Stage 8 - Colnago

My good cycling buddy Darin joined in for today's fun. A shortish 53 miles. The wind was still blowing so the hills that were on tap came almost as a relief as the wind isn't as bad on the tree-lined hillsides surrounding the Holy Hill area of southeastern Wisconsin. In fact, the most exposed section of the ride was the long, downhill stretch heading east off of Holy Hill. With a westerly wind the twenty mile run back to the parking lot was about as much fun as a guy can have on two wheels. With Darin and I taking turns up front the pace never went slack. Most of that stretch was done at 25-30 mph. Nice!

The first nine stages are now in the books and tomorrow is a much deserved rest day (Yipee!). Today's ride also ends a string of eight consecutive 50-plus mile stages. Although nine 50-plus mile stages remain, the longest streak of long mileage days is three, which happens twice. With two time trials and a another rest day to break up the long stages I'm hopeful that my legs will be able to find a groove. It would be nice if the wind would die down too.


After today's ride I needed to deal with the saddle sore. Even though I can shift on the saddle to find a position that isn't tearfully painful the sore is not getting any better and the Tour will be in jeopardy if it gets any worse. Instead of the usual pee sized and shaped sore this one is about two inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. Since it was swollen and looking like a blister I opted for surgery. After carefully cleaning the area I sat on an old towel and with a flashlight to illuminate the target location I went in with a sterilized pin. There must have been two distinct sores as it required two painful punctures to fully drain the thing. At first a clear liquid gushed out and then blood oozed out. The blood will actually flush out the remaining puss and should help to prevent infection. Although there was not enough blood to categorize the surgery suite as a crime scene, it was pretty nasty. I cleaned up and then applied some anti-bacterial salve and gauze. It now has 48 hours to heal before I ride again.


Michael Rasmussen won today's Tour de France stage while astride a Colnago bicycle. Hey, that's what Elvis rides! One of the fun aspects of cycling is that you can use the same gear that the pros do. NASCAR fans try that. Anyway, no cycling blog would be complete without some gear discussion. Here is what the first two Tour Challenges have taught me; get a bike that fits right and feels good. Spend the time necessary to get it set up just right (and when you do use Elvis' Bike Position Chart so that you can duplicate it when necessary). Any mis-adjustment will cause pain when riding 400 miles per week.

People tend to focus on the frame when selecting a bike. A frame is certainly important but my feeling is that most major manufacturers have frames all but identical to other manufacturers. What I mean is, a low, mid or top end Trek can be matched by a low, mid or top end Specialized, or Giant, or Cervelo, or Time, or Orbea, or even Colnago. Figure out what type of frame you want and then compare the rest of the stuff on the bike to decide between manufacturers. For me, Trek loses by sticking their own branded stuff all over their bikes (yes, Bontrager is a Trek brand). This does nothing for the consumer, it simply raises the profit level for Trek. Find a bike that uses the stuff that you might buy if you were building up a bike from scratch. Mavic wheels instead of Bontrager, for example. Specialized does a good job at this and should be on your list of bikes to look into. Of course, I like putting bikes together and would recommend that you give it a try some day. Buy the frame you want and the parts you want. The task of building up a bike will, in addition to giving you a no compromise bike, make you a skilled mechanic, ready to tackle any maintenance or repair job. And it's fun!

Official bike of the 2007 Tour de France Challenge

Levi Leipheimer has a lot of attacking to do if he is ever to be considered a great racer by Elvis. Levi loves to sit on a wheel and follow. He never works and sadly lacks the panache of the great riders. The OLN (Oops, I mean VS.) announcers like to suck up to the American audience, so they'll characterize Levi's style as "smart". If he doesn't attack he won't bonk is the theory. Let other riders trash themselves and Levi will be the last rider standing. With Tour contenders Michael Rogers abandoning with injury and Alexandre Vinokourov badly hurt himself one could argue that it's a fine style, sitting in all day. But to a lot of us it's just plain sissy. If you want to be the Tour champion you need to show some aggression and take risks.

Had Leipheimer worked at all today he could have put much more time on Vinokourov, who will surely attack when his wounds heal. And I wonder if Leipheimer showed us his true self today when he had his team car pull him back to the pack after a bike change. It was a sorry sight to see. if you missed it here is what happened; Leipheimer had a problem with his chain that caused him to drop off the back of the main group so that he could grab his spare bike from the team car. Instead of working hard to get back like most riders do he pretended that his spare bike needed some adjustment. So he rode alongside his team car so that a mechanic could pretend to adjust the saddle height. Since this was his spare bike it would have been set up properly beforehand. But with the fake adjustment the mechanic was able to push/pull Leiphieimer at 40-plus miles per hour as they rode back up to the main pack.

Leipheimer has been penalized 10 seconds for his shenanigans. On one hand this is a spectacular deal. He saved minutes by being pulled back to the group by his team car and he saved energy too. All of that for a 10 second penalty is one heck of an investment. On the other hand, Elvis Kennedy never forgets. For all of Leipheimer's lack of aggression and lack of panache, being a cheater may be his biggest crime. Leipheimer made things worse by formally recognizing what a smart move cheating was. Speaking of his 10 second penalty he said, "It could make a difference, but if I hadn't gotten back, it would have made a bigger difference" (read HERE). We should read that as, "Had I not cheated I would now be out of contention". If Leipheimer happens to win this thing the logical conclusion to all of this will be that he didn't win it fair and square.

Why is it so hard to like the top American cyclists? Or maybe the question should be; why are the top American cyclists such jags?

Leipheimer; first he cheats, then he sits in