Stage 11, Tour de France 2016, © Sapin88, creative commons licence

It’s the first rest day in this year’s Tour de France and I’m missing the action already. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the analysis of yesterday’s dramatic stage from The Cycling Podcast and I’ll catch up on a couple more podcasts during the day. I’ve decided to do some filming video today as I can’t watch the race and do that at the same time, and leave the grunt work I have to do in front of the TV tomorrow. You could say I’m addicted.

Yet rewind 5 years and the Tour de France, or any cycle racing, wasn’t on my radar at all. I was a keen cyclist in terms of it being a pastime – a ride to a pub for a burger and a pint on a sunny day – but racing never caught my attention. Various earnest people had tried to explain its attractions over the years, but my entire interaction was the occasional glimpse of a snake of lurid lycra on a friend’s telly and doping scandal headlines in the papers.

So what changed? Very simple. On 5 July 2014, the Tour’s Grand Depart took the peloton through Wensleydale in Yorkshire. We had spent a couple of fantastic holidays in Askrigg in Wensleydale and were heading back that August. I knew those roads and those villages, so I wanted to see how they looked on the TV. That’s it.

And I was instantly hooked – I’ve hardly missed a TdF stage since and my interest has spread to the other grand tours and the one day classics. So what changed?

Simple. That half hour or so of racing through Wensleydale and up over Buttertubs pass was where my world and the Tour overlapped – so I paid attention.

This is exactly what I do when I use Green Jujitsu for employee engagement for Sustainability – I find the overlap between the attention of the audience and Sustainability because that’s where you get Sustainability through their filters and make it interesting and relevant to them. And it works!