He wasn't getting his tan in shape or balancing beer cans on his beach chair.

He was climbing Sterrett's Gap, tooling up to Shermans Dale, doing some other hills, then climbing the road up Waggoner's Gap on his ultra-light Cannondale road bike and heading home to Carlisle.

A nice 40-mile loop, he calls it, and about the only way to get ready for the Tour de France Tour - a week of biking the Alps just ahead of the pro bike riders in the 21-day race spectacular.

"It's kind of like these fantasy camps you can go to, for football and baseball," he said. "Well, one of the more expensive fantasy camps."

Higgins and a buddy, Dr. William Apollo of Harrisburg, signed up in September 2003 to go on the Velo Sport Vacations tour for July 2004, when Lance Armstrong would try to win the Tour for an unprecedented sixth time.

Higgins also hooked up with another world-class rider, Josh Beck of Carlisle, an elite athlete in the running-cycling combination sport of duathlon.

"He got me set up on a schedule," Higgins said. "We worked on, as he put it, different energy systems each month."

Climbing runs, base miles, sprints, intervals and the months went by. "Then, in June, we combined energy systems so we'd peak in July, just like a racer.

"Diet was a big thing. I learned a lot about the science of the body; for instance, exercising two hours after you eat so you burn stored fat. If you eat and then you go out on your bike ... you're just going to burn up what you just ate.

"With cycling, you want to lower your body fat. If you're lighter on your bike, the climbs are easier."

That's even more critical than it sounds.

Higgins and Apollo had chosen the second part of the Tour, in the mountains.

In Cumberland County, a hard climb might run for a mile or