- Le Tour Thanks to OLN, ahem, I mean Versus, we were able to rise every morning in July to live coverage of Le Tour. Thanks to all the pre-Tour coverage, we were looking forward to seeing if Hincapie could overtake Ullrich and Basso. Little did we know that midway through, they’d all be gone (either faded away or sent away), and that the crazy rough-hewn, no-PR-team-behind-him Floyd Landis, would emerge the leader. A disastrous stage 16 sent him out of contention, only to see the storied Stage-17 come-back (wherein my wife woke me early in the morning, saying “I think you might want to watch this — something special’s going on!). The following day’s time-trial sealed the victory, and made for a storybook ending to a storybook post-Lance Tour. Of course, the euphoria would last only a few days, as once again riders were overshadowed by laboratories, governing bodies, and enough misinformation to make any biochemistry-101 student cringe.
- Le Training, Part-I This summer, the entire family is into full-on triathlon-mode, and with it, a lot of cycling. The morning of my wife’s first summer tri, the dropouts on her front Bianchi fork ripped out (thanks to an bad-mount on our Jeep’s Yakima rack). However, thanks to a very friendly little-league baseball parent, she was able to borrow a lovely 20 year old Trek bike, and turned in her own PB at the race later that day! Of course, the accident provided a great excuse to upgrade her fork with a nice Richey carbon replacement! Here’s hoping the lost weight translates into mor mph’s off from her oly tri this coming weekend in Pleasant Prairie!
- Le Training, Part-II After 12 years of riding my used 1989 Trek 1000, I treated myself to a sports car: a Cervelo Dual time-trial bike. It took a few weeks to really acclimate to the aero-position, but once I did, I swear I could feel the added power. Due to my slicing through the wind like a knife (or due to a simple placebo effect) I set my own PB in my first summer race at Harbor Lights. We’ll see if this was fluke when my “A” Chicago Accenture triathlon race comes up in two weeks!
- Le Training, Part-III As icing on the racing cake, our son Andy told us he wanted to “try a tri,” and so he’s been training for his own debut at this summer’s Accenture Kid’s Triathlon (held on Saturday, the day before my Sunday oly). He’s been so impressive — not to mention cute — working through his own swimming, running, and biking routines (including being just a littler bit nervous about how it all works). As recognition for his improving bike skills, he upgraded his Trek Cub model to a “real bike,” a Trek Mt 220. After getting it tuned up at Pony Cycle, our LBS, he said to mom, “boy, this bike is a lot faster!” We’re going to go through a simulated race this Weds so he can do a walk through the transitions, get a feel for a the race, etc. Then, it’s only two short weeks to the real deal. Go Andy!
- Bad Karma – Good Karma Jen and I wanted to stop hopping into the car just to drive the corner to pick up groceries, go to the movies, and the like. We do very little driving to begin with, and most of it has become this sort of intra-town commuting. So, I hit chicago’s craigslist to find a cheap beater or hybrid in which we could tool around. I ended buying a perfectly good Trek 7300 for $150 from some local dude — who met me in a local CVS’s parking lot. From the get-go we thought that the deal was too good to be true, making us wonder if we just didn’t buy ourselves a nice stolen bike. We didn’t have long to struggle with our concious, however, as less than 2-weeks after getting the bike (and outfitting it with another $100 in rear-rack + grocery pannier), it was stolen out of our basement laundry. Oh well, we took this to mean that it was never meant to be ours in the first place, and that we should look to alleviate our fossil-burning tendencies with a new, guarenteed not-stolen, model. And so we’re now the proud owners of a nice Giant Cypress DX hybrid (plus $80 mega-kryptonite lock and chain). Hopefully, we restored just a bit of our karma as well!
- Le Tourmalet, L’Alpe d’Huez, and Elk Grove Village??? On Saturday, we headed out the far west suburbs (shudder!) to check out the inagural Elk Grove Village Classic pro race, a 27-lap, 100KM crit that featured a rather standout lineup (including CSC’s Dave Zabriske and Christian Vandevelde and Davitamon-Lotto’s Chris Horner). Oh yeah, and the race also features a $100,000 purse, with $25,000 to the first place finisher. (Boy, the suburbs don’t mess around!) We had a great time watching the pelaton whiz by us, and we were all amazed by just how much wind 80 guys on bikes can whip up while riding in a group.
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- Good Guy, Bad Guy, or Just A Guy? This past weekend, I attended the opening celebration of the Robbie Ventura’s VisionQuest Coaching and training facility here in Chicago. The event I went to featured presentations by and Q&A with no less than: Jessi Stensland (pro triathlete), Eric Kapitulk an endurance athlete who’s story you have to hear to believe), and pro cyclists Christian Vandevelde, David Zabriske, and another cyclist by the name of Floyd Landis. My thoughts? Well, Vandevelde is incredible and someone you want to bring home to mom (born and raised in the midwest, how could he not be?); Zabriske is incredible and someone you may never really figure out (the quirky personality portrayed in his recent Bicycle magazine article doesn’t begin to get at his “unique” nature); and Landis, well, he’s more than incredible, and strikes you as the most self-effacing, good natured, and genuine athlete you’ll ever meet (whether this exempts him from being a doper or not, I can’t say, but I will say that I think he was the best racer at this year’s Tour and deserves his yellow jersey. Oh, and if he had a PayPal defense fund, I’d contribute $5 to it. Editor’s note: I do not believe, however, that there were/are WMDs in Iraq.) Anyway, I walked away completely impressed with Robbie’s new venture, and a newfound respect for pro-endurance athletes, including and especially Mr. Landis. I guess I’m just a pushover for a signed autograph!
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