Durand
Friday, April 20th, 2007Good luck to those who are racing tomorrow. I won’t be there.
I am going out to Afton to find what is left of my fitness.
Archive for April 20th, 2007
Trivia
Friday, April 20th, 2007The answer is: Albert Champion, 1899. Spark plug mogul.
His name is where the AC in AC Delco came from.
Now you know.
Amstel-Gold
Friday, April 20th, 2007I have no idea so I am going to go with Alejandro Valverde. I would have picked Bettini but it does not seem like he has his act together this year.
We’re losing
Friday, April 20th, 2007
In the three days that Americans have rightly been fixated on a horrifying act by a mentally disturbed person, well over 200 innocent people have been massacred in a country with less than one tenth the population of the United States, where the U.S. government has ultimate responsibility for security and where al Qaeda and Sunni mass-murderers roam with impunity. Ahmad Al-Rubaie/AFP/Getty
Or have we already lost?
2007 Velodrome Scouting Report
Friday, April 20th, 2007Just in from Ped:
About 10 people were there during the course of the evening. Two women. Gilby did not ride much and looked to be dialing in her new track bike. The man in black left right after we showed up. There was a dude from T-town riding. Skibby is looking tough and was working hard. Dubay had matching shorts and was looking strong. I also saw a USA national team long sleeve skin suit out there but did not recognize the rider, as I don’t know anyone on the US track team. It could be an athlete staying at the dorm preparing for the season at Blaine. Tainter was organizing the workouts. Tyler installed two new Tufo tubular clincher tires and they gave him problems. I spent most of the night working on setting up my position the new Salsa track bike. No Hummers were spotted during the course of the evening. I almost feel ashamed that I went to the track to train. I don’t want to have people get the wrong idea about how seriously I take track racing. Also I only heard one crack from Skibby about Smithers and I being joined at the hip. Probably more, just none I could hear. Also, Tyler was riding strong for the amount of training time he has in so far.
So, in summary:
Gilby was only there to glare at the other riders and start the psychological battle.
The man in black got scared and left as soon as Ped showed up.
Skibby is trying to make up lost ground from a winter of beer and pretzels.
Ped is scared of Dubay.
Some dude bought a USA national team track suit.
Tainter was trying to tell Ped what to do.
Tyler is an incompetent mechanic and Ped is not much better.
The Donimator is still on the beer and pretzels training program.
Ped is worried about his fitness as well as worried that people think he is in a gay relationship with me.
Ped is scared of Tyler.
Maybe I will try and come up next week and take a look around. Ped and I can hold hands and generate more discussion.
Virenque
Friday, April 20th, 2007OK, here is the deal with the video.
Virenque has two of his team mates up the road, Herve and Rous. He is riding with a group that has dropped the yellow jersey, Ullrich.
Ullrich is totally under pressure and starting to panic about Virenque.
Some questions:
• Why did Virenque send his two team mates up the road instead of working with his group to put more time into Ullrich?
• Once he did have his team mates up the road why did Virenque chose to go to the front and work to chase his team mates down?
• Why was Virenque asking the other members of his group to help chase down his team mates?
Instead of taking advantage of Ullrich’s moment of crisis, Virenque instead wasted an opportunity to keep him under pressure.
The only conclusion that I can come to is that Virenque does not know how to race unless the road is pointing up.
