Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sunday observations..

1) What gives with the fans at the Tour of California. 90% of them are fat and overweight. Who knows that the reason is, but maybe the guys that go watch bike races are more of the type that sit around and rather talk bike and drop names than ride bike and take names. ;) The thought of watching the bike race is nice, but I think I'd spend most of the time wishing I was out riding the climbs and the course.

2) I was only able to get out and ride for an hour today, but went out to the National Arboretum and did a couple of laps of my "circuit". It surprises me how few people know about this gem for training in the city. If you haven't gone, you should. I'll give you my course to get you going. Pretty much just roll around the park and there are a couple of good climbs...nothing terrible, but not bad for being within the city limits.

National Arboretum Circuit

3) I'm glad the Tour of California exists, but it was pretty boring overall. There weren't enough stages to really put Levi at risk. Maybe it's too early in the season for anyone to challenge a guy who peaks in February. It's kind of like Superdave riding the tradezone C race and people guessing what the result is going to be.

Here is hoping for better weather...

5 comments:

chris said...

I used to ride there once in while and I completely agree with your assesment. I used to like to go all the way up to the dead end on the backside where the pagoda is and the Annacostia. Which in that area is rather nice and scenic. Moglia and I would sometimes train there. Proximity to it is important and the summer crowd is sometimes prohibitive. Now is perfect. Awesome Bonsais.. and the conifer collection also. Free.

GamJams said...

I think ATOC will get more interesting as our domestic scene develops. Yeah it was a relatively stacked field this year, but to your point, it's still not much of a race when 90% of the class in the field is using it just to get some race miles in. Cancellara could have made it interesting - he's aiming for the hillier spring classics this year so I'm sure was intending to go well over the mountains. Levi dodged a bullet when he got sick.

But the race gets really interesting when the domestic teams have enough depth to mount a serious challenge. For a ProTour team, February is a nice tuneup to the spring calendar. But for a Bissell or Rock or OUCH, the chance to knock off ProTour teams on their home turf is irresistible. You know they won't use it as a tune-up - it's the highlight of their season. But so far, they don't have horsepower to make it a race. Maybe in a couple of years.

Greg said...

The longhorns guy was such a tool.

RayMan AKA StingRay said...

Jesse,

I think the mountain stages were kinda boring because they about 20-30 miles of downhill or flat racing to the finish. What mountain goat can fly up the these climbs and then stay away for 20-30 miles?

Jesse said...

Agreed with Rayman. Having 20 to 40 miles of run in prior to the finish of a stage doesn't really allow anyone a real chance to gamble against a big pro-tour squad.

I would have loved to see DZ or Mick attack Levi in hopes of gaining a minute on a climb right at the end...that would have been sweet.