Every July the Tour de France delivers beautiful imagery.

The three-week stage race also gives us cringeworthy photos.

This weekend the largest annual sporting event offered up the wildest picture we've ever seen.

It shows Julian Alaphilippe flying through the air at over 30 mph into the side of a mountain.

The French rider was racing in the Tour's first time trial on stage 13, from Bourg-Saint-Andéol to La Caverne du Pont-d'Arc, when a fierce crosswind blew him off the road.

Incredibly, the Frenchman got up and continued on in the world's biggest bike race.

Photographer Joris Knapen got the perfectly timed shot.

Alaphilippe, who rides for the Belgian Etixx-Quick-Step team, won the Amgen Tour of California in May.

The Tour de France finishes next Sunday in Paris.

Kenyan-born Briton Chris Froome is leading the race after Sunday's stage 15.

SEE ALSO: What Tour de France riders are eating and drinking immediately after racing

DON'T MISS: Why an American team at the Tour de France bought its leader 21 of the world's fastest bicycle chains

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NOW WATCH: This is what the number of calories Tour de France cyclists burn daily actually looks like

Chris Froome is not just leading the Tour de France; he's dominating it in a way we haven't seen in years. His Sky team is by far the strongest in the three-week race, and it has protected its leader perfectly from the start.

Sky has among the largest budgets in cycling — about €40 million (US$44 million) — and it has bought up several of the best riders in the pro peloton to deliver Froome to Paris in yellow. Froome's teammates are so good that several of them could easily be protected leaders on other teams.

Froome, a Kenyan-born Briton, has worn the leader's yellow jersey for eight days straight, and with a week to go it doesn't look like anyone or any team is going to stop him from taking his third Tour title.

He leads Dutchman Bauke Mollema of the Trek-Segafredo team by 1 minute and 47 seconds. And the much-hyped rivalry with star climber Colombian Nairo Quintana has failed to materialize, at least so far.

While there is plenty of racing still to go — and the final week of the Tour has several tough mountain stages — if Froome and his Sky team keep riding the way they have, it's unlikely that anyone will be able to touch Froome.

Froome is so strong that at times he looks bored. Riders are either afraid to attack him or can't.

At one point on Sunday's tough mountain stage he taunted his rivals with a fake attack.

It was a fascinating moment of insight in part because Froome has never shown such bravado.

"It was just to see who had the legs,"Froome said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. "I wanted to see exactly what the state of play was, to see what reaction I'd get, who would be following me, who might be making a move over the top."

"Of course, it must be quite demoralizing,"added Froome, with a mix of glee and wonder, VeloNews reported. "For other people to have to think of attacking knowing that this caliber of riders are going to be chasing and riding behind at a tempo that will neutralize their attacks."

Third-place rider Adam Yates (Orica-BikeExchange) spoke about what it's like to race against Sky: "Anyone who is attacking they just bring them back."

The Houston Chronicle said Froome's "cheeky move spoke volumes about his current supremacy."

But Froome's taunting of his rivals is unprecedented for him. The normally quiet, polite, and business-like Briton has not shown such brass before. In fact, unlike during his first two Tour wins, Froome 2.0 is not holding back this Tour, attacking when least expected and even running without his bike when necessary.

Froome's taunt this weekend was reminiscent of Lance Armstrong's jeering of German Jan Ullrich in the 2001 Tour.

In what has now become known simply as "The Look," Armstrong was leading Ullrich up the iconic Alpe d'Huez. At one point Armstrong turned around and stared at Ullrich before attacking the German and dropping him.

As for Froome, he's a fierce competitor. In his autobiography he revealed his intense focus when it comes to preparing for races like the Tour:

I think a lot about my competitors when I’m training. I think about how they might be riding, and wonder if they are out with their teammates chatting for five hours. Especially if I’m out on my own that day, doing more focused efforts. I’m not just dawdling along. I like to think I’m doing more than the other guys, even when I don’t know if this is the case or not.

With any luck, this final week of the Tour will see Froome's rivals coming out and attacking in a real way.

You can watch the full clip of Froome's fake attack below:

SEE ALSO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The Lance Armstrong team that dominated the Tour de France

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Team Sky's Chris Froome, the best bike racer in the world right now, is leading the Tour de France, the biggest bike race, and he doesn't look to have any serious rivals with two weeks of racing done and one to go until the finish in Paris this Sunday.

A lot goes into a Tour victory. You need to pick the right parents, for one. Then you need a super-strong team. The best equipment. And so forth.

But you also must eat right at the Tour, of course. On Tuesday, on the Tour's second and final rest day, Froome tweeted a picture showing what he had for breakfast.

Froome's morning meal would be a pretty healthy breakfast for anyone, but it especially is for an athlete, as it's high in protein and healthy fats and relatively low in sugar.

The carbohydrates in the avocado (which contains about 320 calories) provide him with a source of quick energy, while the hefty amount of protein and fat in the eggs (70 calories each), avocado, and fish (100 calories for 3 ounces) helps fuel muscles and slow the breakdown of food in the body.

That helps steady energy levels and stave off hunger pangs. Plus, since the eggs are poached and the fish is smoked, they have no added fats or oils.

As an added energy boost, Froome has a sachet of cherry-juice concentrate, 2 tablespoons of which would give him about 18 grams of carbohydrates and about 70 calories.

All in all, the meal would be about 700 to 800 calories with a hefty amount of protein and fat and some carbs.

Froome came into this Tour to win, and after two weeks he looks set to do just that.

The Briton is so strong he taunted his rivals over the weekend with a fake attack. If Froome can defend his yellow jersey over the next week, he'll take his third victory in the race.

Here's to eating right.

DON'T MISS: What Tour de France riders are eating for dinner

SEE ALSO: What Tour de France riders are eating and drinking immediately after racing

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NOW WATCH: This is what the number of calories Tour de France cyclists burn daily actually looks like

ARCALIS, Andorra —Lawson Craddock is riding his first Tour de France this month, and he's not just sitting in for the ride. The Houston native has finished in the top 20 on two stages and gotten into a breakaway. He has put in a lot of hard miles working for his team leader, France's Pierre Rolland. Craddock has suffered, too, having been dropped from the peloton while climbing some of the race's toughest mountains. But with a steady trajectory from junior rider to the top of the sport, and impressive results on his résumé including third at the Amgen Tour of California, Craddock keeps learning and pushing on.

Craddock also has the dubious distinction of being the first Texan to race the Tour since Lance Armstrong, the seven-time race champion whose titles were stripped after he confessed to doping for most of his career. At 24 years old, Craddock is a generation removed from Armstrong, 44, but the two differ in many more ways than that.

Business Insider sat down with Craddock on the Tour's fist rest day, in Andorra. Here's what he had to say about racing in the world's biggest bike race, Armstrong, suffering, and his inspirational team leader:

Daniel McMahon: You compete in many different races in many different countries all season long. What makes the Tour de France unique?

Lawson Craddock: It's a race unlike anything I've ever done. Everything here is on a bigger scale. No one comes to the Tour as preparation for another race. People go to the Giro prepping for the Tour. People go to the Vuelta prepping for the Tour the next year. So when you have people who focus their entire careers on this one race, you're going to have a lot higher expectations, a lot higher risk, and a lot higher rewards. You see that in the races — people braking that half-second later, taking that little extra risk going around turns in the rain. Nothing can quite prepare you except being here and doing it.

McMahon: You've ridden two editions of the Vuelta a España. Was getting to the Tour about having that experience in grand tours?

Craddock: I think that's the most important thing. It's getting that first grand tour under your belt. I noticed a huge difference after I did two weeks in the Vuelta the first time. You never get that experience anywhere else, where you race two weeks in a row. And already in that offseason I noticed a pretty big jump in my engine. Then I finished the whole three weeks. It was kind of incredible. You have this motor that allows you go almost all day. You develop this completely new gear on your body. It's incredible how the body adapts.

You look at two years ago at the Vuelta. I felt like I did everything leading into to it, but looking back there could have been things we could have changed in terms of the racing and training schedule. But after two weeks the body was completely empty. I'd get out of bed every morning and could barely pedal a bike. And you fast-forward one year and I'm able to race hard for three weeks. And then you fast-forward another year and here I am at the Tour de France. I'm racing 50 hours in nine days, and all you need is one day of recuperation and you're back into it. It's incredible how the human body works.

McMahon: Were you at all intimidated coming into the world's biggest bike race as a rookie?

Craddock: You kind of adapt to it and lose that mentality of, "Oh, God, I'm scared — I don't want to crash these guys." Instincts take over, and you start fighting and racing your bike. Your whole mentality changes.

McMahon: What's been the lowest point?

Craddock: It always sucks to get dropped. There's no getting around that. It's bike racing, and that's going to happen. So far, the Tourmalet day was rough for me. I'd put a lot trying to get into that breakaway, and when we hit the Tourmalet I was on the limit already [laughs]. Then you look down and you're off the back and you have a hundred K to go and 4,000 meters of climbing and you're like, "This is going to be a big day." That was a rough day for me and the team. Pierre crashed, too. It was a dark day, but we made it through and put it behind us. You turn your focus on to the next goal, the next task at hand.

McMahon: What's motivated you in this Tour?

Craddock: When you have a great leader like Pierre, you know — in the bus the next day [after Rolland crashed on the Tourmalet stage] his first question was, "All right, can I attack today?" When you hear that out of a guy who had just crashed really hard the day before and has got stitches in his hand and road rash all over his body, it definitely shows you he's not ready to give up and quit the race. He's geared up to race his bike, and that's what he's come here to do. That boosts morale. We're here to fight all the way to Paris, and that's what we're going to do. It motivates the director and it motivated the riders, and it set the tone for the rest of the race. You know, you hit a fork in the road. Our leader crashed, and it's going to be a lot tougher now. But the fact that he's ready to keep going gives us inspiration.

McMahon: What is it like being the first Texan to race the Tour since Armstrong?

Craddock: I grew up watching Lance race the Tour as my inspiration getting on a bike when I was younger. I did grow up in a cycling family — my dad was a big racer. But when I was younger the Tour de France was the only race on TV. You start riding bikes and racing your friends around the neighborhood. You turn on the TV and you see Lance winning and it motivates you to get out there on a competitive level.

I was pretty fortunate with the path that I took in cycling. Obviously there's that whole story with him and the doping aspects, but he did help me out in my career, and I raced for the under-23 team that he helped fund and create. Without those opportunities it's fair to say I would not be here racing the Tour. It's unfortunate everything that happened, but I think it paved a clear way for cycling.

Being from Texas and living in Austin now, you're always going to draw comparisons. But at the same time I'm here to make my own legacy. I'm here to race the Tour and be Lawson Craddock, not Lance Armstrong, in a lot more ways than the doping aspects. It's cool to be compared to such an iconic cyclist and someone who helped mold the sport into what it is, but still, at the end of the day I'm going to be myself, not him.

McMahon: Do you get tired of the Lance questions?

Craddock: I mean, not necessarily. It comes with the territory. Just being from Texas it's something I'm asked a lot, but it's not something that bothers me. I harbor no hard feelings for the guy, and it doesn't upset me. And honestly it doesn't upset me what he did because it allowed me to come to the sport and not have to not face these decisions — like, "Oh, man, if I want to race the Tour, I'm going to have to put all this shit in my body." The sport definitely went through a rough patch, but being here and being part of a great team like Cannondale is just — I'm really fortunate with the path I've had into the sport.

McMahon: Can you imagine a situation where you or anyone on your team would be tempted to cheat?

Craddock: I can't really imagine it. Obviously you can't speak for everyone, but for myself I'd like to think that my parents raised me better than that, and I know they raised me better than that. I'm not here to cheat my way to the top. I don't see any enjoyment in that. I honestly don't see how anyone would find that fun. I love the sport because I can go out and push my body to the limits and I can see success just from doing that. I can see success in races from doing that. That's what I enjoy. And when you put drugs in the picture, it's like, what's the point anymore? It's not you doing the work. It's some outside factor. It's cheating. It's no fun.

McMahon: You rode with a European team for two years. How did you end up on an American one?

Craddock: [Cannondale-Drapac general manager] Jonathan Vaughters wanted me ever since I was 17, and it never worked out. Things didn't really quite fall into place. And at the end of last year we got on the phone for the sixth or seventh time over the last six or seven years, and I really felt in my heart that this would be the best place to succeed. They have a great antidoping perspective, and that's something I share with them. That's huge.

But it's also the feel of the team. You could tell the guys have fun and are professional but enjoy racing their bikes. They love it. They don't do it for the money — they don't do it for the fame. They're a bunch of dudes who love racing bikes. That was a big draw. Also being an American team and being an American rider was big for me.

McMahon: What's the best thing about being a professional bike racer?

Craddock: Just seeing the world. You're in Andorra on two wheels seeing this beautiful scenery that you would never see otherwise. Eye-opening experiences that stay with you.

McMahon: And the worst thing?

Craddock: Being away from home for so long. But even that gets better with time. You learn how to adapt. My fiancée and I are living together in Girona [Spain] now, and that helps a lot. You start to make it more like home and not a place you're just staying. But it's hard to be away from Texas for so long. I haven't gone fishing at all this year, and that's been a little rough.

McMahon: What do you do at the Tour when you have down time?

Craddock: Right now I'm moseying through a TV series, "Revolution," which is pretty good. But I also have a Kindle and I read. But you'd be surprised. There's not as much down time because you just wake up, you eat breakfast, you race six hours, you drive, massage, eat, and by then you've got like 30 minutes and you want to lie down and relax before you go to bed at 10:30 or 11. I try to get nine hours' sleep, but you get to a point during the Tour where you get so tired you can't fall asleep anymore.

McMahon: What would you be doing if you weren't a bike racer?

Craddock: My dad owns a roofing company in Houston, and when I was younger that's all I ever wanted to do was take over the business. My brother is out there now, and he's working for him. My dad is grooming him to take over the business, and I can only hope that my brother accepts me with open arms once my career is done.

McMahon: You're 24. Today some guys are racing until 40 and beyond. Do you envision having a full cycling career?

Craddock: I fully do. I'm here for the long run. I want to push my body to the limits and take this as far as I can go at the competitive level as long as I can. And if that's 15 years, then hell yeah — let's do it.

SEE ALSO: What Tour de France riders are eating and drinking immediately after racing

DON'T MISS: Tour de France leader Chris Froome is so strong and bored he taunted his rivals with a fake attack

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NOW WATCH: This is what the number of calories Tour de France cyclists burn daily actually looks like

Tour de France leader Chris Froome and his Sky team are among the most tech-savvy people in pro cycling. An example is Froome's use of non-round chainrings.

Froome's rings are not branded — probably to avoid conflict with his team's sponsorship by Shimano, which supplies Team Sky with components and wheels — but they are made and patented by Osymetric. French mechanical engineer Jean-Louis Talo invented them.

Osymetric USA claims the chainrings"let you achieve 7-10% more power" and that the "patented bi-cam design allows you to take advantage of the strongest part of your pedal stroke, giving you 7-10% more wattage without doing any more work." Froome has been riding these rings for a few years, so he must believe they give him an edge.

And while there are other riders in the peloton who use non-round rings too, none of Froome's big rivals are on them as far as we know. And yes, these rings are UCI-legal, UCI being the French abbreviation for the International Cycling Union, world cycling's governing body.

Here's a closer look at the unconventional chainrings that the Tour de France leader is using:

SEE ALSO: Why an American team at the Tour de France bought its leader 21 of the world's fastest bicycle chains

DON'T MISS: Meet Lawson Craddock, a rising star of American cycling and the first Texan to race the Tour de France since you-know-who

Froome and his bike have been photographed during this Tour with Osymetric's 110 outer chainring, which has 52 teeth. But apparently the "Osymetric" lettering has been covered or removed to avoid conflicting with Sky's Shimano sponsorship agreement.

In the US the rings sell for $140, according to the company's website.

Osymetric claims the design requires less effort from the rider while helping to increase power — with a gain of up to 10% watts:

"This patented design reduces the gear and the effort needed to get through what is commonly called the “dead spot” in everyones [sic] pedal stroke. Then it increases the usable gear during the power portion of the pedal stroke between the 1 and 5 o’clock positions of the crank so your body can take full advantage of its natural strength. This powerful tool can reduce lactic acid by 10% and increases power by 10% for anyone that uses them. With OSYMETRIC chainrings installed properly on a bicycle, one can expect a gain of 7-10% watts. Interestingly the rings are most beneficial the closer your are to your personal anaerobic threshold."

The inventor, Jean-Louis Talo, is an engineer from France.

CyclingWeekly profiled Jean-Louis Talo in 2013: "In 1991, Jean-Louis Talo, a mechanical engineer from Menton, southern France, produced his first prototype Osymetric ring. He has spent 22 years trying to convince the cycling world that it works."

Talo said he had no interest in the business side of chainrings, saying he was only interested in recovering his costs and seeing a rider win the Tour on his invention. It took him just 12 days to work out the invention. Again, Talo as quoted in CyclingWeekly:

“You can alter the design so that you give the leg muscles work to do where they are at their strongest and less work to do where they are weak. A round chainring gives you work to do where you are weak and takes power away from you where your legs are strongest,” says Talo. “A bicycle chainring is round because at one time that’s all factories knew how to produce.”

Team Sky boss Dave Brailsford has worked with Froome on "marginal gains," a performance philosophy he used with former Tour winner Bradley Wiggins.

Sky is synonymous with the term "marginal gains," which general manager Dave Brailsford has explained as follows:

"The whole principle of marginal gains came from the idea that if you broke down everything that could impact on a cycling performance — absolutely everything you could think of — and then you improved everything little thing by 1%, when you clump it all together, you're going to get quite a significant increase in performance. So we set about looking at everything we could."

Friday's stage 19 of the Tour de France was filled with drama for race leader Chris Froome, who crashed on a rainy descent but managed to finish the stage and keep his race lead — thanks to gritty racing and a borrowed bike.

Froome went down after losing his front wheel while riding over a white painted line in the middle of the road. Italian Vincenzo Nibali, a former Tour winner, went down with him.

The stage saw many riders going down in the slippery conditions.

You can see Froome and Nibali crashing below:

Both riders got up quickly and appeared to be OK, though Froome had road rash, a bleeding right knee, and a ripped-up yellow jersey.

Froome had to borrow his teammate Geraint Thomas' bike to keep racing and to protect his race lead.

The borrowed bike didn't have Froome's Osymetric chainrings, seen here on his regular bike before the Tour started in Normandy:

But he managed to ride along and finish the stage on the loaner bike.

Dutchman Bauke Mollema was the biggest loser of the day. He crashed and lost his near-certain podium spot, finishing well down on the other favorites. He is now 10th.

"Today showed exactly why I thought the Tour was not over," Froome, who sported a heavily bandaged knee on the podium, told ITV4, according to AFP. "I was really grateful nothing is seriously injured but it could have gone either way.

"Ironically, I was trying to stay safe but I hit one of the white lines and lost my front wheel."

Froome thanked his teammates for getting him to the finish. He said he was glad to have had an advantage of over four minutes in hand.

Romain Bardet, the French climbing specialist, won the stage.

Froome finished 36 seconds after Bardet. He was wearing a bandage on his right knee when he went up to get his yellow jersey.

Bardet is now second overall, and Colombian Nairo Quintana moved up to third.

The Tour finishes on Sunday in Paris, but there is one more tough mountain stage to get through on Saturday.

Froome is a two-time winner of the race and the defending champion.

Thomas tweeted this:

Back on stage 12, Froome crashed into a motorcycle and ran up Mont Ventoux until he could get a spare bike.

Froome has been eating well during the race. And the Kenyan-born Briton is so strong he taunted his rivals with a fake attack.

DON'T MISS: Tour de France leader Froome is so strong he taunted his rivals with a fake attack

SEE ALSO: Froome is using these weird chainrings, and they might be helping him win a historic 3rd Tour de France

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NOW WATCH: This is what the number of calories Tour de France cyclists burn daily actually looks like

There's no shortage of high-tech gear and bikes at the Tour de France, but one thing that caught our eye when we recently visited the world's biggest bike race was the liberal use of a common kitchen staple: vinegar.

We saw the Cannondale-Drapac team treating its tires with it whenever stages called for rain. Here's how and why vinegar is used as a tire treatment at the Tour:

SEE ALSO: Chris Froome is using these weird chainrings, and they might be helping him win a historic 3rd Tour de France

DON'T MISS: What Tour de France riders are eating and drinking immediately after racing

Before the rain, some vinegar for good grip and good luck.

Cannondale-Drapac mechanic James Griffin rubbed vinegar on all the riders' tires before the start of rainy stages. He told Business Insider that the vinegar makes the rubber suppler, which means better traction on rain-slicked roads.

The vinegar also helps prevent flats because a suppler tire absorbs bits of road debris better, debris that might otherwise puncture the tire. For what it's worth, at the Giro d'Italia this May, the team told Business Insider that its riders had zero flats during the three-week stage race.

The vinegar, kept in a water bottle, is poured on a rag and then rubbed on the tires.

Italian handmade-tire manufacturer Challenge has an insightful blog post about the use of vinegar on tires. You can read it here. This is the most relevant part:

Immediately when I brought up the problem in front of team management they looked at me incredulously and said, "What? You do not know that you need to apply vinegar to the tires before riding in this 'season of the little stones'?" I could not have been more stunned. ...

Riders and mechanics for professional teams are all taught at a young age that you must treat racing tires with vinegar every two to three days during “winter” (or when “winter” suddenly reappears). ...

Long story short, if you want to have all the incredible performance - low rolling resistance, cornering and traction – that the Pros enjoy with Challenge Handmade tubulars but do not want to get a bunch of cuts or punctures, simply keep a rag handy and wipe your tires with vinegar every couple rides in that “season of the small stones”

Vinegar — it's not just for salads and fish and chips.

Should recreational cyclists use this vinegar trick at home? We asked Mark Purdy, an experienced mechanic who has wrenched for racing teams and currently works at Savile Road bike shop in New York.

"I've never done it myself, but I am aware of the concept of using vinegar on tires to soften the rubber a bit, like for rainy days," Purdy told Business Insider. "I suppose it makes sense, but your tires will wear out really fast. Diluted vinegar is a decent degreaser too."

Keen cyclist Mike Gregoire is the CEO of New York enterprise software firm CA Technologies, which is valued at $14 billion (£11 billion) on the NASDAQ stock market.

This weekend, he's invited 35 of his biggest customers to watch the final stage of the Tour de France in a bid to build and strengthen his company's relationship with them. They'll spectate from the finish line on the city's famous Champs Elysées.

Customers of CA Technologies include the likes of BT, Loreal, Orange, and Qantas but the company wasn't willing to disclose which particular firms — or indeed which executives — will be in attendance this weekend.

While in Paris, guests will also be given behind the scenes access to riders in the Trek Segafredo cycling team, which uses CA Technologies' software to ensure each bike is perfectly set up for each rider.

As if that wasn't enough, CA Technologies' guests will also get the opportunity to jump on a bike themselves and participate in a group ride, where they'll be given a special cycling jersey.

This might all sound like a lot but it's worth it, according to Gregoire. "It’s fun and customers love it," he told Business Insider at CA Technologies London office this week.

"There’s multiple purposes [for the hospitality]," Gregoire added. "First of all, it’s an opportunity to have some one-on-one time [with customers] and we have an opportunity to explain our company and our products. Also, Trek are a great ambassador for us."

The Tour de France Trek Segafredo team uses a piece of CA Technologies software called "Flow Dock" to help them get the optimum settings on each rider's bike.

"Flow Dock is a piece of communications software they [the Trek team] use to get instantaneous feedback from the riders on what’s happening with the bikes," said Gregoire. "So they’ll be on their PCs and talk about the seat height, or the stem making noise, or when I was riding at 45 mph I had a slight vibration in my fork.

"As soon as they provide their information it gets disseminated to all the people that are subscribed to that link that have anything to do with the bike. You think it’s just a bike. Not at this level. There’s a person that runs wheels, a person that’s worried about cranks, a person that’s worried about brake surfaces."

Gregoire declined to reveal how much the event is costing CA Technologies. "In the realm of customer hospitality, it’s medium," he said. "It’s not like the Masters. We used to sponsor the Masters. The Super Bowl we’ve done before [as well], that's very expensive."

Gregoire is a self-confessed cycling fanatic so it's no wonder he enjoys taking customers to the Tour de France. Just last weekend he took part in The Tahoe Trail, which is a 100km mountain bike ride in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which straddles the borders between Nevada and California.

"They just absolutely love cycling in Europe," said Gregoire.

On this weekend's closing stage, Gregoire said: "The British have quite a good team this year. [Mark] Cavendish is killing it. [Chris] Froome is killing it. So there’s lot for the British to be happy about."

Join the conversation about this story »

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I'm not by any means a competitive biker. I don't track metrics, don't plan on beating people's speeds in Strava, and for the most part, I don't log more than 15 miles on my bike a day before I feel like keeling over.

But when I got a chance at riding a bike designed for competitive cycling, I had to see what the fuss was about. Bike company SpeedX is selling an aerodynamic carbon-fiber road bike on Indiegogo with a ton of smart integrations. It's raised nearly $3 million so far.

Take a look.

I tested out the SpeedX Leopard Pro, one of the company's two models. This one costs $2,699, but there's also a base model that costs $1,700. These are technically full retail prices, but if you're an early bird, it's cheaper on Indiegogo.

The bike weighs in at 17.4 pounds. I could easily lift it and sling it over my shoulder while walking.

There are connectors in the front that allow you to add a front light, which is sold separately. The battery here houses the bike's electronic gear shifting system.

Chris Froome will win the 103rd Tour de France in Paris on Sunday, barring disaster. It is his third Tour victory, a record for a British rider.

He and his Sky team dominated the three-week race, setting an inferno pace up the toughest mountains and distancing rivals in the time trials.

On and off the bike, "Froomey" is relentless in his training, diet, equipment, and even mental preparation. He has the strongest team in pro cycling. Fiercely competitive, Froome is one of the greatest athletes of our era.

So who exactly is Chris Froome?

SEE ALSO: Chris Froome is using these weird chainrings

DON'T MISS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The Lance Armstrong team that dominated the Tour de France

Christopher Clive Froome is 31 years old. He was born on May 20, 1985, in Nairobi, Kenya. His nationality is British. He is the youngest of three boys born to Jane and Clive.

Froome was raised in Kenya. He won the first bike race he entered, at age 13. When he was 14 he attended school in Johannesburg, South Africa, and pursued cycling. He did two years of college, studying economics, before turning professional at 22.

Source: The Telegraph

Froome, who is 6-1, went from 167 pounds in 2007 to 147 pounds in 2015, all while maintaining a similar sustained power output. This has helped Froome win races like the Tour de France, where a rider's power-to-weight ratio is critical to success.

Source: The Guardian

British cyclist Chris Froome is set to make history on Sunday when he wins his third Tour de France.

The Team Sky rider has a four minute five second lead over Frenchman Romain Bardet following a wet penultimate stage in the Alps.

Froome — who has fallen off the bike a couple of times this year and won a couple of stages — will not be tested on the final stage in Paris.

Tradition dictates that the Tour de France race leader isn't challenged on the final stage, meaning Froome will win his third title in four years.

Froome also won the Tour de France in 2013 and 2015.

This year, Froome will take home €500,000 (£417,000) in prize money for his efforts, which is the most he's ever won at the event, according to Total Sportek.

Tour de France prize money has gone up by around 8% this year and there is a total of €2.29 million (£1.98 million) being awarded to riders across the field.

But prize money for the 3,535km three-week race is still relatively low compared to other large sporting events like Wimbledon, where the winners receive a £2 million payout.

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Chris Froomehas won the Tour de France for the third time. The 31-year-old took the race leader's yellow jersey on stage eight and never let it go. He won two stages along the way.

France's Romain Bardet, 25, finished second and Colombia's Nairo Quintana, 26, took third. The highest-placed American was Tejay van Garderen in 29th. The Tour started on July 2 at Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy with 197 riders and finished with 174 in Paris on July 24.

Froome, a Kenyan-born Briton, won the Tour in 2013 and 2015. He was favored to win in 2014 but crashed out of the race during the first week.

The biggest surprise of this year's Tour was the failure of Quintana to challenge Froome in the high mountains. The compact climber from Cómbita — runner-up to Froome last year — never posed a threat, and the highly anticipated duel between Quintana and Froome didn't happen.

Froome's Sky team was by far the strongest in the race. Several of Froome's teammates — notably Dutchman Walt Poels and Colombian Sergio Henao — were as good or nearly as good Froome's rivals, and their fierce pacesetting made it virtually impossible for others to challenge Froome. The victory was a tribute to Sky's class and depth — it has now won four Tours in the past five years (Bradley Wiggins won the 2012 Tour with Sky) — as well as an example of how the teams with the biggest budgets tend to dominate the Tour. Sky has a budget of about $40 million, which is massive for pro cycling and much larger than that of most teams.

Here are six unforgettable moments from the 103rd Tour de France:

SEE ALSO: Who is Chris Froome?

DON'T MISS: Chris Froome uses these weird chainrings

Froome running up Ventoux

In a wild sight on one of cycling's most storied and iconic climbs, Froome had to run up Mont Ventoux after a crash involving a motorcycle left him without a bike. The crash left several riders hitting the ground and Froome desperately sprinting up the road to save his race lead. After the chaos settled, Froome managed to get a bike and finish the stage with his lead intact. But the image of Froome running uphill in the yellow jersey through thongs of fanatical spectators without a bike is now already indelibly etched in cycling memory for the ages.

Sagan donning his first yellow jersey

Cycling's best one-day racer, Peter Sagan, had a wonderful Tour. He won three stages and wore the yellow jersey, his first, for a couple of days. He did it all as world champion. And along the way he won yet another green jersey, his fifth, for being the race's most consistent daily finisher. His winning attack in the final kilometers on stage 11 — which drew Froome out of the bunch — was pure class from the world's No. 1 rider.

Froome attacking down a descent and into yellow

During the opening week of the Tour, Sky protected Froome superbly. Then on stage eight Froome threw down the gauntlet, attacking at the summit of the last climb and storming down the decent to finish solo at Bagnères-de-Luchon. Froome's totally unexpected attack saw him racing in an aero tuck while sitting on the top tube of his bike and furiously pedaling a massive 54-tooth chainring. Froome took the yellow jersey in style and would never let it go. The attack may not have given Froome a huge time advantage, but it struck a psychological blow to his rivals and showed panache.

Chris Froome on Sunday won his thirdTour de France title in four years, and yet his victories were many years in the making. So much is needed to win the Tour — among other things the right genes, a super-strong team with a big budget, the best bikes and gear, moral support, motivation, the right mind-set, and hard training. But Froome also had to lose significant weight, and he has developed physically from a younger and stockier version of himself into the quintessential stage racer: lean, light, and strong.

When Froome turned pro in 2007 at age 22, he weighed 167 pounds. Now, at 31, he is often cited as weighing 147 (in his 2014 autobiography he said he was 66 kilos, or 145 pounds). The 20-pound weight loss has allowed him to thrive on the bike, especially in the mountains. In scientific terms, his power-to-weight ratio— a key measurement used to express an athlete's performance — is about 6.25 w/kg, the envy of just about every cyclist. After the trimming, Froome is thought to have increased his power to weight by 10%.

"His success can be put down to a massive loss in weight, helping to explain his improvement from also-ran to Tour de France winner," William Fotheringham at The Guardian noted.

"The engine was there all along," Jeroen Swart, a sports physician and exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town, told Richard Moore for Esquire. "He just lost the fat."

Hello, protein — goodbye, carbs

For the first several years of his professional racing career, Froome had a modest résumé. By far his best result came in his fifth year as a pro, at the end of the 2011 season in the Vuelta a España, or Tour of Spain, where he finished second overall, won a stage, and wore the leader's jersey. Until then, Froome was largely unknown.

In the years leading up to that remarkable performance, Froome had been carrying all kinds of extra weight — tipping the scales at up to 167 pounds. In a 2014 interview with Paul Kimmage for the Irish Independent, Froome said he had "always been aware of the weight issue" but took it for granted: "I don't think I necessarily thought that I could go much lower than [69 kilos/152 pounds] and apparently I have. I've gone a good three kilos lower [66 kilos/145 pounds] which is huge."

Michelle Cound, now Froome's wife, said in the same interview that he "starved himself" before his breakout performance:

MC: He starved himself before the Vuelta, and then he came back to South Africa and that's when we started dating. I've always had a bit of an interest in sports nutrition and my view was that he could still train on more protein and cutting back on the carbs at certain times. And also making sure he wasn't hungry, so having more meals, more often, things like that.

CF: But smaller portions. Basically, I think I lost the weight for that 2011 Vuelta in an unhealthy way; I was starving myself trying to get the weight off and I don't think that's healthy or sustainable. But since I've been with Michelle I've learned to do things in a ...

MC: It also keeps your weight more stable throughout the year, so you're not starving yourself, and then after a Tour you want to eat everything.

CF: (laughs) I still do.

MC: Especially the carbs, he's got such a sweet tooth. But he's found now that if he does cut back on carbs the weight does come down a lot easier than it did in the past. And cutting out foods like breakfast cereals and a lot of the wheat products and bread but still eating enough food — the right food — that he is able to not feel hungry during the day. If you look at his build from the 2011 Vuelta compared to now, he's still lean but his muscles look a lot more defined. So now he has found a way of doing it ...

In July 2012, 11 months after starving himself to ride well in the Vuelta, Froome finished second in the Tour de France. Then he won the race outright in 2013, 2015, and 2016. (He was favored to win the 2014 Tour but crashed out the first week.)

As Froome told Kimmage: "In the Vuelta that year (2011), I think my muscles were probably lighter. I was quite gangly. You wouldn't look at me and say, 'That's someone who's strong.' Whereas now, my diet is a lot more protein based. I've cut back on carbs completely but I'm not losing muscle."

Big lungs too

It's not just about being light. Froome has an exceptional VO2 max— 88.2 — a key performance indicator that measures the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete can use.

"The general population has a VO2 max of 35 to 40, with highly trained individuals in the 50s and 60s," AFP reported. "A few athletes have been measured in the 90s, including three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond. Phillip Bell, a senior sports scientist at GSK, told Esquire: 'Froome's values are close to what we believe are the upper limits for VO2 peak in humans.'"

It all means that Chris Froome has a huge, and hugely efficient, engine. When he won his first Tour he was already down to his ideal race weight of 147 pounds, which he has kept to these past few years, and it has paid off handsomely. He has three wins in the world's biggest bicycle race and earns at least $5 million a year — massive for a bike racer and a far cry from his neo-pro year when he made 22,500 euros.

Men's Health asked Froome whether it was easy for him to stay lean:

"No. I think hard about the quality of the food I'm eating – organic fruit, vegetables and meat wherever possible. It's a common misconception that because we're training five or six hours a day that we can eat what we want and burn it off. It really is a case of watching every little thing you put in your mouth and how it's going to benefit you. Your body really does respond to tweaks then."

In Froome's autobiography, "The Climb," he likens eating right to fidelity:

"I try to go very light in terms of diet. In the mornings I limit myself to just the one bowl of porridge, and normally a two-egg omelette, with no hint of extras on the side. No second helpings, no picking, nothing. If there is a big stage ahead that day I'll try a three-egg omelette, but warily, and I'll mix a small amount of white rice into the porridge ...

"On to the desserts, which no longer contain 'love' as I like to put it. Instead, I'll chew a few pieces of fruit or have a pot of yoghurt. I don't count calories or know the values of most things; I just let my instinct guide me as to what is the right amount to eat. My instinct always says that the right amount is less than I feel like eating. In a previous life I think my instinct lived in a remote monastery. I can think of food, see things in terms of food ... But I just can't eat food. Not like before. It's a fidelity thing."

SEE ALSO: Who is Chris Froome?

DON'T MISS: Chris Froome is using these weird chainrings

NEXT UP: Tour de France champion once posed as a Kenyan cycling official so that he could race in Europe

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Every so often an athlete does something that the rest of the world didn't yet know was possible. They take whatever we thought were the "limits" of human performance and show that we haven't yet found the point beyond which we can go no further.

Athletes now tend to approach sports with equipment and even techniques that their predecessors didn't use, which is largely responsible for the impression that humans are still getting "stronger" and "faster," according to Dr. Michael Joyner, a physician and Mayo Clinic researcher who is one of the world's top experts on fitness and human performance.

Because of that, these achievements or records almost never last forever. But there's something special about certain achievements that sets them apart, and so we asked Joyner to name a few of the most impressive achievements of all time. These aren't all in the past, either — at least one of these athletes will be competing in the Rio Olympics in August of 2016.

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Roger Bannister: On May 6, 1954, Bannister became the first person ever clocked running a sub-four-minute mile.

Eddy Merckx: In 1972, the Belgian cyclist set the record for the furthest distance traveled in an hour, speeding 49.431 km around a high altitude track in Mexico City.

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary: Joyner says the first time mountaineers summited Mount Everest, which Norgay and Hillary did in 1953, certainly deserves a spot on the list.

In a desperate time Chris Froome once resorted to a desperate measure.

As the now three-time Tour de France winner revealed in his autobiography, "The Climb," Froome once impersonated a Kenyan cycling official, using the man's email username and password to get his résumé into the right hands.

It was 2006, and Froome, who was born and raised in Nairobi, was racing as an amateur for Kenya's national cycling federation. The up-and-coming talent, who aspired to race abroad, found himself caught in a power struggle between his mentor, David Kinjah, and the federation's president, Julius Mwangi. Froome sided with Kinjah.

Froome was hungry to prove himself on the big stage in Europe, the hotbed of world cycling. He believed that if given the chance, he could prove his mettle and land a contract with a pro team. But to get an invite to Europe he needed to get his résumé in front of the right person — or into the right inbox. And he knew it would be a waste of time trying to do that with Mwangi.

One day Froome saw an opportunity. As he writes in "The Climb," he was in Cairo competing in the Tour of Egypt when Mwangi asked Froome to help him out with some administrative tasks.

Mwangi gave Froome his email username and password.

Here's Froome recalling the situation in chapter nine of his book:

"I thought it was odd that he had given me this information; he knew that I was a good friend of Kinjah's. Regardless of the peculiarity, I sat there and typed out the few emails he wanted done. They were administrative tasks to be sent to various people, and there was nothing of any significance. Mr. Mwangi wasn't too confident of his written English, so I assumed he had found a good use for his spare mzungu. I made a mental note of the login details.

"After Egypt and after Melbourne I had an idea.

"I had already begun sending out my CV to cycling teams in Europe. A two-pager that I had typed up, which included all of my results from everywhere I had been racing in Africa, together with a few photos pasted on the side. I thought it looked great. In the back of my mind I was aware that European cycling teams were really only interested in seeing CVs which provided evidence of having raced in Europe. A few people got back to me and asked that very question. 'Have you done any races in Europe, sonny?'

"I thought that if I did the Under-23 World Championships in September, in the city of Salzburg, which was definitely in Europe, it might be a giant step towards becoming a professional. Things were bad between the Kenyan Federation and the Safari Simbaz. Asking the Federation to enter me into the race and fund me to get there would be a waste of time. They knew I was on Kinjah's side.

"So I sat down and logged on to the Federation email address. Posing as Julius Mwangi, I wrote a short letter to the UCI, informing them that I would like to enter Christopher Froome, one of my country's most promising Under-23 riders, into the World Championships at that grade in the autumn. Thank you.

"Mr Mwangi, I am sorry I impersonated you. To be fair, I did mention it all vaguely before I left. That time when I said I had 'sorted something out.'"

Froome's plan worked, and he got to Salzburg.

There, he competed in the 2006 under-23 world championship time trial and road race. The TT started with a mini disaster when Froome crashed rather dramatically into a race official on the course, but he finished a pretty impressive 36th. He did well in the road race, finishing 45th and better than several future stars of the sport.

The next year, Froome turned pro at age 22 with Konica-Minolta before joining the Barloworld team and moving to Europe. This past Sunday, 10 years after posing as Mwangi, Froome won the world's biggest bicycle race for the third time. In his neo-pro year with Barloworld, he earned 22,500 euros a year; now he makes $5 million with Sky.

Impersonating Mwangi helped Froome get to Europe, where he got to compete against the world's best on pro cycling's biggest stage, the one he now rules. Importantly, it gave him the confidence he needed to pursue cycling. Career-wise, it turned out to be one of the best moves Froome has ever made.

 Who is Chris Froome?

 Chris Froome is using these weird chainrings

 After Froome cut back on carbs for more protein, he lost 20 pounds, started winning the Tour de France, and became a millionaire

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One hundred and ninety-eight of the world's best cyclists started this year's Tour de France, and each rode a bike that would make any lover of state-of-the-art tech drool. We saw fancy-looking rides with wind-tunnel-tested aero frames, stealthy brakes, and unconventional chainrings.

One bike we couldn't stop swooning over was Pierre Rolland's custom-painted Cannondale SuperSix Evo HI-MOD. The Frenchman's gorgeously understated velo, with its jade paint and classic-looking frame, elegantly stood aside from gaudy color schemes, overly aggressive geometry, and aero uppitiness.

Rolland, who rides for the American Cannondale-Drapac team, still benefited from plenty of high-tech goodies under the hood, as was only fitting for the two-time Tour de France stage winner.

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Bethel, Connecticut-based Cannondale shipped Rolland a custom-painted SuperSix Evo HI-MOD for the 2016 Tour.

Rolland has won two stages in the Tour, and he has finished the race in the top 11 on four occasions. This year he was 16th.

Rolland is 6-foot and weighs just over 150 pounds. He rides a 54-centimeter frame. The high-end performance-driven SuperSix Evo is popular with both pros and amateur riders for being stiff yet comfortable.

The longest bike trail in the US stretches for a whopping 2,768 miles, beginning in Antelope Wells, New Mexico and ends in the snowy resort town of Banff in Alberta, Canada. But soon, a 2,900-mile, bike path called the Greenway will overtake it as the longest bike path in the US — and it won't share the road with cars.

The Greenway will start in Key West, Florida and ends in Calais, Maine, right next to Canada. The project will essentially fill in the gaps between a chain of already existent bike paths — the route currently incorporates over 100 trails across 15 states, linking 25 cities. 

The East Coast Greenway Alliance started working on the path in 1992, and the group told the Atlantic's Citylab that the Greenway already incorporates some 850 miles of trails. By 2020, the organization plans to add 200 more, and the Alliance tells design magazine Core77 that it's planning to have 95% of the trail done by 2030. 

The project's completion timeline, like many big projects that require multi-municipality cooperation, is contingent on local governments that have to approve the designs and make sure they're code-compliant.

The Alliance isn't designing the route to be the most efficient path between the two points; rather, it's opting for a more scenic one that's more accessible for casual riders — not just hardcore distance cyclists.

"Because we aim to serve people of all ages and abilities, we will maintain our efforts to find off-road solutions, even in challenging locations," the Alliance wrote in a vision statement.

The path isn't close to being finished yet, but Eric Weis, the Greenway Alliance's director of development, told the Atlantic that over 10 million people are already using parts of the Greenway annually. It's a good indicator that many people will likely make use of a bike path down the Eastern seaboard.

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The world's biggest bicycle race is a tech junkie's wonderland, with blingy high-spec bikes and digital gizmos galore. But old standbys like tape and paper are still put to good use too. When we visited the Tour de France this year, we were as impressed with the state of the art as we were with simple tricks of the trade.

Here are some of the things that caught our eye:

SEE ALSO: After Chris Froome cut back on carbs for more protein, he lost 20 pounds, started winning the Tour de France, and became a millionaire

Super-fast carbon-fiber aero road bikes and deep-section wheels.

For nearly a century, the world's best cyclists all rode steel frames. Later came along aluminum and titanium. But these days every rider in the Tour de France rides bikes made of carbon fiber, a technology borrowed from the aerospace industry. It's light, stiff, fast, and a lot more comfortable than it used to be. Eventually, aero road bikes — which take their tube designs from time-trial bikes — came onto the scene. These bikes give a definite wind-tunnel-proven advantage and are now a mainstay of the peloton. The fastest sprinters ride aero road bikes, including Mark Cavendish, who raced a Cervélo S5 and Enve aero wheels to four stage wins.

Meanwhile, the search for motors continues.

The International Cycling Union conducted 3,773 tests for technological fraud — aka motor doping— at this year's Tour using magnetic-resistance technology via a tablet app. There were zero positives. It all goes back to February, when a Dutch rider was caught at the cyclocross world championships with a bike that had a motor hidden in the frame. 

Indeed, officials were taking the threat of "motor doping" seriously.

A thermal camera was used for the first time without warning at the Tour this year, in a bid to detect hidden motors in riders' bikes, AFP reported. The camera was developed by the French Atomic Energy Commission and used alongside magnetic-resonance testing. "No one saw it, no one knew," Thierry Braillard, the French secretary of state for sports, told AFP.

British cyclist and Tour de France winner Chris Froome nearly spoiled his chance at history over a small mistake.

Froome, a three-time Tour de France winner, is trying to become the second cyclist ever to win the Tour and an Olympic gold medal in the same year.

However, prior to Saturday's cycling road race, Froome nearly missed the chance entirely when he forgot to sign up for the race.

According to The Independent, a BBC journalist had to alert Froome that his name was being called over the loud speaker to register for the race.

Luckily, he got Froome's attention and Froome signed up.

Froome is part of a British team featuring Steve Cummings, Geraint Thomas, Adam Yates, and Ian Stannard. They were at the front of the peleton to begin the race.

Of course, there's no guarantee that Froome will accomplish history this Olympics, but it would have been a shame nonetheless for the world's top cyclist to miss the race because he forgot to sign up for it.

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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - An anti-bomb squad at the Olympic Games in Rio de detonated an unattended backpack near the end of the cycling course on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the public security department said.

Officials expect the bag may have belonged to a homeless man, but protocol requires any unattended objects to be destroyed, she said. The controlled blast occurred at 1:45 p.m. (12:45 p.m. EDT), the spokeswoman said.

Twitter users have posted more pictures:

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