose a bit of time, but I went all out and I hope uh uh she didn’t lose too much today. Now, tomorrow we go Malan Summit finish. It’s a big one. You prefer the road finishing up there rather than down. It suits you. Yeah. Um yeah, we’ll see what happens. We’ve still got Kim and yellow, but um yeah, maybe the teams will regret not dropping me yesterday when they could have. Hopefully. Yeah, the whole of Australia sees you as a hero now. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks. No, no, no. But uh it’s because we so believe in Sarah for the weekend and um yeah um we really believe she can do something special this weekend and um so uh we needed to to reduce the time as as much as possible. So uh it was my job and with a pleasure if there is something big to come again justine and vape again being able to coach somebody on the bike from the back to you know cue them in um certain aspects of a descent or corner whatever um I mean that’s how it looks when you’re at speed trying to refine at the very uh top end. However, when I’m coaching anybody on descending and cornering, you take it down to the basics first, right? Slow, you look at the corners, all this kind of stuff. But once you’re on the bike, yeah, you got to queue them. And you have to queue them in the moment. And it’s it’s the cue of the reminder of hopefully you started with the basics and built up from there. But even at that highest level, and I have I’ve coached um I mean former US national champions and and uh mountain bike champions and and I’ve coached them on the road for descending in that way because they’ve they’ve had to work on it. And really my end goal is always like be smooth because smooth will be fast over time. And that’s where I really want to uh get a rider. Usually they have at that level anyway, they have the basics fairly well done. and they just need confidence to kind of like build up from there and then find that line. But, uh, yeah, I think tactically we’re going to see this in the women’s field more and more because the disparity is is there. You can see people ripping and and making gaps and the GC riders will need to shore that up. And back on uh Kim Laort’s uh crash today, we know she is a very good descender. She brought back a 30 secondond gap yesterday. She’s a former mountain biker. Um, she was taking risk yesterday. A quote from her yesterday, I tried to kill myself on a few of those hairpins was in her crash today. It she wasn’t like it was just, you know, the the pack going along and it was a whoops. Yeah, it was a whoops. I I wonder if it’s just like fatigue maybe um you know that you know lapse of attention um a little bit she got up you know didn’t look hurt it uh I don’t think it’s why she got dropped early. I don’t think she was really going to be up there today. No. And I just to touch on that real quick because in my older years now um I now appreciate descending as much as I used to appreciate climbing. Um and and so to be on the limit to I don’t take a local you know uh KOM on the downhill or or to intentionally in a race try to like you know blow something apart on the downhill. Physically there’s a physically it’s very hard but mentally it’s very taxing. And I would say just like on a day where you’re going to take a q or a k where you’re all in on something when you’re taking that on the downhill or you’re at the tour France fa zift and you’re trying to do that I mean physically and mentally and they they mentioned this on the broadcast too is just like you come up you know you’re racing full tilt over a climb you have to ground yourself before you hit that descent breathing relaxing that kind of stuff. And it’s easy to make a mistake in in that way. And and we’ll see it. I’m not going to put, you know, words in Kim’s mouth. We’ll see it in some of the interviews, but like that’s an honest mistake. I’ve done it before. Never feels good, but like I said, hopefully if you crash, you don’t take anyone else out with you. Um, I’ve really enjoyed getting to be a little bit more familiar with Kim Leort this week. Um, she’s only been in the Pro Tour a couple years, so you know, first last first time I really noticed her was last year, but in her interviews and everything, I just she’s a straight shooter. Uh, uh, big Yeah. And in one of her interviews, uh, post-race interviews this week, I believe it was the stage five that she won and took the jersey back a little bit. Oh, not a little bit. She took it back. Um, she said just straight up, “I didn’t feel good today. I’m on my period.” You know, and I think it’s great that writers like her and Demi’s another one who are just like, “Yeah, it’s a thing. Sometimes I feel bad because I’m on my period.” Yeah. Um and and and having conversations like that both like you know uh with your coach, with your teammates on international television, like I hope we can get there as a society because it’s just like I slept bad last night. I had a bad day. It’s it’s like that. It is reality. It is a normal thing, right? People sleep bad. People get on their periods and it changes moods and uh physical states. Yeah. And as you were saying like individual because some women feel the effects more than others. Um, you know, most often it’s the second half of the cycle as you’re getting to the, you know, week ahead of of when, uh, when you have your period, the lutil phase, you know, athletes are like lower energy, maybe bloated, not sleeping great. um you know and then once the hormones change and you know post uh period in the follicular phase you know that’s usually when women if they have a trend or crushing it they feel great feel like a champ I’m one of those day after my period starts like Hulk smash some straa k um and just because somebody feels bad doesn’t mean that they’re going to perform bad. I think there’s a little bit of psychology behind it too, especially for for ladies if you let it get in your head. Oh, I’m bad today. I feel bad. Um Kim felt bad. She won the stage. One of the very few races I won here in Colorado. I remember I felt so bad. I was on my period. I was like crampy and and uh the race was slow and I was just focused on like how I was feeling and so I just attacked. I said like went off the front. I figured if I’m suffering this bad I might as well just be off the front suffering and kind of you know by that point I forgot about my cramps because I was like my legs were hurting and my lungs were hurting. I did win the race though. So nice. Nice. Well, I mean to that point, I mean this is something I’ve never experienced myself, so I mean take it for what it’s worth, but coaching athletes like this, I’ve learned that over the years is like feeling does not equal performance, right? And that’s where when someone is on their period, it’s like, okay, well, let’s just push today. We maybe we have intervals or whatever. Let’s just push today and see what happens. And sometimes we see, oh yeah, the performance doesn’t change. I feel bad, but the performance doesn’t. Other times I’ve had riders where it’s like, “Let’s just try the intervals today.” And it’s like they get into number one halfway through and they’re like, “Nope, I’m out. Go back home.” So, and understanding how you respond on those general ways is for you ladies is really important. I encourage uh my athletes, and I do it myself, you know, to track. And, you know, you could track with your, you know, wearable. I’ve got my Garmin watch or just tracking training peaks. There are apps out there that you could track, but I’d like to keep my stuff all in one place in Training Peaks. It’s just easier all in one place. Um, yeah. So understanding how you perform and you know maybe if you are that person who has those fluctuations and feel it more severely um that’s uh something that you can try to work around not plan your hardest workouts uh or you know give yourself a little bit more grace uh you know changing your fueling a little bit uh during your period. um uh per the per the tracking, I I have some athletes um that do a great job with this uh not only communicating uh when they start their period, but also communicating when they think they’re going to start the period. And so we can either move training around for that or uh kind of work the pre-race routine accordingly for that. But I think the just the planning aspect of it is really helpful um at least on the coaching end of things and the communication side of things with the athlete. So I think that’s really good. Um so if if you if anybody hasn’t done that and just using training peaks with notes and and uh metrics to to do that that’s great. And then over time we have data points of when the period started relative to the performance uh metrics that we have and then we can kind of see trends over time. Yeah, there’s not a ton of information out there starting to become uh talked about a little bit more. Um, there was actually a great episode of the Real Science of Sports podcast last week that did a whole like hour and a half on the menstrual cycle and athletic performance. That’s a good Oh, cool. It’s a good nerdy exercise fizz sport podcast. Anyway, uh, we should put a link in the show notes. Uh, and send it to me, Coach Renee, please. I’d like to I sure will. Um when I was when I was an athlete and you know in my youth um I did struggle more as affected pretty bad. I think I called in sick a few times Adam uh when I just felt terrible. Um and you know some women use contraceptives as a method of uh you know controlling their their cycle. In in the olden days, like when I was racing, there was actually uh women were sometimes using oral contraceptives to control when they had their cycles. So, they’d, you know, skip their little placebo pills and not have their period in in race day. Um, but there’s a little bit of evidence that the oral contraceptives can negatively impact performance. And I am not here to tell anyone what to do for their contraceptive choice. I’m just giving this as information. You’ve got to talk to your doctor about what’s best for you. Um Stacy Sims is another uh big voice in talking about women’s uh physiology, exercise physiology. Um she’s got a great book out there uh called Roar. That’s a a really nice resource. Um, a little background on Stacy Sims. She uh not only an exercise physiologist and nutrition expert, former racer, she and I were racing at the same time. I was in a few races with her. Um, and she actually worked with CTS for a while. I had a I got to work with her on a project with US field hockey. We were doing some consulting, a lot of hydration stuff and uh a little bit of coaching on the physiology side. So anyway, that’s pretty interesting. But she’s a really smart lady and she knows her stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But one shout out to CTS, one of the kind of coolest hires at the time because really uh she was a resident expert in kind of everything. But I remember just like lunchtime we would uh break brown bag lunch and sit in the ESC or ECS, whatever, uh down by the strengths and conditioning room at CTS and we would just have a topic and that would be once a week and we would learn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check check out her socials because she puts out a lot of good content on Instagram as well and readable. Um, so you know the things I’ve learned, you know, from from her information and others, you know, about how oral contraceptives could affect a performance is that they alter, you know, hormone uh fluctuations because they flatten out the estrogen and pro progesterone. Um, and it could impact things like metabolism and thermmorreulation and maybe a little bit of recovery and muscle uh muscle protein synthesis. um and potentially blunt the body’s usual adaptations to training for some athletes. So Stacy recommends uh copper IUDs um and uh as as a a less impactful solution for some ladies. um you know I use merina um that has a low dose of progesterone um so it’s it’s not very significant um and very from my understanding very little impact you know I think Stacy goes for the copper IUD just because it has no hormones at all because you know on the hormones like I couldn’t take the pill or I tried to take the pill and it I not on the performance side of things I don’t think I was really racing at that point. It was uh just made me crazy like moody. It It made me moody. Anyway, I’m just saying that you have to talk to your doctor. You have to find out what works for you and what makes the most sense. I will say this once I got the IUD, the Marina, game changer. Yeah. Monthly symptoms almost nil. You don’t usually get a period when you’re on Marina. That’s a bonus. And it can stay in for five or seven years. So, you know, if you didn’t know about it, I’m sure uh which I’m sure a lot of you ladies did, but it wasn’t around when I was young. It didn’t come out till like 2000, and it really didn’t get popular in the the US till 2010. So, I didn’t even know about it in my key racing era, or else I probably would have checked it out. Yeah. Yeah. I would say a lot of my athletes um um are using that now uh based on what I know um seems to be working well but again it’s individual talk to your doctor we are not medical experts but those are my observations so yeah and you know I’d encourage ladies out there to talk to their coaches um even I forget to ask sometimes last week I was um with one of my athletes she was just like having a bad week and you know I finally asked her like cuz I couldn’t figure out why she was having such a bad week and you know we talked periods and things like that. So you know even I forget to ask sometimes so you know I think the just the more we talk about it like it’s a regular just you know I got a cold or I had my period you know that just makes it a lot less uh uh taboo. I don’t think it’s really taboo anymore, but you know, it’s still delicate. Yeah, it’s it’s Yeah, it can be delicate. Um, but I think it I mean, I think it’s taboo in our society. Um, I hope it won’t be into the future, but uh, you know, having podcasts in conversations like this hopefully helps to get us there. So, yeah. Yeah. Adam, we’ve got one more stage left tomorrow. One more. And um the top of the podium is wrapped up. Uh she’s got so almost three minutes on Sarah Jagante. There is no mountain top finish uh tomorrow. Um it is 124 kilometers about 77 miles. The big feature of the day is a zup plan. It’s 11 kilometer climb 8% grade but it comes in the middle of the stage. Um, so the race is not over. We just talked a bunch about descending and Sarah Jagante is a little she needs a little help on the descents. I could see teams like Demis like Cassia’s ripping the descent of that and putting Sarah into jeopardy. I mean like on GC jeopardy um not danger. Um, so I that’s a real possibility. So, you know, you want to catch tomorrow’s stage. Um, you know, but Pauline uh she’s got she’s got it uh locked up, I think. And you know, it’s been 40 years since the French had a winner of the tour to France. Really? I didn’t know that. Bernard Kino in 85. Well, see, you wouldn’t remember because I don’t even know if you were born yet then. This is this is true, but fun facts of cycling history is uh something I’d love to learn about and I just learned something. So, thank you, Renee. Uh last pro tip for tomorrow. Um another day of full coverage, but it starts later, 9:15 Eastern. 9:15. Yeah. Okay. Well, so who uh so who are you identifying as your pick for tomorrow, Rene? Oh, shoot. I forgot to make a pick. Yeah. Um, breakaway breakaway rider. Your your girl Squibbon. Oh, she’s No, she’s tired. My brain is fried. I got I got no one. Capeki. Capeki was doing some teamwork today. Oh, and speaking of teamwork and jerseys and things like that and the race and stuff, it looks like Weebis has the green jersey locked up. Yeah, it looks like Shabby has the polka dots locked up. Um, Ninkabika is still in white. So, but there’s still plenty of good racing tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. Tons of good racing. And you know what? My pick is PFP and I hope she does like a TAD move. Yeah. Cuz you’re you’re like what? Like TAD with the men’s race they basically neutralized it because the the rain and it got uh So basically they’re like okay all the jerseys are now safe and Todd was like screw it. Let’s go bike Grayson. And he just went for it. And part of me wants Pauline to do that. Just to just be like, you know what, girls? Let’s boss would be a great candidate for tomorrow. You think so? Huh? Not too mediumy mountainy for her. It depends on how hard they ride it. I think they’re going to ride the descent hard. Yeah. You know, they could just tempo up the climb because halfway through, but then to rip the descent. Well, and then, you know, if they’re ripping the descent and Boss is up there, she she’s very good at that. She is. Yeah. All right. We shall see. And I look forward to watching some more awesome racing. So, uh Renee, we’ll leave it there for today. hopefully a little shorter episode so people can go out there and uh get away from us for a while, ride their bike on the weekend and and come back fresh for the final stage. Right on. See you tomorrow. Thanks.