Inside a Tour de France time trial with one of the world's best cyclists

A time trial in the Tour de France is one of the most grueling and technical tests in all of sports, but, when well executed, it can also be one of the most rewarding. Unlike most mass-start stages of the Tour, in the TT each rider races individually, and the winner is the guy who can complete the course in the fastest time.

Le contre le montre, the race against the clock, is a physical and mental discipline that demands thorough reconnaissance and sharp focus, for the rider and his sports director. It's not unusual for TT's to be decided by a handful of seconds or even hundredths of a second. After Greg LeMond completed the most famous TT in cycling history, he won the 1989 race by eight seconds.

A rider has to leave it all on the road, but he should finish with his energy and power spent evenly. If he goes too hard too early, he might implode and pay for his efforts later in the race; if he goes too easy, he risks running a slower time and missing the opportunity to give his all. Winners meter out effort over the duration.

Most of the 198 riders in this year's Tour took to the start line for the stage-one time trial in the rain. Overall favorites raced in hopes of striking an early blow to their general-classification rivals, many just wanted to finish the race safely, and a handful of specialists raced to win the day.

Business Insider rode in the follow car of Cannondale-Drapac team leader Rigoberto Urán. From the backseat we got a look at how his sports director, Charly Wegelius, helped Urán do his best race and begin to lay the foundation for a high overall finish in Paris 23 days later.

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A flat, fast course in the rain with lots of turns and slippery road surfaces.

The 104th Tour de France got underway in the rain, which changed the mood of a race and made the riders nervous. Those in the hunt for a high overall place in Paris 23 days later had to decide whether they were going to take risks to try to gain time on rivals or play it safe and just finish without crashing. They say you can't win the Tour on a day like this, but that you can lose it. Spain's Alejandro Valverde, a race favorite, rode too fast and crashed out after going down in a slick corner and shattering a kneecap. His Tour was over in minutes.

A well-executed time trial requires detailed planning and a thorough reconnaissance of the course.

Rigoberto Urán is a gifted climber who has finished second overall in the Giro d'Italia on two occasions and won a time trial in that race. Charly Wegelius is a former pro cyclist turned sports director. Urán came into this Tour fresh, and the team had expectations for him to finish high in the general classification. Wegelius told Business Insider that the objective for Urán in the opening TT was to avoid crashing in the rain.

To get ready, Urán completed a specific warmup out on the course prerace and then another on his stationary trainer right before the event.

"When you come into the first stage like that, when you come in fresh after a few days of rest, the warmup can be longer, especially because the temperature wasn't particularly high, so his core body temperature isn't going to haywire," Wegelius told Business Insider. "He would have ridden in the morning an hour or so, on the road when he looked at the course. Then he eats, then he rests. His actual warmup would have been 45 minutes. As for efforts during warmup, every rider finds their way, and a lot of that is deeply psychological. But what you're looking at is getting the body going and then a couple of journeys slowly building up to race intensity, holding it for a few minutes, coming down, going up again. You're getting that engine going and getting that system going and firing off. And then some pretty quick efforts to wake the body up."

Every curve and every corner on the course is studied carefully, over and over.

In addition to studying the TT course on paper before race day (the Tour route is revealed a year before the race), and discussing objectives with the riders, Wegelius drives the course the morning of the race and takes detailed "pace notes," which he uses to plan a strategy.

"There's a time before the race when the roads are closed and somebody else drives for me," Wegelius told Business Insider. "I start at kilometer zero, and I write notes about how I see the course. You try to have a dry run through the corners at the pace you expect a rider to go at. And you say, 'OK, this is a corner you could do without coming off the skis [aerobars] or here you might have to brake. Then I try to fit that together with a fairly rigid terminology, kind of how they do in rally driving."

Urán heads to the start house ...