Mass Market Bagels and Lance Armstrong

I thought about those cruddy round-shaped pieces of bread that are passed off as bagels when I got an email from Livestrong.com with the the title "Lance Ranked 2nd Overall After Stage 6."

Ranked? Yes, in the general classification (or gc or classment if you prefer the French), on which Lance has the second lowest overall elapsed time, Lance is indeed in second place, I couldn't help but be disappointed in the word "ranked." I would have preferred "Second Place" or even "2nd Place." I think Lance fans have enough sophistication in the ways of bike racing to understand Lance's position in the race.

I think of the bagel because it appears that many bagel makers decided to make their offerings taste more like traditional bread in an effort to gain a wider following. It hurt the bagel. Lance is big enough that his minions at Livestrong should use cycling terminology.

The picnic in the middle of each stage

Since there are no time-outs during a Tour stage, the guys eat on the go. No surprise there. But even a long time racer might be surprised by how much food the Garmin-Slipstream team says they pack per rider. I'm guessing that the guys don't eat everything. Six bars, five gels, four packs of bloks per rider is a prodigious meal even if the riders were much, much bigger.

Still, it's not the funniest part of hte packing list. Here are the items of greatest amusement:

.10 ml sun lotion/start oil depending on the weather
8 safety pins
.10 ml chamois cream

4 pages newspaper each long descent or/and wet day to pack in shoes.
0.5 caps laundry detergent
1 large bath towel for shower in bus
20 ml shower gel
0.5 cups massage cream
0.25 rolls of plastic tape to attach earplugs from race radio to their ears so it doesn’t fall out.

And now for the Question you've been too polite to ask

How Clean Is The 2009 Tour? The Associated Press answers.

On the one hand, the UCI anti-doping chief says it's cleaner. On the other, anti-doping expert Michael Ashenden says, “It’s clear that riders have learned to dope within the passport...I could write it down on a post-it note.” Apparently, micro-dosing of blood or EPO could work.

If it can be done within cycling, it makes you wonder about other sports, where they're not looking so closely.

What say you?

From far afield, a TdF Tea Party

While I think The San Jose Tea Examiner was struggling to come up with a Tour topic, she succeeded at doing something nobody else has. Design a tea party menu for those days when you're watching an epic stage with friends. Or in her case, a menu for when she's hosting Tour Fiends on her sofa. Know that the chef isn't a cyclist, but a foodie, so there are no variations on electrolyte drinks or jersey pocket food and no pasta plates to celebrate post-race binges.

The Fever is in flavor

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Does the Bike Give It Away?

Andreas Kloden has some impressive palmares. He's even finished second in the Tour and has good form this year. But despite all that, Astana must not think much of his Tour chances. As you'll see from this picture, he's riding the old Trek TT bike, and not the new one that Lance, Levi, and Alberto have. Ouch. Look at the black bike next to Kloden's. You can see from the front which one is supposed to be faster. Klodi even beat Lance and Levi in the stage one time trial, and was only four seconds behind Contador.

The Telltale (racer) Heart

Polar, a big name in heart rate monitoring, has hooked up a number of their sponsored riders to transponders and is broadcasting their real-time heart rate data to the world. All you need to do is go to Polar Cycling and click through to "live race data." Click around and y0u can enter yourself to win stuff, too.

There's a Lance Documentary being shot

Alex Gibney, the guy behind Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, is directing. Here's the easy takeaway from the article, "Hollywood loves beat-the-odds stories, and Sony hopes that Armstrong's return to racing after a 3 1/2 -year absence could prove as enthralling as any make-believe film." Looking for the easy way out? Never thought Hollywood would do that.

Sometimes it's hard being an expert

I don't think I'm alone when I write that the more I know on a subject the more I despair when journalists get things wrong. What about those stories where I'm not expert? Could they be as wrong, too?

Here's a story from Popular Mechanics on Tour Tech that will be at a shop near you. The images on the second page are the disturbing ones. They show an old pic of David Zabriskie on a time trial bike with mechanical shifting. They write, "Zabriskie’s time-trial bike (at top of page) doesn’t yet have new electronic shifting, but his road bike soon will." Only his TT bike at the Tour had electronic shifting on it. He's the guy in the Captain America getup; notice the battery pack on his left chainstay. I guess this is forgivable as the story and pictures appeared in the June, 2009 print edition of the mag, though Z's certainly been playing with electronic shifting at least as far back as February.

But then, they try to pass off titanium cogs as new. They try to pass off aero water bottles as a new thing. They show a conventional Shimano Ultegra brake and caption it with "Pro bike manufacturers mount rear brakes down toward the bottom bracket to declutter the frame. Front brakes are being moved inside or behind the bike’s front fork." So far, this is only true of some time trial bikes. And they show a Zipp 808 wheelset and describe it as a "solid core rear wheel." The 808 is hollow--the only solid core is a disc, which they don't show.

I guess one right out of seven isn't bad.

3,000 Water Bottles for Team Milram...and they'll probably run out

Michael Zellmann of SRAM somehow is penning a column for Chicago Now. It's not like he'll be giving press to SRAM-sponsored teams or anything.

OK, this story has to do with team Milram, a SRAM-sponsored team. And what goes into having a team at the tour. He lists the gear needs of the team in this article. Milram is the milk product name of Nordmilch, which specialized in "curds" among other things.

The Tour can be on your iPhone or Pod Touch

This is what our weary, over-busy world needs. The Tour Live on their iPhone!

I received this headline, but so far, the link isn't working. The tech is via NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster.

Power Junkies, your site is ready

If you live and die by your data download and your powermeter, then you'll get a kick out of seeing power files from Tour riders. Training Peaks, a power data intrepretive program, sponsors a number of teams and will be giving the world some peeks at Training Peaks files of sponsored riders. TP sponsors the Saxo Bank team as well as Team Columbia. Every day, they'll be putting up a few power files, so you can see what the big boys are actually doing during each stage. After reading the files, you'll know exactly watt's up when the racers throw down.

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/2009-tour-de-france-files.aspx

Trainspotting at the Tour

To me, the Tour is, among other things, the biggest product launch for the bike world. And with countless company flacks and thousands of journalists, they should be uncovering every last bit of gear. If a team is riding re-labeled stuff, we should be hearing of it. If Lance has special handlebar tape, it is big news to bike sites.

So, it is a surprise to me that no one has thusfar commented on Astana's wheels. Bontrager, a Trek label, supplies the wheels. However, the team has been rolling on conventionally-spoked deep-dish wheels this Tour. It appears that Bontrager/Trek has abandoned the paired spoke technology that Trek has utilized since it was selling Rolf wheels in the 90s. So far, there's no explanation anywhere.

The second oddity is Fabian Cancellara's Specialized S-Works Shoes. Specialized has been making hay about how their pro riders don't get custom shoes, they get what the public can get. But a close look at Fabian's slippers reveals that he's running two Boa knobs and no Velcro strap at the bottom, unlike the rest of the team or public. Does Spartacus pull out unless he's got a second line of fishing wire holding his feet in place?

TdF Live and on the web and no copyright violation

Versus is doing it here: http://www.versus.com/tourdefrancelive. There are both free and paid versions. The paid is "enhanced."

Tour Fever: sort of in stores

I've gotten some questions lately as to where to score a copy of Tour Fever. It could be at your local bookstore, but the way most bookstores deal with books, it's hard to say for sure. I regained the rights to the book and have been planning an updated edition, just haven't found the time to finish the updating. Poor timing, I know.

I have tried to track down the remaindered copies, which were sold to a company that specializes in remaindered books. Figured I could offer them online. For some reason, they have them randomly sorted on pallets of books. Those pallets haven't been opened and thus the company doesn't know where they are and thus can't sell them.

In the meantime, I recommend going through AbeBooks. Independent booksellers and used booksellers use the site to sell their wares. You can definitely find copies there. I think Amazon owns Abe these days.

Lancaster "spitting chips" after Stage 2

Aussie Slang dominates reportage of their home boys at the Tour in Cadel Stays Cool On Tour de France. Even the "on" as opposed to "in" of the title threw me. What are they, New Yorkers?

Here are my fave's:

"Cadel Evans was content but fellow Australian Brett Lancaster was spitting chips after the first bunch sprint finish on the Tour de France."

"'The guy needs to pull his head in.'"

"Roulston came a cropper on Sunday when he crashed with 70km to go, according to his team, then he missed a split second decision which meant he didn't pull as planned in the lead-out."

Stage 9 @ BXL to Benefit the CRCA Junior Development Program

From two guys who care.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Jed Kornbluh

Christophe Jammet

NYCX

Stage 9 @ BXL to Benefit the CRCA Junior Development Program, presented by CJ & Jed

NEW YORK, NY July 6, 2009– Mussels! Schleck! Frites! Berto! Beer! Bottle! Lance! Who? On Sunday, July 12th at 7PM, come out to support the CRCA Junior Development Program and enjoy the company of fellow members of the NYC cycling community as we watch Stage 9 of the tour de France, featuring the classic climb up to Col de Tourmalet, at BXL Café on west 43rd (b/t 6th and Broadway). Belgian beer will flow, prizes will be raffled, and great TdF racing will be on the TV as CJ and Jed bring you another great party for a worthy cause.

The event begins at 7PM, with coverage on Versus beginning at 8PM, and will run until the end of the broadcast at 11PM. Offers for the night will include drink specials, courtesy of BXL and other event sponsors, a steady steam of prize raffles, as well as pre-recorded extended coverage of Stage 9. Raffle tickets will be sold for $5 throughout the event and all money raised will go directly to the CRCA Junior Development Program.

Raffle prize sponsors for this event include:

CRCA

Sportique Body Care

Univest Grand Prix Cyclosportif 100k

NYC Velo

Finkraft Coaching

New Jersey State Fair SpectaCross

David Jordan Coaching

Uvex Helmets

D'artagnan

OrthoChick

Velo Classic Tours

Gage Desoto Tees

Wafels & Dinges

BXL Cafe

AND MORE!

For additional information, contact: newyorkcross at gmail dot com

Flyer is HERE.

Ville Etape puts your town on the map

Ever heard of Tonnere? You will now. The 2009 Tour's 12th stage begins there. It's a distinction that Tonnere's mayor hopes will make the town known the world over. Not just for their amazing 300 meter deep well. While it feeds the town, townspeople are hoping the Tour feeds the town as well.

Want to know who's the fave'? Check the odds

Oddschecker.com does the checking for you.

Here's their Tour de France page.

Lance Armstrong: The perfect person*

*according to his coach.

Chris Carmichael tells us the truth. Lance is "one of the best on-the-road tacticians the sport has ever seen."

Maybe Carmichael forgets Lance's early days, when he'd go out to obliterate the competition and get beaten by fellow juniors. or how he rode too aggressively early on in races like the 1991 worlds or 1992 Olympics. Maybe Lance learned in his early pro days from Motorola Directeur Sportif Hennie Kuiper, widely considered a great tactician. No doubt he learned something from Johan Bruyneel. Or maybe it's just experience; he's got ten years on his teammate Contador and much of the peloton.

Myth-making aside, we'll get to see how Lance does without a radio in his ear on stage 10 and 13. Stage 10 could well be a tough one, occurring on the heels of a rest day and countless little ups and downs that could create chaos. And stage 13 has two category two climbs separated by a category one climb. Doesn't look to be a decisive day, but without radios and a tired peloton splintering, we could learn how good Armstrong's on-the-road captaining really is.