If you’re like many working cyclists, you watch the Tour de France by either calling in sick (make sure to keep up with Bicycling’s Tour stage previews, so you know you know when you’ll be “coming down with something”) or watching the stage replay in the evening. But there are ways to catch the race while you’re stuck at work. Here are our favorite methods.

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Split your screen The best bit of advice (and you didn’t hear it from us) is to have a separate browser open for watching the Tour and the other open for work, so you can split-screen them and focus on your work when the race action cools down. Most of the time, the announcers will cue you in when the competition is ramping up, so wear headphones and pay attention to the audio portion while you’re not watching the peloton.

Set up a shortcut Don’t forget to think about what you’ll do when the boss pops his or her head into your office. Create a keyboard shortcut that will let you quickly minimize your Internet screen (Google “minimize active window,” plus the name of your operating system). Make sure you have a boring spreadsheet ready on your desktop so it looks like you’ve been slaving away.

Stream from your phone or tablet Again, headphones are key.

Break for lunch If you have a flexible schedule, plan your midday meal around the projected finish.

Head for the loo If you’re streaming from a phone, a well-timed bathroom break is great for viewing sprint finishes. Just be careful not to shout and cheer too loudly while sitting in the stall.

Take over the remote If you work someplace such as a bar or restaurant where the TV is already on, it’s time to change the channel. To help make your case, you can remind everyone that 3.5 billion people worldwide watch the Tour de France on TV each year; the Super Bowl snags a measly 115 million. Beyond that, if waxing poetic about the race (the scenery! the suffering! the cows!) doesn’t sway people, try showing them this bike racing fight video. 

Bribe your coworkers You might need to host a lunchtime viewing party to get the office interested in the race. Bring in some fancy cheese and baguettes (and maybe make some yellow-frosted cupcakes) to lure your officemates into a conference room to watch the Tour on TV.

Depending on time zones, you may need to tape the day’s stage, or watch a replay of one from the day before. “One challenge is that by lunchtime in the Eastern time zone, the race is usually over!” says Pary Bell, a VP in digital media at Rogers Communications and a huge cycling fan. “But you can bring up the last 20 kilometers or whatever is the right place for excitement in the day’s stage.” In any case, it’s a great opportunity to explain to your coworkers why cycling is awesome. The next step: Getting them riding with you. 

How do you watch the Tour at work? Show us on Twitter and Instagram by tagging your photos with the hashtag #TouredAtWork