Just in case you have been following me here, I have been posting to my training blog...go here for the complete post race report. LOVE Blue Lake!

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Tour de France

Since 2003 we have watched as much of the Tour as possible. This year is different, we had canceled our Directv subscription which meant we were canceling our Tour watching capabilities. Fortunately, we have a friend who has Directv and after reading my initial lament of not being able to watch the Tour said that they would record the Tour for us...SO COOL!

That with the daily broadcasts on the internet, we'll still have Phil & Paul blaring throughout the house for the next 3 weeks! Lastnight we received the first 3 stages and man, it's nice to watch the stages (even though they are past now) on the big screen instead of the computer monitor. So, with my daily dose of cycling news, Versus via steephill.tv and the recorded stages, we are set for the rest of the month! We are sad, sad people - every July revolves around the Tour.

I'm thinking of moving to France every July - anyone want to join me?

PS: I always root for the underdog, so I'm hoping that Team Garmin will do well this year, they came in second in today's Team Time Trial!

Alpenrose Six Days

Another trip to Alpenrose to catch some of the Six Days races. Tonight was points and madison racing. This was our first time watching madison and it was pretty cool...there was a crash and one end of the track which wasn't terribly surprising since the race is so chaotic...this is just a sample of the race - notice the team making an exchange - at the end and brief before I quit recording.

TDF 2009

A few months ago we decided to cancel our Directv subscription because we really didn't watch hardly anything on TV and when we did there were usually a few channels that we would flip to and paying $50+ a month for a few channels seemed pretty stupid. Once we did have it cancelled we wondered how the heck we would get to watch any of the Tour de France...here we are a week away from the start of the tour and we still haven't figured that out yet.

However, one of the guys showed me a link for Steephill TV on the internet. This site has all the races that have happened or will be in the near future. I haven't previewed anything yet, but at least with that I'll stay in the loop. I am a little sad though, now that we have the flat screen that Tom has been wanting since forever, we won't be able to watch any racing action on it.

I wonder if we can get Directv for 3 weeks every July...hmmm....

Alpenrose Velodrome

Took a little bit of video with our camera, my Flip should arrive soon so future videos will be better!

VELODROME MANIA!

This last weekend was really a velodrome weekend....not that we were at Alpenrose for periods longer than 2 hours at a time, but that we had gone out on 3 separate occasions from Thursday - Saturday.

Friday night is the regular Thursday Night Series - which was pretty brief as we were informed by Dave (from Performance) that many of the cyclists would be racing during the Alpenrose Velodrome Challenge (AVC) thru the weekend.

So we caught the points race for the men and women and it was pretty cool.

We returned in time to watch some of the Pursuits races toward the end of Session 1 Friday morning.

Saturday afternoon we returned in time to watch the sprints and keirin races. Keiren has got to be my favorite, although the sprints are pretty cool and very tactical and psychological...here is a shot of Keirin - Entertainment between races was provided by the Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers....

It was a really fun weekend and we might have to go back and try out riding on the Velodome....YIKES!