CHARTRES, France - Peter Sagan thrust an arm and fist forward à la Superman. Chris Froome calmly dropped back to his team car to have his seat adjusted by a mechanic. Other cyclists chatted as they admired the rolling countryside.
With nearly six hours in the saddle and hardly any action until the final stretch, there was plenty of time to relax and fool around Friday during the seventh stage of the Tour de France, the longest of 21 in this year's race.
"Boring stage," said Sagan, the three-time reigning world champion. "You're happy it was a sunny day, no wind, without stress. But it was boring."
Sagan finished third in the mass sprint with and uphill finish that suited him, and he said he was pleased with the result because he "had no legs to beat the first two guys."
He was asked how he passed the time up to that point.
"I talked to everyone," Sagan said.
Dutch cyclist Dylan Groenewegen won the stage ahead of Fernando Gaviria. Four-time champion Froome and the other favorites finished safely in the main pack. Unlike earlier sprinting legs in the race's first week, this one was without serious crashes.
Greg Van Avermaet held on to the yellow jersey he earned in the third stage, and he doubled his lead on Geraint Thomas to six seconds by winning an intermediate bonus sprint. Froome is 14th, 1:05 behind Van Avermaet.
Gaviria and Sagan were marking each other - each has won two stages in this year's race - when Groenewegen surprised them and surged ahead on the final straight. Groenewegen also won a sprint in last year's concluding stage on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
"The first days were not good enough, the legs were not good. Today the legs were good, and everything was OK," said Groenewegen, who rides for Team Lotto NL-Jumbo. "With 200 meters to go, I saw the gap and I was going to the finish line."
After crossing the line, Groenewegen placed his finger to his lips in a gesture of silence.
"People said I was not good enough after the first sprints, but that's not true," he said.
The 143-mile trek from Fougeres, home to the best-preserved and largest medieval fortress in Europe, concluded in Chartres, site of a vast cathedral known for its stained-glass windows.
Days like these are referred to as "transfer" stages, with their implied purpose merely for moving the Tour from one area to the next. In this case, it was from Brittany to north-central France as the race winds toward Sunday's highly awaited cobblestoned leg to Roubaix, near the Belgian border.
"It was quite long You can ask the question, 'Is this really necessary in a Grand Tour?'" Van Avermaet said. "But everyone kind of enjoyed it - the first day we could really relax."
After a few early attacks failed, Yoann Offredo launched a solo effort 22 miles in. The French rider with the Wanty-Groupe Gobert team established an advantage of more than eight minutes - the biggest breakaway lead in this year's Tour - before being caught by the pack with 56 miles to go.
Fortuneo-Samsic's Laurent Pichon, another French rider, then also got away alone for a spell. In the end, though, it came down to a bunch sprint as expected.
Saturday's eighth stage covers a slightly more challenging terrain over 112.5 miles from Dreux to Amiens but again should set up well for sprinters.
The overall favorites should be tested again in Roubaix before heading down to the Alps next week.