At last, Lance Armstrong has the yellow jersey on his shoulders, and he plans on keeping it this time.

As we saw with Thomas Voeckler, the yellow jersey has the power to give the rider wearing it an extra bit of motivation and drive. While Lance is not lacking in either of those things, he has a deep respect for the yellow jersey and believes you have to rise to the honor of wearing it. Lance has never relinquished a yellow jersey once he has it in the mountains, and he has no intention of changing that this year.

Grabbing the yellow jersey today provides the added benefit of being the last man to start the Alp d’Huez individual time trial tomorrow. Armstrong likes having information about his rivals during road stages and time trials, and starting last allows him to get time splits on everyone in front of him. While he will be going as fast as he can regardless of the information he receives, gauging his effort off the performances of others helps provide motivation.

There are a several added pressures and responsibilities placed on Lance’s shoulders now that he possesses the yellow jersey. While Jan Ullrich quietly rode back down the finishing climb to get to his team bus this afternoon, Armstrong had to go to doping control, the jersey presentation, and a press conference. All three of these things are required of stage winners and the holder of the yellow jersey, and they delay a rider’s ability to get away from the finishing area and back to his bus and hotel to continue the recovery process.

Having Lance in the yellow jersey won’t really change the amount of work US Postal Service has to do in the coming days. For one thing, two of the next five stages are individual time trials. For another, the team has been controlling the race in the mountains already, regardless of the fact they didn’t have the jersey. While Voeckler was wearing it, USPS received a little help from Brioches La Boulangere in the beginning of mountain stages, but controlled the pace completely in the second half.

The USPS will continue doing the majority of the pace-making over the rest of the road stages, but they should still get some help. Now that Ivan Basso has established himself as Armstrong’s closest rival, his CSC team has to come to the fore and do some work in order to distance Basso from challengers behind him. For USPS and CSC, it is in both team’s best interest to contribute to the pace making in the Alps in order to put pressure on T-Mobile riders Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloden. Basso has to try to attack Armstrong for the yellow jersey, but he will also race to preserve his current position in second place.

Lance Armstrong is in a very good position, wearing the yellow jersey with a 1:25 lead over second place and just five stages to go. He still has a lot of work ahead of him to wear yellow in Paris , but I haven’t seen any indication the man is troubled by fatigue, dehydration, or any other problem. He is in good shape to take on all challengers over the next five days.