Compare and contrast - the real Tour of Britain

Mrs Noel went out to watch the real Tour of Britain today. This is stage 5 of the tour and it follows the same course as my charity tour ride of two weekends ago.

Sadly I wasn't there to experience it for myself but Mrs Noel was good enough to show me a few pictures. It made me think 'how different is the proper tour from what we did?' After giving it some consideration, I think the two events are pretty similar.

If you take away the support cars and all the state-of-the-art bikes, take away a few of our food, drink and toilet stops (well, all of them in fact), and take away the tour riders' ability, including the years of training and dedication to reach that level, then I think what we did was pretty similar.

Obviously, you'd also have to factor in that these guys have been doing this every day for the previous 5 days, and you'd need to account for my usual level of tactical naivety. But when you've taken all this into account, and the degree of mental pressure that the tour riders are under, I think the two events are largely similar.

Perhaps when making such a comparison you might also need to consider the average speed that the tour guys are going - approximately twice what we were. But, to get back to my original point, apart from the support, the bikes, the ability, the dedication, the lack of rests, the day-on-day fatigue, the tactical acumen, the mental pressure, and the overall speed, what we did a few weekends ago was pretty similar to what Mrs Noel witnessed today.